Alberta's underground teen sex trade is flourishing with the help of cellphones and the internet, a CBC News investigation has found.

Calgary sex trade expert Susan McIntyre says technology allows youth in the trade to avoid walking the streets and work in so-called trick pads and motels.

"I never worked on the street. Not once. It's possible that you don't work the streets when you're in these other places, when you're smoking crack and stuff."—Shadow, 19

"We've always had trick pads and I think that is becoming more and more common. Technology is allowing people to connect differently."

Some outreach workers estimate three-quarters of the teenagers involved in prostitution in Alberta are working underground.

'I never worked on the street'

Shadow, a 19-year-old who goes by her street name, worked in the underground sex trade for three years, most often trading sex for drugs to feed an addiction.

"I never worked on the street. Not once," she said. "It's possible that you don't work the streets when you're in these other places, when you're smoking crack and stuff."
 
Many teenagers involved in prostitution make their so-called dates using the internet or by keeping their clients' numbers on a cellphone speed dial. Often they meet their "dates" at malls, she said.

"They just go on their phone. Call a guy up and they'll take them to wherever," she said.

The off-the-radar, drug-hazed underground trade can be dangerous, as Shadow found out.

"I got introduced to this … guy," she said. "The idea of going there was to sleep with him, but then he wanted to do it anally. I said no, and he raped me twice."

Edmonton outreach worker Wallis Kendal says pimps, johns and the teens selling sex have become increasingly organized, often working out of constantly changing locations.

"I would say over 75 per cent of it is underground," he said. "What they do is rent a motel and they'll stay there for X number of days …. They may be having the date in the pad, or the pad is only a place to set up the dates and they are going out to hotels."

There is a growing demand for youth, some pimps looking for 12-year-olds, he said.

New Alberta law helping some

Alberta's Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution legislation came into effect in 1999, giving police and social workers the power to apprehend teenagers working the streets without charging them.

Those who try to help teens in the sex trade mostly agree the supply of teens hasn't dropped since the law was introduced.

Jo-Ann McCartney, a counsellor and former Edmonton vice detective, says while the law has allowed some teens to turn their lives around, technology has made it easier to work below the radar.

"In the past, underground would have been in … the back of the restaurant and stuff like that, but physically out in the open."

Police and outreach workers need to work harder to find teenagers being exploited in the underground sex trade, she said.