Shop

The Free Press discovers that teenage girls from Vermont have been "hooked on heroin and whisked away to New York" where they have been forced into prostitution. Many of the young women have been in state custody, but the state lacks "the money, manpower or wherewithal to keep track of its incorrigible charges," the investigative series reveals. Some of the stories shed light on the "heroin epidemic that consumed many young Vermonters," and other articles focus on the deviant activity of a Burlington businessman who has been taking tens of thousands of pornographic pictures, some of underage girls. The coverage starts with a story about the death of 16-year-old Christal Jones, a ward of the state who died in a seedy New York apartment, and whose fate has been kept from the public by the state officials.