Prostitute series raises dispute behind the scenes

Dear readers:

We're proud to introduce you to our new columnist, Tammerlin Drummond, whose column will focus on Oakland issues and appear twice a week.

THERE ARE certain things that are so evil we put on blinders, hoping that shielding our eyes will make them disappear.

Things such as men old enough to be grandfathers flocking to Oakland from far and wide for the specific purpose of having sex with little girls (and sometimes boys) as young as 10 years old.

Child prostitution has been Oakland's dirty little secret fora while now. It's one of those things that a lot of people know exists -- certainly anyone who has ever driven certain stretches of International Boulevard or San Pablo Avenue. It's an open secret that most of us recoil from. We may steal a furtive look at the little girls in grotesque make-up, teetering in too-high heels and tight, revealing clothes, ducking their heads through the passenger windows of strangers' cars. But then the stoplight changes to green and we hurry on back to our own busy, self-absorbed lives.

Recently, a team of reporters and editors from the Oakland Tribune decided that it was time to finally shine the public spotlight on the shocking, shameful epidemic of child prostitution in Oakland. The Tribune began publishing its investigation Monday to coincide with Sexually Exploited Minors Awareness Week, which the Alameda County Board of Supervisors proclaimed to draw attention to this social disease.

On Thursday, more than 100 people attended a town hall meeting about child prostitution at the Youth Uprising Center. "We're talking about girls being gang raped, kidnapped and handcuffed to pipes in motels," said panelist Holly Joshi, an officer with the Oakland Police Department's child exploitation unit. "We recovered a 14-year-old girl last week who was cut with a hot iron on both her breasts by her pimp and given gonorrhea."

One of the most disturbing stories in the Tribune series was reporter Kamika Dunlap's interview with a 14-year-old girl who was identified only as Desiree.

Here's what our readers who have been following the series know: Desiree ran away from home after a trip to the mall and ended up being sold as a prostitute on Craigslist. She was forced by her pimp to have sex with as many as five men a day. She contracted a painful venereal disease that made it impossible for her to work and eventually made her quit and return to her family.

Here's something you don't know.

Desiree's grandfather had responded to a Tribune advertisement seeking child prostitutes who were willing to tell their story. He told Dunlap that his granddaughter, who turned 15 last Saturday, had been a child prostitute. Desiree -- with her mother's permission -- agreed to tell her story and have her full name and picture published in the newspaper.

Desiree also sat for a video interview with Tribune photographer Jane Tyska that was to have been published on the newspaper's Web site. Desiree said that she hoped by telling her story, she could discourage other young girls from repeating her mistakes.

Because Desiree is a minor, and because of the explosive nature of the subject matter, the editors consulted the paper's lawyers. They required Desiree and her mother to sign consent forms, which they did. They also asked Dunlap to tape a phone conversation with Desiree in which she reiterated that she consented to having her name and picture in the paper. Desiree agreed.

From a legal standpoint, as far as the reporting and editing team was concerned, all of the I's were dotted and the T's were crossed. But from a journalistic standpoint, the issues was not settled. It is a long-standing journalistic principle that newspapers do not identify minors who are victims of crimes, but the reporters and editors on the project felt the paper should make an exception because Desiree could put a face on this horrible issue that had been in the shadows for far too long.

But when Bay Area News Group-East Bay Vice President Kevin Keane was shown the piece, he disagreed. He said he did not see a compelling interest in breaking the rules. He said he felt that using Desiree's full name and image -- even if she and her mother had agreed to it -- was crossing the line into exploitation. He told Tribune Editor Martin G. Reynolds he did not want Desiree's full name used and that the paper was not to run her picture or the multimedia video.

The reporters and editors on the team were shell-shocked. Some, feeling all of their hard work to finally give a human face to child prostitution had been for nothing, were in tears.

The story ran Tuesday with just Desiree's first name. But Keane's decision not to go with Desiree's full name, photographs and video, generated intense debate at the newspaper. That is not unusual; intense debates happen in newsrooms all the time.

Keane says he has no doubt he made the right call. That while the paper might have been legally within its rights to make Desiree's identity known, it had a moral obligation not to exploit a child.