Luckily for this girl, she had better family support than the film's title character. She was taken to BEBASHI - Blacks Educating Blacks About Sexual Health Issues - where workers referred her to a pediatrician who treats similarly abused youngsters.

The girl showed up at BEBASHI's offices around the same time as last month's Philadelphia premiere of "Precious," the critically acclaimed film about an abused Harlem teen mother infected with AIDS by her father. The Oct. 18 premiere was a fundraiser for BEBASHI; the movie opens in theaters this weekend.

BEBASHI's director, Gary Bell, was struck by the similarities between the plot line of "Precious" and the local 14-year-old. He hopes the film will provide a much-needed reminder to people that the deadly threat of AIDs hasn't gone away. Earlier this week, in fact, the World Health Organization released a report calling AIDS the leading cause of death and disease among women ages 15 to 44.

If you ask me, what's really needed is a gigantic jolt, a slap-in-the-face wake-up call to remind people that the threat of AIDS hasn't gone away just because you don't hear much about it anymore. "Precious" is fiction, based on the novel "Push" by the writer Sapphire, but there are real-life girls and boys in our city contracting HIV through unprotected sex.

"Some people have just been lulled into this false sense of security," Bell pointed out. "In Philadelphia, our HIV rate is five times the national average and one-and-a-half times the rate in New York.

"I think the numbers are going to continue to go up with the current economic climate."

During hard economic times, there's an increased tendency for people to turn to drugs, alcohol and sex for comfort, which increases the chance of risky behavior. Some women, particularly unemployed mothers struggling to make ends meet, may find themselves in such economically precarious circumstances that they feel they can't protect either themselves or their partners from infection.

"We work with a lot of women who are not going to tell their man that they're HIV-positive," Bell pointed out matter-of-factly. "If you think about it, if I'm poor, barely making it and I finally found a man, if I start telling him to wear a condom, he's going to want to know why.

"If I'm living with this guy and he doesn't want to wear a condom, am I going to say no? I need a roof over my head," Bell pointed out. "They may need someone to help support them and their family, and they may be willing to make concessions that they wouldn't normally make. . . . They are living in fear that he's going to find out."

Bell hopes that somehow "Precious" will get Philadelphians at least talking again about HIV and AIDS.

"I don't know if it's wishful thinking," said Bell. "I hope they do. I do think it's such a powerful movie."

Send e-mail to heyjen@phillynews.com. My blog: http://go.philly.com/heyjen.