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SPEAKER 1: In Ramsey County, authorities and nurses are working together in a novel approach to fighting juvenile prostitution. They're following the runaways. Research shows that Minnesota girls who run from their homes are not only more vulnerable to being sold for sex, they also face a higher risk of being raped or sexually exploited in other ways.

In Saint Paul, Police and schools identify the most vulnerable runaways, then the nurses step in to help the girls rebuild their lives. Advocates hope parts of the program can go statewide as Minnesota tries to curb the buying and selling of young girls. This story contains graphic details of child prostitution that some listeners may find disturbing. Laura Yuen reports.

LAURA YUEN: It's called the Runaway Intervention Program. A key player is the Saint Paul Police Department, which deploys three officers whose job is to go after missing people. Most of their cases, nearly 2,000 last year, are children.

BENNY WILLIAMS: All right, where are we going?

CHRIS STARK: All right, let's go first.

LAURA YUEN: Officers Chris Stark and Benny Williams roam the neighborhoods for missing kids. These 50 something fathers see themselves in a race. They need to track down runaways before the pimps and other criminals reach them. They say the kids run to escape rancorous households, alcoholic parents, abuse in the family, or reasons less obvious. As Williams explains, this police chase can seem futile.

BENNY WILLIAMS: And some of them keep running and keep running, and you just keep chasing them. Sometimes, we have started investigating runaway reports when some of these children are 12 years old. And they may go up all the way until they're 17. Sometimes, it just never stops.

LAURA YUEN: The officers start their morning rounds by checking up on missing persons reports filed by parents and teen shelters from the night before. Officer Stark reaches a front stoop of a home on the East side.

CHRIS STARK: How are you doing?

LAURA YUEN: The mom answers his knock. The officers learn that her teenage daughter has since come home. When the girl appears, something on her neck catches Stark's attention.

CHRIS STARK: Now, you're 15 years old, right?

SPEAKER 2: Right.

CHRIS STARK: All right, first thing I notice is you got these tattoos, right? So who's giving you these tattoos?

SPEAKER 2: When I ran away and I was with my friends, they put me on drugs. So I didn't remember getting these tattoos. I just woke up with them.

CHRIS STARK: Really?

LAURA YUEN: The girl is soft spoken and yet matter of fact about what sounds like a stint in hell. She says she was staying at a boy's house in the neighborhood where he and other gang members made her take codeine pills. She also recalls getting high on what the teens called lean. It's a mixture of NyQuil and Sprite with the pills thrown in for good measure. She says, after she told the gang members she wanted to leave, they doused her in gasoline.

BENNY WILLIAMS: How long were you there?

SPEAKER 2: A month. And I wasn't going to school because I'm on the drugs. And I'd just sit there all day and do the same thing over and over. Go to sleep, wake up.

LAURA YUEN: She tells the officers she ran barefoot into the street and escaped. She says she was never prostituted but had sex regularly with an 18-year-old while staying at the house. MPR News has agreed not to name her because she's a minor and could be a witness in a criminal investigation. At 15, she's one year younger than Minnesota's legal age of consent.

Moments later, she tells Officer Williams she doesn't want to see the man she developed feelings for get in trouble. It's something Williams sees over and over again, young girls protecting the men who they believe exploited them.

BENNY WILLIAMS: Do you know there's been similar girls in your situation there that we've never heard from again, that are missing, that have gone through your same ordeal who's never been fortunate enough to make it back to their family? So is it OK if he does it to someone else?

SPEAKER 2: No.

BENNY WILLIAMS: OK. Was it OK that he did it to you?

SPEAKER 2: No, not at all.

LAURA YUEN: Later, the officers trade notes. As incredible as the story sounds, the two men say they've heard similar tales with other girls that turned out to be true. The good news is that this 15-year-old will be part of the Runaway Program and will receive services that could help her recover.

While it's the police's job to catch the runaways, it's Laurel Edinburgh's job to help them heal.

LAUREL EDINBURGH: And this is our exam room.

LAURA YUEN: Edinburgh's office at the Midwest Children's Resource Center in Saint Paul looks like a regular doctor's office. 10 years ago, the nurse practitioner helped create the beginnings of the Runaway Intervention Program. At the time, Edinburgh was treating Hmong girls as young as 12 who were slipping through traditional safety nets. Child protection workers typically didn't get involved because the abuse was happening outside the home.

LAUREL EDINBURGH: And I just thought, how could the most severely traumatized and abused children that I see be the ones where there's no services for them? And that just didn't make any sense to me.

LAURA YUEN: Edinburgh figured there was a better way to find these girls. She helped develop 10 questions for Saint Paul Police to screen runaways for physical or sexual abuse. The first question is simple. Why did you leave home? The Ramsey County attorney's office pours over the runaway reports. The highest risk girls are given the option to meet with nurses like Edinburgh for a health assessment.

Nearly a third of the girls in the program report having experienced the most extreme forms of sexual assault or exploitation, including gang rape, prostitution, and survival sex, in other words, trading sex for food and a place to sleep. Most of the girls said they've tried to kill themselves and use drugs or alcohol. Edinburgh says the girls are often easily duped because they're so young and naive.

LAUREL EDINBURGH: Over the summer, I had a teen tell me, well, I went with these two people because one knew my friend. And they said they would take me to Valley Fair. I've never been to Valley Fair. That sounded like it would be really fun. And they said all I had to do was come with them to this hotel and then, the next day, we would go to Valley Fair. And then they said in the hotel had a swimming pool, so I even went home and I got my bathing suit. And as an adult, as soon as I start hearing that, I'm like, people just don't invite you to a hotel. But when you're 13, or 14, or 15 years old, that's not how your brain is thinking.

LAURA YUEN: And in fact, the eighth grade girl was raped by two men at the hotel. Edinburgh says they were trying her out for prostitution. Girls in the program received treatment for substance abuse, group counseling, and home visits by nurses. Edinburgh says she sees progress with the girls. Over time, most of them report becoming more connected to their families and schools and show fewer signs of destructive behavior.

Advocates hope the federally recognized program could serve as a roadmap for the rest of Minnesota as the state prepares to build a system for treating sexually exploited youth. Two years ago, state lawmakers passed the so-called safe harbor law. It requires authorities to handle prostituted boys and girls under 16 as kids in need of help, not as criminals.

The law was written with the Runaway Intervention Program in mind, but it won't be fully implemented until the legislature funds the services to help these kids. For police and prosecutors in Saint Paul, the link between runaways and prostitution became hauntingly clear with this 9-1-1 call from a downtown Saint Paul hotel room.

SPEAKER 3: 9-1-1, where is your emergency?

SPEAKER 4: (TEARFULLY) Hi, this is Barb, and I'm a runaway from Des Moines, Iowa. And I'm in big trouble. I'm afraid I'm about to get killed.

SPEAKER 3: All right, honey. I'm going to help you, OK? Are you at the Hilton Garden Inn right now?

SPEAKER 4: Yes.

SPEAKER 3: How old are you, honey?

SPEAKER 4: I just turned 18. The people who are wanting to hurt me just left.

LAURA YUEN: The criminal complaint says the young woman, who was 17 when the abuse began, was forced to have sex with about 30 men over the course of a week last year. Her captors, a man and a woman, told the girl they would beat her up if she tried to leave or call her parents. Prosecutors say she even scribbled in her notebook the names of her captors in case she was found dead.

SPEAKER 3: Did they just leave?

SPEAKER 4: Yeah, but I'm afraid they're going to come back.

SPEAKER 3: I'm going to help you right now. You're going to stay on the phone with me and I will not hang up with you, OK? You promise me?

SPEAKER 4: Yeah.

SPEAKER 3: Good girl.

LAURA YUEN: Authorities say the girl has Asperger syndrome and has the developmental capacity of a 13-year-old. She ran away from home in Iowa after meeting a man on a social media website. He paid for her bus ticket to Saint Paul and then sold her for sex on backpage.com. That's when her nightmare began, says Ramsey County attorney John Choi.

JOHN CHOI: When people hear it, they're shocked. But the reality is, this is happening on a day-to-day basis in our community.

LAURA YUEN: The girls traffickers, Bianca Mixon and Tyree Jones, pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution of a minor and were ordered to serve one year in jail. That was a disappointing outcome for Choi, whose office coordinates the Runaway Intervention Program. He says the connection between kids who run away and prostitution should alarm everyone.

JOHN CHOI: That whole spectrum of who runs away from home can be from someone in the upper class or the lower class. It doesn't matter and it really has no distinction. What we find is that anybody who runs away from home is very susceptible to being exploited by really bad people out there.

LAURA YUEN: And yet, he recognizes that the handful of cases he sees each year make up just a fraction of what's out there. With a grant from the Women's Foundation of Minnesota, Choi's office and Saint Paul Police have reviewed hundreds of old cases going back to 2005, including files on runaways.

The audit turned up about 170 girls who may have been sexually exploited, but whose cases were never pursued. Either no one saw the signs or various agencies weren't communicating with one another. Authorities have begun interviewing some of those potential victims. They want to know what could have been done to help them and what could be done to help other girls on the run who are being bought and sold now. Laura Yuen, Minnesota Public Radio News, Saint Paul.