MOTIVATION
BODY&SOLD is creating a network of theaters and social agencies, who, acting together, will raise the national consciousness about the intertwined issues of child abuse, runaways, and child prostitution.
HERE'S WHY:
Two years ago, we were shocked to learn that in our neighborhood in Boston, girls 12 and 13 are being picked up and brought into prostitution, beaten and threatened daily. When pimps feel the heat from law enforcement, they may move kids to Atlantic City, then Miami and then Las Vegas. It’s as if these girls have dropped off the face of the earth. Their childhoods stop. Their parents can't find them.
Thousands of American children, 12-16 and younger, run away from home and are lured with promises of love and attention they're hungry for, a meal, money, glamour. Or they’re simply drugged and kidnapped.
We cannot afford to lose these girls. We need them to grow up and become leaders. We need to hear their voices.
In Minneapolis, Hartford, and Boston we talked with young men and women who told us many versions of this harsh story. BODY&SOLD is a play composed from the voices of these survivors.
Young Americans — six girls and two boys — tell us how they left home and were seduced, lured, kidnapped into a life of prostitution. They tell us about the trouble in their families which forced them from home, how they became prostituted, the daily violence in “the life,” how they escaped, their struggle to survive.
The play works. In 2005, with support from the Boston Women's Fund, The Department of Social Services in Boston, and the Haymarket Peoples' Fund, Tempest Productions produced BODY&SOLD in three Boston communities. It held audiences rapt. It sparked community discussion groups and action plans from residents of all ages. We want many communities to join this conversation.
"BODY&SOLD is a powerful tool to create community dialogue about teen prostitution and child abuse.”
- Olinka Briceño, co-director, VOX Project
We hope you will host or sponsor a reading and join us!
Acting together we can make the exploitation of children unfashionable.
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