Shaniquah was only 12 years old when she met him. He told her she was pretty and that he wanted to be her boyfriend. He showered her with promises of love, protection, and family. So what if he was 29, or maybe 30, and wanted her to sleep with other men for money? “If he wanted to cut my foot off, then cut my foot off. But just love me,” she recounts to the camera.

David Schisgall’s Very Young Girls is an arresting documentary based around some of the heartbreaking stories that lie behind the commercial sexual exploitation of children in America today. He paints a portrait of a group of girls who have sought refuge in GEMS (Girls Education & Mentoring Services program) – NYC’s only victim-run rehabilitation centre for those struggling to get out and stay out of what they call “the life”.

While global cries in defence of human rights seem to have stirred political and social concern for victims of forced prostitution in countries like Thailand and the Ukraine, Schisgall (a former assistant to Errol Morris – see p 216) shines a light on his native country. In America, it seems, if you are young, female and living in a deprived urban environment, you must be less a victim and more a criminal, in some way accountable for your circumstance: a crackhead, or maybe just a ho, greedy for money.

Through a blend of intimate interview footage, verité-style cinematography and, perhaps most effectively, the use of chilling home video footage (shot by two pimp brothers whose delusions of grandeur had them thinking the material might lead to their own reality show), Very Young Girls poignantly illustrates the lives of children guilty of nothing but risking their own lives, all in the name of promises forever unfulfilled.