at least four women whose bodies were unceremoniusly dumped in tangled scrub brush along a long island seaside highway, possibly at the hands of a serial killer. why are you speaking publicly and on camera and not in silhouette about this? i can t be silent anymore. reporter: swim also is an activist with s.w.a.p., sex workers outreach project. if believes decriminalizing prostitution will make the job safer. this is exactly why predators target us and try to abuse us because they know we can t trust the police for help. reporter: police officials say they treat crimes against prostitutes like they would for any other victim, but the mother of victim lisa bartholome said valuable time was lost to get the police look for her daughter once she learned she was a prostitu
he was saying help me, help me. so i opened my window and said what s the matter? he said, my mom drove the car into the water. he was frantic. very, very frantic. he was hysterical crying, wet from head to toe, and he was shivering uncontrollably. she s talking about a 10-year-old boy whose mom tried to kill him. lashawn armstrong escaped as prosecutors say his mother lachanda armstrong drove her minivan into the hudson river, drowning herself, her 11-month-old girl, and two boys, ages 2 and 5. lashawn got out, eventually picked up on a roadside by a woman you just heard from. that was mave ryan there. how can any child get through this? our human behavior expert dr. wendy walsh joins me now. wendy, it breaks my heart to just read that story. we all know about it, but just it s terrible. wendy, mave ryan says she had to
tell lashawn not to blame himself. what do you have to do to make a child believe that? i had also heard one report that he had told her he wished he had taught his other brothers how to swim. so he was already blaming himself. the thing we know about psychology is sometimes people come through some pretty rough emotional experiences and grow up to be somewhat functional. and then reverse, some people are what we might term delicately scathed in childhood and have deep dysfunction in adult life. we really don t know how the biology is going to play out. most importantly, he does need to get help and support, as clearly his mother needed before hand. i hate to get on a soap box, but, don, 40% of american babies are born out of wedlock. a population of single mothers. where is the village supporting these women? where are the baby daddies? where are the extended family? where are the services for a mother to reach out when she s not doing so well? as you were talking, i was looking a