‘Open market’: US city’s underage sex worker crisis exposed

An area has become so “dominated” by sex workers that “it’s become common for the kids to count how many prostitutes they see”.

Wearing see-through white lingerie and matching sliders, a young girl displays bare legs and a vacant stare as she stands on the street corner.

Down the road, another woman totters along in silver heels and a skintight miniskirt, showing off her rear as an elderly lady shuffles past.

Elsewhere nearby, dozens of women parade half-naked in underwear and tiny bikinis, trying to catch the attention of men in what has become an open sex market in North Seattle - just minutes from the offices of tech firms like Apple and Amazon.

Locals say the Aurora Avenue strip, also known as ‘The Blade,’ has become a magnet for prostitutes, pimps, gangs and ‘Johns’ - the slang term for people who pay for services from sex workers - since the pandemic.

But the problem had got even worse in the past year, The Sun reports.

On average, 300 people buy sex there every day, and there are now as many as 60 working girls working on the notorious thoroughfare - many of them reportedly underage.

Shockingly, almost a third of their customers work in the US city’s thriving tech and business community.

A US city’s sex worker crisis has been exposed in a new YouTube doco. Picture: X/@choeshow

Underage sex workers

Dutton Clarke runs Stereo Warehouse on the street, and he believes the spike in sex work is linked to the closure of Las Vegas strip clubs when Covid-19 hit.

“We’ve been here about 30 years and watching it change over the years has been very interesting, especially about the last three or four years with Covid,” he said.

“That’s when the crime started hitting pretty good with all the sex workers.

“Last summer there were 50 or 60 girls at a time out there and most of them were naked and a lot of them were really good looking.”

The business owner said a significant number of the prostitutes appeared under the age of 16.

His claim is backed by reports of girls as young as 11 working the two-mile strip of single storey businesses and cheap motels that make up The Blade.

Locals say pimps have become so brazen they will approach underage girls outside of schools.

‘There were 50 or 60 girls at a time out there and most of them were naked.’ Picture: X/@choeshow

‘A family business’

Speaking on the Taboo Room with Aaron S documentary, Dutton added: “It was shocking at first.

“It’s become common for the kids to count how many prostitutes they see.

“We’ve always had these workers here, but it used to be one or two.

“When all the strip clubs closed in Vegas during Covid, there’s no loitering law here so they know they can work here and not have any trouble with the police.

“So they were coming here from all over the country and making thousands of dollars a day.”

‘Incredibly privileged’ punters

Sex workers first started loitering on Aurora Avenue, also known as State Route 99, because it was frequented by truckers cruising back and forth from the Canadian border, the publication stated.

But recent studies have shown it is now popular with white collar workers who like indulging in sexual escapades.

Between 2013 to 2021, at least 77 per cent of sex buyers here were employed. About 30 percent of those were working in tech and business, according to local government statistics, The Sun added.

Ben Gauen, a senior deputy prosecuting lawyer who focuses on human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation cases, calls the men that inhabit Aurora an “incredibly privileged sector of our society”.

He added: “I can’t think of any other subset of offenders that we see who have that level of employment at the time they committed their offence.”

‘I’ve been kidnapped & tortured’

Sex workers can make $US4000 (about $A5800) to $7000 ($A10,000) a day, turning tricks for between $60 ($A87) for oral sex and $100 ($A145) for full sex.

“You could say this lifestyle is very addictive,” one street worker called Winter told the Taboo Room YouTube documentary.

“I got out of it before. I got a job as a paralegal, but I wasn’t making the amount of money that I was making doing this so I was like, it’s easier to come and do this.

“On a slow day I will make $US1000 ($A1450) at least and the most I’ve made out here is $4000 ($A5800).”

But the job doesn’t come without risks. Winter later explained how she was once kidnapped, raped and tortured by a man who she went with.

“He had a knife to my throat the whole time,” she recalled.

US city’s underage sex worker crisis exposed. Picture: X/@choeshow

US city’s underage sex worker crisis exposed. Picture: X/@choeshow

Locked in a makeshift cell

And she’s not alone. In July last year, a man posing as an undercover police officer abducted an Aurora sex worker.

He then drove her hundreds of kilometers to his home in the neighbouring US state of Oregon, where he locked her in a makeshift cell in his garage.

She only escaped by punching open the metal door.

The previous November, a 20-year-old woman tried to escape her pimp by jumping half-naked out of the third-floor window of her Seattle apartment.

Her pimp caught her and drove her back to Aurora where she attempted to flee a second time.

A passing driver saw her sitting topless in a driveway.

When she jumped in his car the assailant – who was later arrested – gave chase, continually shooting at the vehicle.

‘It broke my heart’

Locals have captured Wild West-like gun fights in the same area as violent pimps and dealers battle for territory.

Between May and July 2024, Seattle police responded to 30 shootings on Aurora north of 145th Street – roughly one every two days, The Sun reported.

Drug use is rife and sex workers hand over all their money to pimps who feed their addiction to crack cocaine and fentanyl, an opioid that induces zombie-like behaviour.

Authorities are now pledging to close in on the most notorious motels and work at reinstating the anti-loitering laws that were removed in 2020, creating a pimp’s paradise.

Seattle Council member Cathy Moore also called for stiffer penalties for curb crawlers and for greater ‘diversion opportunities’ to be given to sex workers.

An ‘open-air strip club’

Residents meanwhile are so fed-up they’re building a searchable database of license plates of suspected curb crawlers.

One person vented: “Cops don’t intervene until someone is stabbed, beaten or shot.

“That’s why Aurora looks like an open-air strip club more than ever before.”

Another commented: “Many of the girls aren’t there by choice. They were conned into the trade by their ‘boyfriend’ AKA pimp.

“The pimps then use pretty extreme measures to keep them in the trade. Those measures can lead to drug addiction and PTSD worse than a combat veteran.

“And the vast majority are under 18 when they start, on average around 13.”

A third also spoke out on the underage vice, writing: “I drive this section daily as I live about six blocks from this area.

“It’s really ramped up in the last two years. I really am like most in that I don’t have a problem with it if the girl wants to do it and she is of age (18 at least please).

“But some of these girls are definitely not 18 and that I have a huge issue with. I saw a girl recently that had to be no older than 12 or 13 and it broke my heart.”

‘I ain’t got no shame in my game’

Footage of a half-naked sex worker shopping at an Arco service station in North Seattle went viral in June, exposing the reality local residents are facing.

Campaigning journalist Jonathan Choe shot the video then posted it on his website, complaining: “North Seattle is lost.”

The young girl – clad in nothing more than sky high heels, skimpy knickers and a pink top – confronts Choe when she realises he is filming.

“What are you recording for?” she can be seen asking.

When Choe replies to state he is showing how normalised the trade has become, she then adds: “This is the Blade and we are selling a** over here so you can put your camera down.

“I ain’t got no shame in my game.”

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission