AIDS education for teen prostitutes.

• Author: Foley, Dylan
• Position: New York Peer AIDS Education Coalition

Michael Links started hustling and prostituting himself on the Manhattan piers when he was fourteen to support his crack habit. Five years ago, at the age of nineteen, he was recruited to do outreach work in AIDS prevention education among his fellow hustlers on the prostitution strolls.

The group that recruited him, the New York Peer AIDS Education Coalition (NYPAEC), was started in 1990 to reach an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 teenage hustlers, runaways, and prostitutes in New York City. Working out of a donated church space, social worker Edith Springer, the NYPAEC founder, offered stipends of $20 a week and free meals to her twelve original peer educators. "We are educators - we show them choices, but we don't tell them what the goals are," says Springer. "We say to our clients, `You are great and you need to survive. Let us show you how to do things safely.'" NYPAEC provides safe-sex information and condoms for prostitutes and other teenagers at risk of contracting HIV, and promotes safe drug use, including clean needles.

At present, there are twenty-four outreach workers, men and women ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-six. They include whites, African Americans, Latinos, straights, gays, and transvestites. Many of them are still hustling, and some are active drug users. Two of the group's original outreach workers died of AIDS, and some current members are HIV-positive.

Michael Links has been doing peer education for NYPAEC for five years. His experience with the group has led to a job as a caseworker for a community clinic, though he still hustles part-time. Besides safe-sex information, he gives other advice: "I tell people not to go with a `date' who is drunk or drugged, and not to work while you're high."

Luscious is an articulate, twenty-year-old male prostitute who is an outreach worker NYPAEC. "I started turning tricks when I was thirteen," he said. "I became a peer educator because I see so many HIV-infected people on the stroll. Even now, there are people who don't know how to use condoms." He says many of his male clients wear their wedding rings when they pick him up.

Luscious works in drag in Manhattan's meatpacking district. He gives out condoms to his fellow prostitutes, as well as others. "When I get on the subway, I act real loud and carry my condoms where they can be seen. Young people ask for them."

Besides training other outreach workers, NYPAEC also provides group support sessions for them. "In group, I feel...