By Alex Tresniowski

Hundreds of Girls Are Being Forced to Work as Prostitutes at Truck Stops Across the Country. How Is This Happening?

SUMMER, 13, WAS FOR SALE FOR $40. A BUBBLY, PONYTAILED GIRL FROM OKLAHOMA CITY, FOND OF VOLLEYBALL AND SPONGEBOB SquarePants, she found herself far from home and stranded at a truck stop along Texas's Interstate 40 on a chilly January night three years ago. In jeans and T-shirt, she walked to a strip of tarmac where several 18-wheelers were parked—an area known as "Party Row"—and waited for a trucker to flash his headlights. When one did, Summer pulled herself into the cab of his rig and, as the trucker casually watched a small TV, turned her first trick. "I was scared," she says, now 15, recalling the first of hundreds of forced encounters with truckers two or three times her age. "I didn't know how to get out of it. So I thought, 'Just do it, and don't cause problems.'"

For the rest of the article, please follow this link: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20062080,00.html