VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- It's close to midnight on a chilly Friday when they spot her near the bus stop: A thin, sloe-eyed girl with long, dark hair, a baggy sweat shirt and pale skin made paler by garish lights from a nearby used-car lot. 

She lingers and scans traffic along Kingsway, a known prostitution boulevard. Then Detective Constables Oscar Ramos and Raymond Payette, arguably this city's highest profile, street-level, anti-prostitution crusaders, pull up in their unmarked car. 

The girl, they discover, is 16-years-old, living in a group home and in need of a heroin fix. To get it, she's trying to sell herself. 

Within 20 minutes, they have her off the street and in the care of British Columbia's Ministry for Children and Families. 

"She's never really worked the street before -- maybe she's done it once or twice," Ramos says. "Fortunately, we got to her right away." 

Because it's nearby, Portland has a strong presence in the child sex trade of this cosmopolitan port province, which gave a big nod to the growing problem last week by observing Sexual Exploitation Awareness Week. Portland-area pimps often bring their "girls" here -- the youngest on record an 11-year-old police rescued Feb. 24. Portland-area "johns," feeling rich because of the strong dollar, cruise local hot spots, looking for deals. 

Unfortunately, however, cracking down on child prostitution in Vancouver and Portland -- both cities of about 500,000 and hubs of West Coast prostitution -- isn't as easy as the Vancouver officers' Friday night dragnet might suggest. 

Four days passed last month before Vancouver police noticed the frightened 11-year-old working the industrial waterfront on Franklin Street. Police say the girl, recruited at Portland's Lloyd Center mall, was drugged, beaten and forced to work on just four hours sleep, turning about $1,000 worth of tricks before her ordeal was over. 

Recruitment of other girls, usually 14 to 16, is rampant in Portland, Vancouver and across the continent, Canadian and U.S. police say -- at schools, bus malls, shopping centers and parties. 

"By the time the kids realize they've taken too big a step, it's too late," says Officer Doug Kosloske of the Portland Police Bureau's Drugs and Vice Division, which also is investigating the case involving the 11-year-old. "The white picket fence is no boundary." 


A matter of location 
The reason Portland youths end up prostituting themselves in Vancouver, Phoenix, Honolulu and other West Coast cities is mainly a matter of geography, police say. They also think Oregon's strong anti-pimping laws, which carry a mandatory 51/2-year prison sentence, might scare pimps away -- some across the border. 

Still other experts think Vancouver, British Columbia, has become an active market mostly because of Canada's confusing and contradictory prostitution laws. 

Unlike Oregon, selling sex can be legal among adults in Canada, but prostitution-related acts carried out in public, brothels or with minors are not. The legal age of sexual consent in Canada is 14. Such double-speak, some experts say, makes it difficult to address Canada's child-prostitution problem. 

"The only way we are going to deal with child prostitution is by dealing with adult prostitution -- deciding what's legal and what isn't," says Dr. John Lowman, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and one of Canada's leading prostitution researchers. "Only then can we create a situation where it's clear that child prostitution is unacceptable." 

Although the debate about child prostitution in Portland has scarcely begun at the highest levels, the debate about the severity of Vancouver's high-profile child exploitation problem has reached a fever pitch, even more so after the huge publicity surrounding the 11-year-old. Previously, the youngest victim known to police was 13. 

It's intense, politicized, even bitter at times. No one wants to appear soft on the issue, even as critics point out the hypocrisy of the city making money by licensing massage parlors and escort services. As in Portland, many feel the issue isn't a spending priority. 


People are "paying attention" 
"The 11-year-old has changed the debate," says Cpl. Gerry Peters of the Provincial Prostitution Unit, formed by British Columbia's attorney general four years ago to attack child prostitution. "It's drawn more people in, and if there's any good in this story, it's that a lot of people are paying attention now." 

Vancouver vice officers think the problem, although serious, is overblown by the media. But prostitutes and outreach workers say kids as young as 9 and 10 are being sold, kept behind doors in so-called trick pads, beyond the easy reach of authorities. 

"A lot of guys ask for the young ones, and ask older street prostitutes to help them find them," says Raven Bowen, projects coordinators for Prostitution Alternatives Counselling & Education, or PACE, an outreach and advocacy group that former prostitutes founded seven years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia. 

But most older ones -- and in this business 24 is older -- tip off police instead to get kids out of a sleazy, abusive business. If they are shocked at all, it's that the suspects in the Portland case thought they could sell an 11-year-old on the street without attracting police. 

"They don't want children in the sex trade," Bowen says. "But it's not all sainthood. It cuts into their business." 


On the stroll 
Christina, a 41-year-old prostitute, proves Bowen's point. On a recent Saturday night, she tips an outreach worker to two girls -- possibly 14-year-olds -- whom she saw working the street at Kingsway and Victoria Drive. She describes them as "Barbie dolls" in pleather pants, but neither girl is there when the outreach worker drives by with her bag of free condoms and nutrition bars. 

The night before, a veteran tipped police to a 15-year-old she'd heard about but hadn't seen. Officers also looked for a girl they called "red pants," suspected to be underage because of her slight chubbiness and childlike face. 

"Fresh meat," as one prostitute calls it, commands the highest price in "the game." In fact, police and prostitutes estimate that a child can earn five times as much as an adult for the same sex act. It's real motivation for the girls to look, and act, as adolescent as they can. 

Yet on a damp and drizzly weekend night, Vancouver's downtown eastside appears devoid of child prostitutes. Even adults are few and far between on the Franklin Street "kiddie stroll," where the 11-year-old Portlander was found. As midnight approaches, there are three: a dark-haired girl in a shiny trenchcoat reapplying her lipstick under a street lamp; a blonde at a stop sign pumping her leg provocatively to passing cars; and a darkly clad woman standing solo on a street corner. 

Ramos and Payette, who open one or two major investigations involving Portland each year, recoil from the term "kiddie stroll," though they agree that Vancouver has a serious problem. 

"It makes it sound like there's 55 12-year-olds lined up along that street, and that's not the case," says Ramos, noting a 35 percent reduction in street-level activity on Franklin in the past two years because of better enforcement and more comprehensive social services. Police, he says, don't hear much about trick pads. "Most nights, it's like this." 

The reason it's quieter, not like three years ago when one or two prostitutes loitered on every corner, Ramos and Payette say, is because police work with child-welfare specialists around the clock to get the youngest prostitutes off the street. One special car, Car 86, is staffed with a police officer and a worker with the province's children's ministry. Other officers can call a social worker to the scene and get a response within minutes. 

"If we feel someone is 18 or under, we can take charge of that person and connect them with social workers," Ramos says. "We take away their cell phones and pagers to stop calls coming in from the pimp." 

After an interview, minors who don't want further assistance are free to leave, but the next day police can pick them up again. 

And then there's DISC. 

Three years ago, after watching a man try to buy sex from two barely developed girls standing at a bus stop, Ramos and Payette started amassing information about pimps, johns, sex-trade workers and at-risk youth in a first-of-its-kind database now available to law enforcement worldwide. Portland just got the OK to participate, joining about 30 other cities. 

The idea behind DISC, which stands for Deter and Identify Sex-trade Consumers and was launched with a $75,000 government grant, is to track pimps, their victims and customers. Officers record locations, physical descriptions, license plates, requested sex acts and purchase prices, unusual behaviors and so on. 

That means every time a businessman from Portland or Seattle or Los Angeles is stopped during one of Vancouver's weekly "john stings," he's entered. Entered three times or more, he becomes of serious interest to police, particularly if someone matching his physical description is accused of child abuse, assault or murder. 

"Before DISC, police tried to accomplish the same information-sharing with faxes and phone calls, but that didn't work," Ramos said. "Now we have the information real-time." 

As a result, four homicides were solved in the past two years and dozens of children were rescued from the sex trade. Plus, regular patrol officers with access to DISC are more aware of what to look for when they encounter a john, or an exploited child, on the street. "The pimps know you've got to keep the kids moving -- you can't let them get too comfortable," Payette says. "That's a huge risk. That's why we made DISC the way we did." 

Police in Portland and Vancouver are excited about the tool, saying they need it to address a growing problem. But gauging which city has the bigger problem is just about impossible. 

Although Portland police estimate that the Rose City has about 2,000 prostitutes, a quarter of them juveniles, Canadian officials are reluctant to quote numbers. The best available, provided by the Provincial Prostitution Unit, show that, as of three years ago, 60 to 70 of Vancouver's 300 to 400 street sex-trade workers were thought to be juveniles, with 30 to 40 working any given night. Today PACE outreach workers estimate there are roughly 10 times as many young prostitutes working off the street than on, although most say any statistics are unreliable. 

What does seem clear is that Canada's comparatively lax prostitution laws are not always easily enforced, particularly one designed to protect children. According to researcher Lowman, while pimping, living off the profits of prostitution and trying to buy sex from anyone younger than 18 is illegal, the law prohibiting paid sex with minors rarely results in prosecutions because of the requirement that young victims testify. 

The law is also unclear about where otherwise legal prostitution can occur. Brothels, or "bawdy houses," are illegal. It's also illegal for prostitutes and their customers to make dates in open view, including in a car. 

Enforcement of the open-view offense is a top Vancouver priority. And most often it's the johns -- not the prostitutes -- who are busted. On a recent Friday night on Kingsway, Ramos and Payette stop a guy in a gold Toyota who wants to pay a 20-year-old prostitute $15 for oral sex. He tells the officers he's been married just six months. They, in turn, tell him he won't be charged tonight, but his name and physical description will be entered in the database. Then Ramos launches into a lecture he's given many times before. 

"You're coming out here to have sex in your grandfather's car? That's even worse," Ramos chides. "Do you know what kind of diseases there are out here. . . . It's sad for you and this community and the people who live on the street." 

Stunned and embarrassed, the man tells the officers it's his first and last mistake. Back in the police car, Ramos is fed up. "He's afraid I'm going to call his wife." 

First-time offenders charged with a crime have the option of keeping their records clean by paying $400 to go to the Prostitution Offender Program -- also known as "john school." The daylong Saturday academy is a lesson about disease, parasitic and violent pimps, the impact of prostitution on neighborhoods and the role johns play in the problem. Like many of British Columbia's proposed solutions, it's controversial, but Shirley Fisher, a 20-year resident of the "kiddie stroll" area and an observer of the john school, supports it. 

"We see pimps and johns watching the girls on the street all the time," Fisher says. 

Young prostitutes also wander into her yard, she says, to use her garden hose to wash up. Fisher hopes john school reduces the demand for these young women. 

"Maybe they go somewhere else -- to escort services," she says of the men. "But at least it's not on my street." 


Other efforts 
On an inner-city street in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, not far from Kingsway, PACE volunteers are attacking the problem their own way. 

Using $53,000 from the federal government, they are converting a former crack house into six apartments for youths trying to leave the sex trade. When it's finished later this month, Bowen, project coordinator, says it will be the first of its kind in Canada. But she's skeptical of getting more political support for these kinds of services. 

"Outreach doesn't get people elected," she says. 

Even so, a donated couch and freezer have already been delivered, and plans are shaping up for a community garden out back. "Last weekend, we had 15 people working on the project," Bowen says, including Jessica Greenwood, a 16-year-old Vancouver girl who was being targeted by a pimp before her mother intervened. 

Greenwood, who also participates in PACE's support group for girls in danger of exploitation, considers her labors payback to the group for helping her see what was happening before she worked the street. 

"He was so good-looking, and so nice," Greenwood says of her would-be pimp, noting that many of her high school-age friends have also been the targets of prostitution recruiters. "I hate him." 

Other initiatives, all hotly debated, are moving lowly forward. Several groups are lobbying to raise the age of sexual consent in Canada from 14 to 16, a move some believe will make pimps think twice before trying to recruit anyone younger. British Columbia's legislature also recently passed an act that will allow exploited youth to be detained 30 to 90 days and forced into treatment. 

Prosecution remains difficult. Says Peters of the Provincial Prostitution Unit: "In many of these cases, maybe all we'll be able to do is get the child safe. At the end of the day, maybe we haven't put the pimp in jail, but we can feel good that we've contributed to saving a life."