IN the end, it was some harsh words from one of the few people who were meant to be helping her that spurred Claire on to taking a long, hard look at her life. She didn't want to be a prostitute any more. She was 14.

Since then, she has never gone back. Not to the drugs, and not to the prostitution. Now, nine years on, she is living with her boyfriend and two children and gets by on benefits and wages from her part-time job. And she helps young people whose lives are taking the same path as hers.

By the age of 12, Claire had already been taken into care several times and hospitalised several times, the victim of a violent father who was never prosecuted and always allowed to take his daughter back. So she left home and went to live with friends.

These friends used to sell sex on the streets of Middlesbrough, and Claire started to accompany them. A number of prostitutes had gone missing or been attacked, and the girls found it safer to work in pairs, so Claire would take the registration numbers of the cars and act as a safety back-up for her friends. Then she met a man who was to become her pimp.

"At first he kind of acted like a boyfriend. He would look out for you and he used to give us drugs, just to chill us out," she says. "He already had a few girls working for him, and he took them to smart hotels.

"It was not like an exciting party, but when you are involved and just hanging about with these older people and they were having a good time, it just goes from there.

"It was better than working on the streets, but he would not do it to people who were properly on drugs. He used to get clients who wanted younger girls."

Claire had turned 13, and was becoming dependant on cocaine and heroin, when she encountered her first client. Her pimp, who was in his 40s, would take her and other girls from Middlesbrough to hotels around the country: Bradford, Manchester, London, Birmingham, all regular destinations.

'HE would introduce me to a client and leave us in the hotel room and things would happen and they would leave and then I would get a shower and go to a different hotel and meet somebody else," she says.

Even now, knowing she was being exploited and that what was happening to her was rape, the lines of responsibility are blurred.

"Really it was my own fault, although at the age of 12 you're not really able to make your own decisions," she says. "It was not so much being pressured, but you are vulnerable and he could twist your words so you felt you owed him. I had nowhere else to go, and no-one to turn to.

"It was a lot better than the life I was leaving behind, but it was not the life that I wanted."

By this stage, Claire had a place in a children's home, although she rarely stayed there. When she did, she says the staff were not interested in what she was doing, and made no effort to keep her away from either prostitution or drugs, although they must have known what was going on. On one occasion, she had gone to the home to try and escape her pimp, but he marched in and dragged her out. No-one called the police.

At 14, Claire was spending around £100 a day on drugs, but was becoming scared by the life she was leading. Several of her friends had died of drugs overdoses, some had gone missing while working as prostitutes, two had been murdered.

But ironically it was the words of a worker at the children's home, shouted at her during a row, which proved the turning point.

"He said, 'Take a look in the mirror - you are nowt but a little slapper', and I took a good look at my life and it was just not for me," she says.

Claire returned to the children's home and asked staff to lock her in her room. She went cold turkey.

"It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, but I'm so glad I did it," she adds.

At 13, she had got involved with Barnardo's Secos project (Sexually Exploited Children On the Streets) in Middlesbrough, working with a counsellor, and, at 24, has now returned to the charity, helping young girls who have become involved in prostitution.

"My heart really goes out to them. Some of them know me from experience or from children's homes, and they know I can relate to their experiences, I'm not going to judge.

'YOU can just advise and talk to them, you can't drag them out physically. It makes you feel so helpless," she says.

Barnardo's work with children who have been sexually exploited has been made the subject of its centenary appeal, marking 100 years since the death of its founder, Thomas Barnardo, who began his work in the East End of London. The appeal, Better Start in Life, aims to support the 16 projects nationwide which work with children who have been the victims of sexual exploitation, including the Secos project in Middlesbrough, as well as the Ase project (Against Sexual Exploitation) in Stockton, and Rise (Reducing the Impact of Sexual Exploitation) in Newcastle.

After Claire turned her back on prostitution, she discovered she was pregnant by her pimp. She considered an abortion, but decided to keep the baby, without telling the father.

"I just thought it was something to live for. At least I have got something to focus on, and to give everything I never had," she says.

Her eldest child is almost nine now. Claire also has a baby, and lives with her boyfriend. She's been to college and has a part-time job. She has had counselling, to try and remove the feelings of guilt.

"I felt responsible. It was a conscious decision to leave home, where I was getting abuse on a daily basis, but it was not really my fault," she says. "You can't say that any child of 12 could be responsible for making decisions like that. I don't feel any child should be made to feel responsible."