SHE STANDS alone near the corner, holding an umbrella in the driving rain.
Her frail body and the needle tracks on her arms are hidden beneath an oversized Eagles sweatsuit.
For three nights each week, a girl who calls herself Maria stands along Kensington Avenue, working to make enough money to stay high on heroin for the rest of the week.
She is 16.
She's also one of the senior kids on Kensington's streets, making $10 to $20 a customer and having sex with half-a-dozen men a night.
``I gotta have my heroin. That's the only reason I do this,'' she says, her eyes unable to focus. ``Sure I'm scared when I get in a car, but I just keep thinking of the money I'm going to make.''
Her story is not unique.
An increasing number of children are peddling their flesh on the streets of Kensington - children who hit the street before they hit puberty. They trade a life as stay-at-home schoolchildren for the dead-end existence of 13-, 14-, 15- and 16-year-old hookers.
Some are boys, most are girls. Almost all are heavily addicted to heroin, crack or cocaine.
In post-industrial Kensington, child prostitution is thriving, thanks to stricter laws in neighboring states, chatter on the Internet and the city's laissez-faire attitude toward prostitution.
The city vice squad claims Philadelphia has no child prostitution problem. Officers say they have arrested nearly 1,000 prostitutes this year, but have seen few under 18.
But the same cops also admit they release young-looking prostitutes back onto the street without knowing their ages or names since the city neither fingerprints nor photographs most hookers arrested for the misdemeanor called ``obstructing the highway.''
Philadelphia authorities are plotting a crackdown on seasoned Kensington Avenue hookers. But officials acknowledge that their efforts will do little to save the child prostitutes, who can be arrested and released within hours.
``It angers me that Philadelphia has gained a reputation . . . for prostitution,'' said at-large City Councilman Jim Kenney. ``The youth are there on the street - from Washington and Maryland. It's a real problem.''
Neither youth advocacy centers, the U.S. Justice Department nor the police have any idea how many child streetwalkers there are.
Prostitution arrests across the nation last year, according to the FBI, included 263 kids aged 16 and 153 aged 15. Approximately 140 children younger than 15 were arrested.
