ABSTRACT
Anticipating hearing stories of children being coerced into prostitution prior to my trip to Thailand, I arranged with a retired public health worker in Pa-Ngiew, Chiang Rai, to interview three girls sold into prostitution before the age of eighteen. He told me that it would be easy to locate this entry-level group. Upon my arrival, I interviewed only one girl, and she did not enter prostitution until the age of twenty-seven. My next stop was ECPAT International, an office located in downtown Bangkok. During my conversation with Chitraporn Vanaspongse, Information Officer, I learned that the number of children coerced into prostitution has dropped, and that fewer children at the ages of fourteen and fifteen enter this trade. The economic crisis and the Prevention and Suppression of Prostitution Act of 1996 led to the emergence of a new group of sex workers: high school and college students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. During this conversation, I still believed that a large number of children are coerced and lured into prostitution. I kept asking questions about this population but did not get the answers I expected.
