BOSTON (AP) – Law enforcement, state social services agencies and private organizations are using a new tactic to fight teenage prostitution in Boston.

Rather than treating prostitutes as criminals, they are treating them as victims, and using their testimony to go after the pimps.

“What’s different here is that we are not viewing the girls as defendants. We see them more as victims,” Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley told the Boston Herald.

Conley’s office, the state Department of Social Services, and 18 other state and private agencies banded together this year to form “A Way Back,” a program designed to reclaim the futures of young girls who have been coerced into prostitution.

“Pimping is bad enough. Pimping children is an exponentially more evil act,” said Department of Social Services Commissioner Harry Spence.

Roxbury Youthworks executive director Sandra McCroom began looking closely at teen prostitution more than three years ago when she co-chaired the Child Exploitation Working Group.

“We were seeing girls run away with nothing and come back with new clothes and money in their pockets,” McCroom said. “You have adolescent girls who are trying to find their own way and are rebellious. They come from dysfunctional homes or may have no family at all. Then they meet a guy who’s older and a little intriguing.”

It is difficult to quantify teen prostitution cases because the girls often are arrested for other crimes, said Department of Youth Services Boston director Peter Forbes.

Courts used to be lenient on girls arrested for prostitution, hoping they would turn their lives around on their own. Subsequent offenses would lead to jail time, the rationale being it was in the girls’ best interests to be off the streets.

“Now we want a shift in strategy so that the police respond in a way that initiates an investigation,” said Susan Goldfarb, head of the Children’s Advocacy Center connected with Conley’s office.

The program has worked for Angelica. She began in prostitution at age 16 after an older man convinced her she could make good money with her looks.

“I met a friend of a friend, and he was talking to me, and it sounded good,” said Angelica, now 20 and studying business in college. “I always knew it was wrong, but you see money like that and you don’t care.

“For so long, I tried to shut off that little voice inside me telling me it was wrong. It definitely destroys your self-esteem.”

Angelica was beaten, raped, stabbed and had a stillborn baby while working as a prostitute.

AP-ES-10-24-04 1241EDT