Her Tel Aviv-based program, Awake at Night, offers a supportive day center, a hot line, community outreach, medical care and close contact with mentors and professionals for youth and young adults who have sold or are selling sex. Natalee, now 20, said she turned to prostitution after her mother died of cancer shortly after they immigrated to Israel.
The dark blonde with deep blue eyes says she now has a steady boyfriend. Natalee comes every weekday to the center to share meals, relax, watch television and talk openly with others who understand. In , Awake at Night provided services to 95 girls, boys and transgender Jewish and Arab youth, including a dozen that were able to break away from prostitution.
The practice is legal in Israel, however, being a client of a prostitute is illegal but rarely prosecuted. Outside Israel, there are a lot of projects that have taken this on for many years. Although females comprise the majority of prostitutes in Israel, they are a minority in the program largely because females are more likely to be involved with brokers or boyfriends who control their business and that makes them more difficult to reach.
One way employees and volunteers try to draw females into the program is by walking the streets at night and frequenting popular night clubs, where they distribute marked lighters or other discreet information, even going undercover and pretending to be prospective clients. Awake at Night has seen an increase of more than 20 percent in the number of program participants over the last three years, which according to an Elem spokeswoman, could reflect a similar increase regarding the number of young people engaged in prostitution.
In the city of Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, at least teens ages 13 and 14 prostitute themselves at "extremely low prices," according to a spring report made to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. While it is easy to identify such adolescents at the central bus station, on the beaches and in clubs, it is much more difficult to locate those that use the Internet to make contact with clients.
