The teens were runaways that Sgt. Sterling Terrace Hospedales lured into an off-base apartment then forced into prostitution. Cases like this underscore the importance of telling young girls the truth about adults who are overly interested in teens, or “youth liberation” and all related such nonsense:

From Seatle 911:

A sergeant based at Fort Lewis who prosecutors say set up a juvenile girl in an apartment to work for him as a prostitute has been charged with sex trafficking.

Sterling Terrace Hospedales, 26, was charged in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on Monday with sex trafficking of a child and attempted sex trafficking of a child. He is being held held in the Pierce County Jail on state charges.

Prosecutors say the investigation began in April when Lakewood police learned that a juvenile runaway from the Seattle area was posting Internet ads for prostitution.

The juvenile admitted that she worked as a prostitute for Hospedales in an apartment he got for her, prosecutors say. A second girl flew to the area from Wyoming on a plane ticket Hospedales bought. Prosecutors say that he told her that he would kick her out of the apartment and have other girls beat her up if she didn’t pay him back for the ticket by working as a prostitute.

Sex trafficking of a juvenile carries a sentence of 10 years to life.

Runaways are especially vulnerable to being forced into sexual slavery, as are children who spend a great deal of time on the Internet associating with adults they don’t know. Political groups like World Can’t Wait have been encouraging children to socialize with adults their parents don’t know anything about for years.

It’s not a surprise that sex trafficking of children and teens is on the rise in America. A new documentary on the subject called Playground claims at least 300,000 American children are at risk of being forced into prostitution. From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Filmmaker Libby Spears wanted to make a documentary about the sexual exploitation of kids in Asia and Latin America, but that changed when she discovered that child sex trafficking is a big problem in the United States.

“We have laws in this country that protect international victims of sex trafficking and don’t have laws that protect domestic victims, but that’s just starting to change,” Spears told Reuters in a recent interview.

“Here (in the United States) when it’s a 12-year-old girl they like to call it prostitution, they like to call her a prostitute, when that’s not accurate,” said Spears, who hopes her film will raise awareness and help push policy change. “There needs to be more resources for these kids long term.”

The film quotes figures from the group End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT), which says U.S. citizens account for 25 percent of child sex tourists worldwide.

The international group also says 300,000 U.S. children are at risk of being forced into the sex trade.

Spears credits an interview with Ernie Allen, president and chief executive of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, for changing the direction of her film.

“People don’t think it happens in this country. It may look in some cases different than it looks in other parts of the world, but vulnerable kids are targeted by procurers, by exploiters, by pimps, lured into the sex trade,” Allen says in the documentary.

“There are not many American cities, where you won’t be able to go out and find young kids on the streets engaging in the sex trade and virtually none of that is voluntary,” he said. “It’s organized crime.”

Those “escort” ads in the back of the alternative newspapers you hipsters read are mostly sex slaves and many under age. Think about that next time you start quoting Michael Musto or whoever.

The Justice Department must come down hard on the pimps and the johns who exploit children for sex. We as a country need to send a message that we will protect our children from predation from vile criminals like Hospedales and the men who had sex with the little girl he enslaved.