Prostitution 'pays for drug use'

The girl said three women in the family worked as prostitutes

A teenager has explained how she followed her mother and sister into prostitution at the age of 15 after becoming a heroin addict.

The 17-year-old told the BBC she hated what she did, but it was the only way to raise enough money to buy drugs.

She spoke to a BBC correspondent who accompanied Kent Police on an anti-prostitution patrol in Chatham.

One of the officers involved said the force had about 100 known prostitutes on file, out of whom 30 were active.

Recent moves to tackle the problem in Medway have included a get-tough policy on kerb crawlers and providing health and social care facilities for prostitutes.

Figures obtained by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act from Kent Police showed 193 recorded incidents in the county of loitering for prostitution from April 2005 to March 2006 - 191 of those were in the Medway area.

If I didn't have a drug habit I wouldn't do this work, full stop Prostitute

The girl who was interviewed by BBC South East said she turned to prostitution at the age of 15 because of her heroin addiction.

She said: "I don't like it, of course I don't. Selling my body, of course I don't like that."

But she said her mother and her sister were also working as prostitutes, while her father was in prison.

The teenager explained why she did not feel safe and said: "When I get in a car I don't know what's going to happen, do I? It's just a chance I take."

And she said while she had been approached by social services, she had not followed up the offer of help.

'Many are victims'

Residents in Chatham have called for tougher action, but Pc Darryl Paulson said: "A lot of these girls are victims.

"Just to pull up and shout 'clear off' is not going to do anything and as soon as you drive away they're going to be straight back and it's not really what they deserve.

"We can try and move them on but all we do is move them on.

"There are not enough police officers on duty to chase around that many girls."

'Lasting solution'

The Labour MP for Gillingham, Paul Clark, said it was necessary to recognise the concerns of residents and the people attracted into prostitution.

He told BBC South East Today that issues such as drug addiction had to be tackled in order to find a "lasting solution" for both the communities affected and the prostitutes.

"This isn't just local people getting involved in prostitution, this is also part of a much wider thing in terms of human trafficking, in terms of activities that are crossing boundaries of countries.

"And that's why the police in Kent have been involved in Operation Pentameter over the last couple of weeks to actually piece together a picture and to feed that into the new organised crime agency," he said.