MONROVIA, Oct. 20 -- By eight o'clock on most evenings, the young women have already taken their places. Near an unfinished building in the VOA community of Brewerville City, outside Monrovia, they stand in the spots they know are best for catching the attention of passing men. They have a name for those men: "customers." They have a name, too, for what they do. They call it "hustling."

By Obediah Johnson

The word sounds like ambition. In this place it means survival. The young women are mostly between 18 and 24 years old, although teenagers are among them. They sell sex for sums so small that they would barely cover a snack in some parts of the world, and they do it night after night, driven by poverty, grief and, for some, the pull of...