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Very Young Girls
Co-Executive Producer: Rachel Lloyd
Producer and Director: David Schisgall
USA / 2007 / 84 minutes
Very Young Girls is an expose of human trafficking that follows thirteen and fourteen year
old American girls as they are seduced, abused, and sold on New York’s streets by pimps, and treated as adult criminals
by police. The film follows the barely-adolescent girls in real time, using vérité and intimate interviews with them as they
are first lured on to the streets and the dire events which follow. The film also uses startling footage
shot by the brazen pimps themselves giving a rare glimpse into how the cycle of street life begins for many women. The film
identifies hope for these girls in the organization GEMS (Girls Education and Mentoring Services), a recovery center founded
and run by Rachel Lloyd, herself a survivor of sexual exploitation. She and her staff are heroic and relentless in their mission
to help girls sent by the court or found on the street. Given a chance to piece their lives back together, some will
succeed, but many will remain suspended on the edge of two different worlds consistently battling the
force that will suck them back into the underground. Very Young Girls’ unprecedented access to girls and pimps will
change the way law enforcement, the media, and society as a whole look at sexual exploitation, street prostitution and human
trafficking that is happening right in our own backyard.
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