By LEVI PULKKINENSEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Before he was locked up, Dominque Davon Booker had a thing for guys who liked to buy sex from children.
Those were the guys that paid his girls -- at least one as young as 13 -- and his girls passed the money along to him. He still lived with his mom, at least according to the court records, but those johns' cash and those girls' bodies paid his bills.
Flanked by former U.S. Rep. Linda Smith, the mother of one of those girls demanded that the men who would pay to have sex with children like her child face some measure of justice.
Wednesday's gathering in a First Avenue parking lot adjacent to a downtown Seattle strip club was part protest and part celebration, a recognition that new penalties for johns caught "buying time" with kids were set to go into effect the following day.
Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Chris Gregoire in March, the new regulations are aimed at eliminating the "I thought she was 18" defense often offered by johns while dropping prison sentences on those caught by police.
The move comes as anti-human-trafficking activists continue to demand more resources for prostituted children -- only 80 beds exist at secure shelters nationwide, according to one expert's estimate -- and additional attention on the domestic sex trade.
Smith, a former Congresswoman from Vancouver and anti-sex-trafficking activist who advocated for the legislation, told a gaggle of reporters that the new penalties are a starting point. The test will come in seeing that they're enforced.
"This bill starts the process," said Smith, founder of Shared Hope International. "It simply cannot be tolerated to buy a child by the hour or by the act."
The legislation mandates significant increases in the penalties faced by those convicted of pimping children while preventing those accused of paying children for sex from simply claiming they thought the child was of age.
A crime that previously punished with a $550 fine and, at most, a jail sentence will soon carry a minimum 21 month prison term and a $5,000 fine. A john also gets to lose his car, due to new impoundment rules allowing police to seize a vehicle used in prostitution.
Pimps also face stiffer penalties for selling sex with a child. The minimum sentence under the new regime for promoting sexual abuse of a minor is nearly eight years, more than four times the previous penalty.
Other sections of the legislation require that child prostitutes not be criminally charged on their first arrest, and enable authorities to hold them as juveniles in need of services. There's also a mandate that the state Criminal Justice Training Commission create a model policy for law enforcement treatment of child prostitutes by December.
The change in law drew support from the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs and Smith's organization, Shared Hope International. Also signing on was the Seattle Police Guild, whose members along with their King County counterparts and county prosecutors recently brought to a close the first case charged under the state's new human trafficking law.
That conviction, against 19-year-old Deshawn Clark, carried a 17-year sentence in part because of the stiff penalty attached to the human trafficking statute. Clark's five co-defendants -- most also alleged to be members of a West Seattle gang, Westside Street Mobb -- fared slightly better, receiving single-digit sentences following guilty pleas.
Speaking after Clark's conviction, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said that, in his view, the sentences handed to pimps and others benefiting from child prostitution don't square with the harm done to prostituted girls and boys.
"We're talking about kids who were taken off the streets and made sex slaves," Satterberg said. "It's a very dark secret in our community that most people don't know about and don't want to know about. …
"The demand for this is high, and the supply is being created by young girls."
Speaking during a recent visit to Seattle, Mark Lagon, former ambassador-at-large to the United Nations and director of the office to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, said stiffer penalties are useful, if enforced.
"If you only think of the sellers and what's being sold, you're never going to get your arms around the demand," said Lagon, who served as executive director of the anti-trafficking organization the Polaris Project after leaving the UN post.
"It's time that we stop saying boys will be boys."
To succeed, though, communities need to create services that will help prostituted children leave those who've profited from the abuse, Lagon said. At present, he said, no more than 80 secure shelter beds exist for child prostitutes, far too few to offer help for the tens of thousands of prostituted boys and girls.
Smith said previously that the new Washington law clears the way for secure centers where the youths can be taken after they've been found prostituting. Doing so, she said, creates an opportunity to break the youths away from their pimps and make a fresh start.
Resources for prostituted children, like a pilot program currently in the works in Seattle, address the basic unfairness of arresting a child who is a victim of sex crimes, Smith said.
"In most states, they're arrested and the men who buy them walk," the former Congresswoman said Wednesday. "There are literally no safe places."
Laurie, mother of one of the girls pimped by Booker, said her daughter got some measure of safety recently when a Pierce County judge sentenced Booker to a 10-year prison term.
Her daughter disappeared with Booker at 13. Court records show he had the girls working streets and hotels in and around Seattle and Tacoma.
Booker beat the girls, threatened them. Laurie said her daughter is still crazy for him.
"She was brainwashed and trafficked by a pimp," she said. "She still thinks he's the best thing since sliced bread."
The girl is home now. Hopefully, her mother said, she'll stay there this time.
Supporters of the new laws say they can keep johns away from the girls. They'll raise the stakes, Smith and others said, if they're enforced.
Speaking in an interview earlier this month, Lagon said assistance for trafficked individuals is needed. So, he said, is better behavior from businesses tangentially involved in the sex trade -- specifically Craigslist and online services like it, which serve to connect child prostitutes with willing buyers.
Lagon said he takes heart in the unity shown on the issue by people of all political stripes.
"Even today in this time of nasty partisanship, there's still unity on battling what is essentially slavery," Lagon said, noting that he's seen radical feminists and Christian conservatives come together on the issue.
"We need to mobilize public outcry," he continued. "It's unconscionable, and it's not enough that there are laws on the books."
Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.
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