Law enforcement officials, social workers and Hmong leaders have begun drawing attention to the growing problem of sexual assault in the Hmong community, a newspaper reported.

Scores of Hmong girls in Minnesota - some not yet in their teens - have been raped or forced into prostitution over the past several years, and many of their attackers are gang members who go unpunished because shame keeps their victims from coming forward, the Star Tribune reported in its Sunday edition.

Law enforcement and medical workers believe gang rape and prostitution in the Hmong community are more widespread than reported. And studies indicate that Hmong victims are more reluctant to report the crimes.

Records show that the Hmong girls, many of them runaways, have been raped at Twin Cities are farms, motel rooms, basements, garages and closets. Some were threatened at gunpoint. Some were lured with drugs.

St. Paul public schools have trained staff to spot Hmong girls who might be in trouble. Dozens of concerned professionals and community volunteers are meeting monthly as the Hmong Youth Task Force to brainstorm solutions. St. Paul police and Ramsey County sheriff's deputies have begun actively looking for Hmong runaway girls - a departure from their previous runaway policy.

"We have an urgent situation with very young Hmong girls here in St. Paul that needs your attention," Raymond Yu, student services director for St. Paul public schools, says in a school training video. He said the district is putting special emphasis on Hmong girls "because of the significant number of reports that we've heard from the St. Paul Police Department and the Ramsey County attorney's office."

A Star Tribune analysis using an FBI list of Hmong surnames shows that between 1999 and June 30, 2005, 76 Hmong men and 21 Hmong teens were charged with sexually assaulting or prostituting girls in Ramsey County, home to nearly 60 percent of the state's Hmong.

Prosecutors counted 59 victims believed to be Hmong in those cases. They say there were other victims who didn't cooperate and whose assaults weren't charged. Fifteen victims were of other ethnicity.

Secrecy and shame - losing one's virginity without marriage is considered a violation of a basic tenet of the Hmong culture, and sometimes girls are blamed for allowing the rape to happen - keep victims from reporting the crime.

"You've got to go out to the parks, go to the hotels, work curfews, work truancy," said Minnesota Gang Strike Force investigator Kevin Navara, who has concentrated on Asian gangs for six years.

Pediatric practitioner Laurel Edinburgh, who treats young rape victims at the Midwest Children's Resource Center in St. Paul, analyzed 245 cases at her clinic of 10- to 14-year-olds who have been sexually abused by people outside their family between 1998 and 2003. Thirty of them were Hmong, and all but two were treated at the clinic. In preliminary analysis, she found that the Hmong girls treated at her St. Paul clinic were about six times more likely than other victims to have been raped by five or more people.

"The sexual abuse experiences of very young adolescent Hmong girls were markedly more severe than those of their peers," she wrote in a paper presented at a Conference in January.

The gang rape problem first attracted Minnesota police's attention in 1997, when a girl at a Hmong New Year's party told police that boys had thrown blankets over her and her friends and raped them. At least four girls had been raped. Eight Hmong men and boys aged 15 to 21 eventually pleaded guilty to kidnapping or sex crimes.

Some people worry that new Hmong refugees arriving in Minnesota as part of a resettlement might fall easy prey to sexual assault. But Sen. Mee Moua, DFL-St. Paul, said new immigrants are more connected to their parents and traditions.

"I don't have any concerns that they're going to fall prey," she said. "They have been yearning for an opportunity to come to this country. They're going to be the best students. They're going to be the best workers. They're going to fight their darndest."

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