I was reading in the newspaper this morning that a woman has been sentenced to two and a half years, after allowing her daughter to work for a Sydney escort service. The age of the daughter in this case, is sixteen. Here's the story:

An Illawarra mother who subjected her teenage daughter to horrible degradation by allowing her to work as a prostitute has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years' jail.

The 43-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, emailed an altered copy of the girl's birth certificate to the Liaisons Escort Agency at Edgecliff after the 16-year-old was persuaded to work as a prostitute late last year.

During her time there, the teen worked under the pseudonym Layla and participated in a variety of sexual acts with some 18 clients, many of whom were abusive and forced her to take drugs.

One slapped her face, while another pushed her against a wall and said "You're my dirty bitch", expecting her to repeat it, the court heard.

The teen had since "endured hell and back", struggling to understand how a mother could allow her child to have sex with strangers for money, a victim impact statement revealed.

"My mum, the one who was meant to have my best interest at heart, betrayed my trust and put me in danger," she said.

The statement also detailed how the girl had self-harmed – on one occasion carving the word "slut" into her leg – and had tried to commit suicide since working at the agency.

Yesterday, Wollongong District Court Judge Paul Conlon said the woman's actions constituted an "extreme breach of trust", particularly because the teen was emotionally fragile before she began working at the brothel.

"Parents have an overriding responsibility to keep their children from harm's way and to shield them from evil," he said.

"The commission of these crimes by the offender involved an extreme breach of trust … her daughter was obviously in a fragile emotional and psychological state and therefore deserving of special care and attention from her mother."

The mother had a history of depression and abuse which contributed to her poor parenting decisions, the court heard.

She also admitted to the court she felt "horrible, remorseful and ashamed".

The woman, who pleaded guilty to inciting her under-age daughter to participate in child prostitution and receiving money from child prostitution, would serve her minimum 18-month jail sentence in protective custody. She will be eligible for release in April 2012.

My question is why is the mother being punished, but the girl isn't? What doesn't appear in the above version of the story, is that the daughter asked her mother to help her get the work and that whilst the daughter received some of her pay, most of the rest went to a savings account so that they could eventually open a clothing business together.

Whilst what the mother did was shocking and irresponsible, does the fact that the daughter was the one that wanted to do it in the first place change nothing? You can say the mother did a bad job raising the girl, and in most likelyhood she did, but you cannot lay all the fault on the mother. If anything, the daughter should share some of the time with her mother.

Whilst bad parenting and stupid laws that stop people from smacking their kids is the fault for most of the bullshit that younger people do these days, there is a certain point when responsibility should be expected from these kids as well. Being 16, she must have known full well what she was getting herself into, and was unlucky enough to have a stupid person for a parent, one that allowed her and helped her to do such a thing.