What the Media Won't Tell You About Child Prostitution

Update: Sadly, Shaniya's body was discovered a few hours after this story first posted.

Police in Fayetteville, North Carolina, are desperately looking for five-year-old Shaniya Davis, the little girl whose mother allegedly sold her into prostitution.

At first, this story might seem to be about one criminal woman low enough to exploit her own child sexually for profit. However, it tells the tale of something far more insidious that the mainstream media won't touch: even in a small town in North Carolina, there is a market for sex with five-year-old girls.

Antoinette Nicole Davis, Shaniya's mother, was arrested yesterday on human trafficking charges and charges related to prostitution. Authorities claim she "knowingly provide[d] Shaniya Davis with the intent that she be held in sexual servitude," and she "permit[ted] an act of prostitution." Shaniya went missing during a rare visit with her mother. Her father, Bradley Lockhart, had raised his daughter for the first several years of her life. But when her mother told him she'd been sober and employed for 6 months, he decided to let the girl spend some time with her. Shaniya was reported missing earlier this week, but has been seen being carried into a hotel room by a man since then. The man is being identified and Shaniya remains missing.

As sad and grotesque as it may be for a mother to knowingly put her child in a situatuion of sexual slavery, there is an even more disturbing element of this story that is going largely unexamined by the mainstream media.

Davis was able to sell her five-year-old daughter into prostitution because a prostitution market for children exists in America. Shaniya's story is making headlines because she is much younger than the average victim. However, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the average age of entry into prostitution in the U.S. is 12 to 14 years old -- barely past the age of puberty. Some estimates put the range a year younger, at 11 to 13. So while Shaniya's story of being sold at age five might be an anomaly, stories of girls being sold, even by their own mothers, into prostitution at 12, 13, or 14 years old are much more common. All of these girls are sold because there are men demanding sex from children, and who are willing to pay for it.

There are a couple of ways we can try and prevent what happened to Shaniya from happening to other little girls. We can do what we've been doing, taking children away from poor mothers who have addiction issues and putting them in foster care. Of course, kids in foster care are more at risk for exploitation and trafficking as well.

Or, we could spend our time and resources ensuring that the next time someone wants to sell a child into sexual servitude, there are no buyers. Let's make buying sex with a child a dangerous act for a man -- dangerous because the chance of arrest and jail is so high. Let's make buying sex with a child -- not just pre-pubescent children but every child under 18 -- culturally disgusting. Let's make the risk far greater than the reward.

Because when there is no market for trafficked children, there is no incentive to sell them. And if there were no buyers in North Carolina, perhaps Shaniya would be home with her dad right now.

Photo credit: eflon