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Tricks shouldn't be for kids Those fighting child prostitution don't like the term "child prostitute"--they say it banalizes the notion of having sex with a child. If we can stop thinking of it as prostitution and start thinking of it as the sexual exploitation of children, they say, men might not use their services with such impunity. And use their services they do. According to the project managers of Out From the Shadows and Into the Light, an anti-exploitation initiative launched by Save the Children Canada, there are tens of thousands of child prostitutes in Canada. Escort services offer them up, hidden from disapproving eyes. Recruitment goes on in schoolyards. Save the Children invited a handful of survivors of the trade to town this week to help launch its campaign. Says Val Philips, who turned her first trick at 11 and lived to get out of the trade 14 years later, the solution is to lay charges of statutory rape or pedophilia against men who use child prostitutes, and introduce clauses ensuring the right of prostitutes to testify against johns and pimps anonymously. Without these changes, she says, the trade will continue to thrive. "Now, it's like letting someone rob a bank over and over again." --Jacquie Charlton |