Child prostitution crackdown nets 56 arrests in Las Vegas

Fifty-six people were arrested on prostitution charges in Las Vegas as part of a three-day nationwide crackdown on the sexual exploitation of children, FBI officials said Monday.

Overall, more than five dozen child prostitutes, including one in Las Vegas, were found and taken off the streets in the crackdown, the FBI said.

Federal and local authorities said they arrested 99 suspected pimps in 40 cities across 30 states and the District of Columbia. Another 785 people were arrested on a variety of state and local charges.

The arrest tally here included 51 adult prostitutes and five people accused of soliciting prostitution, Las Vegas FBI spokesman Joe Dickey said. No pimping suspects were arrested in Las Vegas.

The children were found during Operation Cross Country V, a three-day roundup targeting child traffickers and pimps. The largest group of child prostitutes, 24, was found in the Seattle area, according to the FBI.

All of the children found were placed in protective custody or returned to their families.

FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry said in Washington that the children found ranged in age from 12 to 17.

Child prostitutes are often recruited by loose-knit groups that seek out kids who may be involved in drugs or runaways looking for a "responsible adult" to help them, Henry said.

"There are groups of people out there preying on naive kids who don't have a good sense of the way of the world," he said. "Sometimes there's a threat of force, threats of violence. A lot of these kids operate out of a sense of fear."

Since 2003, when the FBI and the Justice Department launched its Innocence Lost National Initiative, about 1,250 child prostitutes have been located and removed from prostitution.

Dickey said the local Innocence Lost task force, which includes vice detectives, has found 99 child prostitutes here in the past year.

Targeting the pimps who coerce the children into prostitution remains a top priority of the task force, Dickey said.

Operation Cross Country V is an effort to focus attention on the daily efforts of the anti-child prostitution task forces, Dickey added.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.