The sex trafficking of children is not a problem only happening in far off places like Cambodia. When street corners are hidden behind web addresses, this heinous crime can occur anywhere... including Sacramento County.

Short skirts, heavy makeup and high heels are their camouflage. For these young girls dress-up is more than just play. The life of a child prostitute is one of violence, fear and shame. Often times, it starts in the place all children should be safe... their own home.

In the KFBK series A Voice for Our Daughters, we'll delve into what these children have to live through. We'll try and answer the question of why they stay and where we as a community have failed to help them.

Listen to the series preview

Where there is prostitution, there is almost always juvenile prostitution. In part one of the KFBK series "A Voice for our Daughters", reporter Nikki Medoro learned the horrifying circumstances surround how these young girls end up being sold for sex.

Listen to part 1

It can be hard to imagine the path that leads someone to working the streets. No one grows up saying, "Someday I want to be a prostitute." For so many young girls, that is exactly how they are bred.

Dellana Hoyer's mother and stepfather didn't abuse drugs or alcohol, just her and her siblings. Dellana would run away, bouncing from group home to group home. The pain and rage seething and seething until one day when she met a pimp.

Dellana would be pimped from Sacramento to San Francisco to Las Vegas. While the bright lights of Sin City made others rich, Dellana never got to keep any money.

95 percent of child prostitutes come from broken homes, there is that other small number that does not like Vicky Zito's daughter who disappeared from her El Dorado Hills neighborhood on March 18th, 2008. Vicky daughter was one of the lucky ones to be found and was able to go home to a place filled with love, understanding and support... to parents who fought to have their child back. What do police do with the other 95 percent of girls whose only place to run to is the streets and the only one waiting with open arms is their pimp? Who will be their voice?

For part two of that series, Nikki spoke with Sacramento Police about the vicious cycle involved in finding these children only to see them head right back into the nightmare.

Listen to part 2

A stretch of Sacramento's Watt Avenue, with its coffee shops, fast food, and cheap motel rooms, is like a machine that serves up these young girls to willing customers. Teenage girls with their crop tops and short shorts stand in motel doorways just waiting to signal in the men who make laps around the parking lot.

FBI special agent Minerva Shelton and Sacramento police detective Derrick Steigerts have worked for three years to find these children and arrest their pimps. Police know almost every child they help has nowhere to go and will likely end up in the same spot.

Where law enforcement stops, others fight to keep going, to give these girls a voice and the strength to break free from the streets.

In the final part of A Voice For Our Daughters, reporter Nikki Medoro tries to find out what it will take to end the vicious cycle of abuse that leads young girls to a life of a prostitution.

Listen to part 3

When you think of what life should be like for a young teenage girl, you'll likely think of school dances and first crushes. Statistics show 14 is the age when most girls begin selling themselves for sex. FBI special agent Minerva Shelton says by the time they find these children, this perverted lifestyle has become their norm.

If police can only throw these girls in jail, what can you do to help pick up the pieces?

Clayton Butler's work with Agape International Missions took him to Svay Pak Cambodia where children being sold for sex was commonplace. He was able to change what seemed like an ingrained and depraved way of life.

Clayton is working with Jenny Williamson, the founder of Courage to Be You which is a Rocklin based non profit that is building a home in Sacramento County to house and help these young victims. Jenny needs others to step up and actually be like Dellana, who, despite the nightmare that was her childhood, is now a foster mother herself.

Entire interview with Dellana Hoyer

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Minerva Shelton: Special Agent with the FBI and Derek Stigerts: Sac PD Detective
Part 1
Part 2