CARLY was just one of a band of child prostitutes who are under the care of social services in Bolton but walk the streets at night.

About a dozen girls aged between 13 and 17 are regularly selling their bodies for sex in the borough.

The BEN has learned that all the teenagers working as prostitutes are under the care of the local authority.

But the reality is that social services and the police are powerless to do anything about it.

If the girls are picked up by the police for prostitution, they are handed over to social services and returned to their homes.

Under current legislation, anyone under the age of 18 who offers sex for sale is deemed to be under age.

They cannot be charged with soliciting and are treated as victims rather than offenders.

The girls are monitored and supported by social services staff but they cannot prevent them from returning to the streets.

There is no secure accommodation in Bolton where the teenagers can be sent to and a national shortage since the 1980s when the government decided to close the facilities.

However, the authorities believe that even if these girls were detained, they could not be kept under lock and key forever.

Where there is prostitution, there is child prostitution and once it is established in an area, it is almost impossible to eradicate it.

Unlike traditional vice girls who stand on street corners touting for business in the town's red light areas, young girls build "friendships" with the men.

They are vulnerable, often come from troubled backgrounds and are looking for love and affection.

Like Carly, some are on drugs and need the cash to feed their habits.

Others are just looking for comfort and have never been able to have a one-to-one relationship with anyone in their lives before.

The men pretend to care for them and ply them with gifts, clothes, money and more importantly mobile phones so they can be contacted at any time and meetings can be arranged.

Once the relationship has been established, it is then that the girls are persuaded to do "favours" for the man's friends and introduce other girls to the men.

The tragedy is that many of the teenagers are not even aware they are being solicited.

A police source said: "It leaves the social services with a terrible dilemma.

"If you take these girls off the streets and put them into care of social services, it is possible that they could come into contact with other girls who are working as prostitutes.

"The idea that the police and the local authority can do more to stop this happening is not true.

"The reality is that under the current system, it is extremely difficult to do anything."