Barbara McClung hopes money can be found to fund a program to fight child prostitution in Oakland. Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle
The girl in the halter top with long hair and pink lipstick stood on a corner at 19th Avenue and International Boulevard and stared at her phone.
Two blocks up, another girl, in white, knee-high boots and a short, leopard-print skirt, was ambling along the sidewalk.
"There's another one," said Barbara McClung, director of Behavioral Health Initiatives for the Oakland school district, as she drove by a church, a boarded-up building and families pushing strollers along the boulevard.
The girls looked young, maybe 16, and were almost certainly selling themselves along the 40 blocks called the Track, an area considered a national hot spot of child trafficking.
Every instinct told McClung to stop the car and rescue the girls. But she knew she couldn't. It would be likely to put them in danger, and they would probably resist anyway.
McClung knew that she and other school district officials couldn't fight the problem on the streets. But they could take it on in the classroom. Their goal, starting in the spring, is to give every seventh-grader in an Oakland public middle school an education on sexual exploitation and how to stop it.
The curriculum was created by Love Never Fails, a nonprofit in Dublin that works to protect and remove youths from child trafficking. All seventh-graders would experience a classroom presentation or assembly focused on healthy relationships as well as exploitation.
To read the rest of this story by Jill Tucker, go to: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/ar...fficking-5080256.php
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