Sarah Bendtsen, Author at Shared Hope International

February 22, 2022 by Sarah Bendtsen

When Systems of Care Can do Harm: The Need for Specialized Child Welfare Responses to Child Trafficking Survivors

By: Sarah Bendtsen and Christine Raino

While a relatively small percentage of children referred to and served by child welfare are child sex trafficking victims, child welfare has an important and unavoidable role in responding to child sex trafficking. Reformed and tailored responses to child sex trafficking are critical for ensuring proper responses to system-involved child sex trafficking survivors and reducing vulnerabilities to trafficking, which are often created or exacerbated by inappropriate child welfare responses. Moreover, when the child welfare system fails to respond appropriately to child sex trafficking victims or otherwise creates vulnerabilities to trafficking, research shows those failures disproportionately impact families of color.

Child welfare’s response specific to child and youth survivors of sex trafficking reflects a recent evolution in policy development, resulting in diverging practices and outcomes. While state and local agencies have long been serving young people impacted by maltreatment, including abuse, neglect, and exploitation, the role of child welfare has historically been limited to addressing maltreatment caused by a child’s parent or legal caregiver. The enactment of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act and Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2015, however, required a significant shift in child welfare’s response to both familial and non-familial cases of child sex trafficking. Together, these two pieces of federal legislation accelerated state and local policy change, resulting in many state statutory and regulatory reforms that sought compliance with new federal standards without full inclusion of best practices for this population. Consequently, many states continue to utilize traditional child welfare responses and practices for responding to the unique and complex needs of child sex trafficking survivors, including investigating non-offending caregivers or mandating the child and child’s family to participate in services. Such solutions, while well-intentioned, have only contributed to alarming racial and socio-economic disparities in system involvement and outcomes. However, emerging and thoughtful practices and laws are demonstrating how child welfare agencies can serve as a conduit to holistic wellbeing and support for child survivors and their community, rather than agencies focused on intervention, surveillance, and separation.

1.Historical and Current Practices

The development of formally recognized state child welfare agencies dates back to the enactment of the Social Security Act of 1935, which provided the first federal funding stream for the development of child protection and welfare services at the state and local levels. P.L. 74-271 appropriated $1.5 million annually “for the purpose of enabling the United States, through the Children’s Bureau,[1] to cooperate with State public welfare agencies in establishing, extending, and strengthening, in predominately rural areas, public [child] welfare services . . . for the protection and care of homeless, dependent, and neglected children, and children in danger of becoming delinquent.” Implementation of P.L. 74-271 and subsequent reauthorizations bolstered state child welfare agencies’ powers and provided necessary support and interventions for children experiencing maltreatment within the home; however, discriminatory practices also manifested early, resulting in harmful and biased treatment of families living in poverty, Indigenous communities, and children of single or unwed mothers.

Presently, Black and Indigenous communities, including children and youth, are involved in all systems, including child welfare, at much greater rates than their white counterparts. Of course, this is not because of racial identity but because of deeply entrenched systemic practices and structural responses to race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status. In addition to being reported, investigated, and subjected to abuse and neglect petitions in far greater and disproportional numbers than white families, families of color are also far less likely to receive meaningful economic and emotional supports that are proven to increase positive outcomes for the family and reduce or eliminate further system involvement or interventions.

2.Racial inequities & consequences

Examining the disproportional levels of interactions, interventions, and responses to families of color, it is unsurprising that both communities experience far greater negative short and long-term outcomes than white children who are child welfare involved. In addition to the trauma caused by child welfare investigations and ongoing surveillance, research demonstrates that Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic children are less likely to receive in-home services care, support, and resources than white children, often resulting in unnecessary removals and family separations. Once removed, Black children, more than any other community of children, are more likely to stay in foster or group home placement for longer periods of time, be subjected to multiple placements, and receive fewer services. Additionally, children and youth of color are significantly more likely to age out of the child welfare system rather than exit through family reunification or adoption and experience far worse outcomes in emerging adulthood, including housing insecurity, poverty, criminal justice system involvement, and unemployment. White children and families, who are subjected to child welfare interventions far less frequently, experience some of the same consequences and outcomes following system involvement for conduct that does not reflect actual abuse but, instead, is indicative of the family’s need for meaningful support and services, rather than investigation, ongoing surveillance, court-ordered services and evaluations, and potential separation. Consequently, children and families who may normally seek out and benefit from external support become distrustful of systems designed to support their wellbeing and are reticent to receive services.

3.Impact on CST survivors/families

Child sex trafficking has touched all communities regardless of race, socio-economic status, or geographical location. However, like system involvement, there are significant disparities in impact. Data on identified child sex trafficking victims continues to demonstrate the disproportional effect on children and youth of color. Recognizing the disparities in both experiences of exploitation and system involvement, it is especially critical that our anti-trafficking child welfare policies and practices account for the potential for unnecessary, system-induced harm and trauma. Responsible policymaking as it relates to the federally-mandated child welfare response to child and youth survivors must gravitate towards state-level policies that are culturally responsive and holistically supportive of the child and non-offending caregivers.

Emerging practices are demonstrating how child welfare agencies can be a conduit for support without entrenching trafficked youth and their families into a system that penalizes rather than supports. One alternative child welfare practice devised to avoid unnecessary investigations and interventions is the development of a “third track” avenue for assessing and serving child survivors of non-familial sex and labor trafficking. Virginia was the first state to enact legislation creating a human trafficking-specific assessment that focuses on evaluating the safety and services needs of the trafficked child without necessitating a traditional child abuse or neglect response. Relatedly, Minnesota has sought a similar policy change, seeking to utilize a non-caregiver sex trafficking assessment to focus on identifying the child and family’s service and safety needs, if any, without requiring an investigation into the child’s caregivers or a determination of maltreatment. In an effort to uncover and address systemic biases and consequences, Illinois state lawmakers are currently considering legislation which, if enacted, would create a pilot program to decrease the overrepresentation of children of color in out-of-home placements by requiring caseworkers to utilize a bias-free child removal strategy in making out-of-home determinations. Relatedly, in an effort to decrease unnecessary and traumatizing parent-child separations in cases of non-familial human trafficking, the California legislature is considering a bill which seeks to prohibit child welfare social workers from taking a child trafficking victim into temporary custody “unless continuance in the parent’s or guardian’s home is contrary to the child’s welfare . . . .”

Shared Hope, in a continued effort to identify and advocate for promising practices for responding to child and youth sex trafficking, is in full support of systems-level reforms that mitigate harm, trauma, and unnecessary involvement, particularly for communities and kids that are disproportionately impacted by the harmful outcomes of system involvement. In particular, in developing the Advanced Legislative Framework in 2020, we convened over 200 stakeholders from across the U.S. to identify best and emerging practices related to responses to child and youth sex trafficking. The guidance and feedback provided through this process, combined with information gathered through desk research and state technical assistance, informed a new state policy goal focused on reducing or eliminating traumatizing or punitive child welfare interventions for both the child and non-offending parents or caregivers. Resultantly, Shared Hope has adopted a policy position that seeks an alternative, collaborative, and strengths-based child welfare response to support non-offending parents without employing a traditional investigative abuse or neglect response. We invite you to join us in learning more about opportunities and solutions for increasing better outcomes for children and youth survivors of sex trafficking, including important modifications to child welfare practices and policies, by visiting our Report Cards on Child and Youth Sex Trafficking project page.

Action Items:

Review Policy Issue Brief 2.11 which highlights the need for a modified child welfare response in cases of non-familial sex trafficking.
Share a copy of your State Report Card with your state legislators.
If you are a Minnesota resident, please consider contacting your state lawmakers and request their support for SF 1729/HF 1943, which would create and require use of a non-caregiver sex trafficking assessment for all reported cases of non-familial child sex trafficking.

[1] Established through P.L. 62-116 in 1912.

September 29, 2021 by Sarah Bendtsen

Wisconsin Senate Bill 245 Testimony

Shared Hope International has been working in Wisconsin, across the country, and internationally for over 20 years to guide and support appropriate responses to protect survivors, hold offenders to account, and ultimately prevent the crime entirely. 11 years ago we launched the Protected Innocence Challenge project (i.e. State Report Cards) to assess the status of state’s laws and to drive legislative progress. Since 2011, we have called on states to recognize any minor engaged in commercial sex as a victim of a sex trafficking, not a “prostitute” or “delinquent youth.” We know that survivors of child sex trafficking have the best outcomes when they are met with protection, trauma-informed services, and a response that is appropriate for the horrific experiences they have endured—such a response cannot be rooted in juvenile justice practices and systems.

Amending the prostitution statute to be inapplicable to minors recognizes that children never engage in commercial sex by choice; rather, a child does so out of coercion, force, fraud, fear, or survival. This is not consensual sex; money does not sanitize rape and treating the child as consensual actor not only misplaces criminality, it directly re-victimizes the child. Oftentimes, children entangled in a life that includes commercial sex carry years of trauma, generational vulnerabilities, and abuse on their backs. Other times, such children have trusted the wrong adult, been fed a false promise, or have fallen for an exploiter who later sold the child to someone all too willing to pay for the chance to rape him or her. Children with unsafe or unstable home environments may find the streets safer and, resultantly, sell their bodies in exchange for something to eat or someplace to sleep. These are not choices; children living in such circumstances deserve, at a minimum, specialized services and long-term care, not the traumatizing impact of an arrest, detention and prosecution, or juvenile records that carrying devastating collateral consequences far beyond childhood years.

In 2014, four years after releasing the first State Report Cards, we graded Wisconsin a “B” state for having a set of strong, comprehensive laws that address child sex trafficking; for the last 8 years, Wisconsin has consistently scored higher than the national average in developing robust policies and practices related to child sex trafficking. However, despite holding a position of leadership, the state has lagged seriously behind a majority of the country in designing and prioritizing protective responses for survivors. 31 states and D.C. have made clear that children engaged in commercial sex are victims of sex trafficking, no prostitution offenders. While Wisconsin state law clearly defines children who are bought and sold for sex as victims of sex trafficking, those same minors can be and are arrested and prosecuted for prostitution. SB 245 is not only critical for remedying this legal paradox; this legislation embraces a nationally-regarded promising practice for protecting children and preventing harm.

Concerns have previously been raised that, without the ability to arrest child sex trafficking victims, law enforcement are limited in their ability to keep vulnerable youth safe. We wholeheartedly share the desire to ensure survivor safety; however, arrest is not the only and certainly not the appropriate mechanism for doing so. Alternatively, many states that have enacted and successfully implemented Safe Harbor responses have abandoned the use of arrest and adopted more child-friendly and appropriate tools for taking children into custody, including the use of temporary protective custody provisions. Fortunately, Wisconsin has already developed this mechanism under Wis. Stat. § 48.19(d).

SB 245 not only aligns with promising and child-centered responses to sex trafficking but amplifies survivors’ calls for justice. Our decades of research and collaborative work with trafficking survivors has illuminated the harms of punitive responses to victims; survivors continue to reiterate the additional trauma and harm that is caused during arrest, detention, and prosecution, even if such responses are well-intended and designed break the cycle of exploitation, including

Wisconsin’s current diversion response to child sex trafficking victims. Conversely, responses outside of punitive systems are proven to be more effective, cost-efficient, and impactful in addressing survivors comprehensive needs and goals, and preventing the predictable cycle of vulnerabilities, exploitation, criminalization, and increased vulnerabilities to reexploitation.

We commend the Sponsor’s leadership on this issue and are grateful for the Committee’s interest in supporting an alternative, more survivor-centered and justice-oriented response.

If you live in Wisconsin, urge your legislators to support Senate Bill 245 and end the criminalization of children with prostitution.

May 29, 2020 by Sarah Bendtsen

Bridge to Success– National Foster Care Month

Bridge to Success

May marks National Foster Care month, prompting an annual focus on a system response that impacts nearly half a million children and youth in the U.S. at any given time. During a normal year, advocates and policymakers highlight promising trends, practices, and challenges for supporting foster care youth, including those transitioning out of the system. However, with a global pandemic in the backdrop, the plight for many is magnified, and the time for immediate reform is now. For over 20 years, Shared Hope has been committed to protecting all children and youth from being commercially sexually exploited. To do this, in the midst of the pandemic, requires a heightened need to focus on the most vulnerable among us.

The intersection of sex trafficking victimization and foster care involvement has been widely recognized. We know from anecdotal accounts, survivor voice, and the limited data available that youth survivors of sex trafficking are disproportionately more likely to have experienced at least one foster care placement prior to their trafficking victimization. The trauma, caused by both the experience driving foster care placement and the removal/placement itself, magnifies the vulnerabilities that are inherently present during adolescence. This compounded trauma, which is likely present for all—425,000—youth in foster care, makes the need for thoughtful, age-appropriate, and holistic support for those transitioning out especially dire.

The impact of removal and foster care placement can create vulnerabilities that do not expire upon the child’s 18^th birthday. In fact, such vulnerabilities can be intensified as the child is confronted with new expectations and decreased support systems. Navigating this bridge between adolescence and adulthood is daunting for any child but can be crushing when the child is forced to build their own bridge and cross over it alone. This is the plight that youth transitioning out of foster care experience. As a result, such youth are disproportionately more likely to experience housing insecurity, homelessness, exploitation, and substance use, as well as trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. Unsurprisingly, this creates a revolving door effect: when discharged into the world with no support, resources, or safety net, transition age youth are forced to make choices out of survival, often leading to criminal justice involvement; those involved in the criminal justice system are more likely to experience having their own children removed and placed in foster care, and the cycle repeats itself. We know from our own work focusing on ending the criminalization of sex trafficking victims that this is often the experience and fate of survivors. We can stop this cycle of abuse-poverty-punishment. We can provide youth with both the support needed to transition into adulthood and access to opportunities that promote health, wellness, and stability. We can build bridges to success.

To promote critical transition age care, Congress passed the Federal Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, allowing state child welfare agencies to utilize federal funding to extend services and care to youth under 21. Subsequent legislation that passed in 2015, The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, amended the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) to permit states to use CAPTA funding to provide extended child welfare services to youth under 24 years of age, recognizing the imperative need for a continuum of care, support, and services during an especially vulnerable period of life. Over the last decade, 45 states have extended foster care systems to include some youth under 21; however, a number of those states have created eligibility conditions that make accessing extended services and care a challenge for many older youth. The barriers to care have manifested in countless stories of youth being discharged into poverty, homelessness, sex trafficking victimization, unemployment, and criminal justice involvement even before the COVID-19 pandemic; the consequences are even more dire now.

Recently, Foster Care Alumni and the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare (NCHCW) issued a joint letter to the National Governors Association, forecasting the serious challenges awaiting approximately 17,000 youth anticipated to transition out of foster care this year. The letter referred to discharging these youth now, in the midst of the pandemic, as “unconscionable and inhumane” as many may face isolation, homelessness, unemployment, and food insecurity at unprecedented levels. Though the letter paints a grim and unsettling picture, it also serves as our call to action.

Shared Hope has long demanded a reformed child welfare response specific to sex trafficked children, but the realities and experiences of youth transitioning out of child welfare’s care demand that we push further to mitigate the vulnerabilities and end cycles of exploitation and abuse. We must develop and provide the infrastructure, resources, and support necessary to ensure the youth’s journey from adolescence to adulthood is not one of survival but, instead, one that promotes the long-term health, safety, and success of the young person. No child or youth in the U.S. should be pre-destined for exploitation, homelessness, poverty, or prison. Yet, many state policies currently provide a one-way ticket to an adulthood riddled with volatility, injustices, and abuse. The onus is on us, as adults and advocates, to reverse the course, engineer new plans, and build the bridges to success for all youth.

Resources:

Child Trends, “Supporting Young People Transitioning from Foster Care: Findings from a National Survey”

Chronicle of Social Change, “The Pandemic You Know, and The One You Don’t: Vulnerable Youth in The Crisis”

Kansas City Star, “Throwaway Kids”

Juvenile Law Center, National Extended Foster Care Review: 50-State Survey of Extended Foster Care Law and Police Executive Summary and Database

National Conference of State Legislatures, Older Youth in Foster Care State Profiles & Data Base

The Field Center, “Human Trafficking Prevalence and Child Welfare Risk Factors Among Homeless Youth: A Multi-Year Study”

Shared Hope, State Impact Memo on Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act (PSTSFA) and Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA)

Opportunities for Advocacy & Action:

Coming soon!

December 3, 2019 by Sarah Bendtsen

States’ Laws Say “Kids Are Not Prostitutes.” So Why Are They Still Being Punished?

During the 2019 legislative session, nine states passed[1] critical legal reform measures to protect child sex trafficking victims from being prosecuted for prostitution, commonly referred to as “Safe Harbor” laws. However, as first pointed out in 2017, not all “Safe Harbor” laws actually insulate child sex trafficking victims from a punitive response for engaging in commercial sex. States, in an effort to carve out alternative processes for commercially sexually exploited minors, have developed a broad range of responses, ranging from the availability of an affirmative defense to full non-criminalization, with various other legal responses falling somewhere in between. Once again, lawmakers underlined the prevailing conflict between the anti-trafficking community and other stakeholders that regard some commercially sexually exploited minors as consensual actors, needing of reform and punishment.

South Dakota is one such state that complicated the “Safe Harbor” narrative and furthered the disparate legal processes designed to address child sex trafficking victims. Legislators this session passed House Bill 1063, which repealed the previous law that allowed 16 and 17 year old kids to be charged and prosecuted for prostitution. In demonstrating their support for the measure, several lawmakers emphasized the inherent injustice of prosecuting children for prostitution offenses, stating, “prostitute implies consent and that a minor chose,” “the key is getting them the help they need,” and “we need to get [the child victim] help, not treat them as a criminal.”[2]

So why are child victims in South Dakota, like many other states, still vulnerable to arrest and prosecution?

Undoubtedly, House Bill 1063 made an important legal and policy change; yet, in doing so, it amended the state’s Child in Need of Supervision (CHINS) process to include “a child who engages in prostitution by offering to engage in sexual activity for a fee or other compensation.”[3] The intent of the bill was to treat commercially sexually exploited minors as victims, not delinquents; however, as written, South Dakota’s new law will create very little practical change for child victims. Effectively, minors engaged in commercial sex will still be subject to an inherently adversarial process within the juvenile court system.

We strongly disagree. Unlike a protective response, deeming a minor survivor as a “child in need of supervision” denotes culpability and responsibility. Sending a youth survivor into the juvenile justice system, where the CHINS process is housed, commences a punitive process: a child is still taken into custody, charged with an offense, provided a sentence (albeit a “reformative” one), and placed on probation. Should the minor violate the terms of probation,[4] he or she is vulnerable to re-arrest and additional charges. No aspect of this process is trauma-informed or victim-centered.

Unfortunately, South Dakota is not the only state with such conflicted laws and practices. 11 other states have created alternative responses that fail to unequivocally identify and respond to all minors engaged in commercial sex as victims of sex trafficking. Oftentimes, these alternative responses are utilized as a means of ensuring that the child is separated from the exploiter and engaged in services. However, requiring youth survivors to participate in services or refrain from certain behaviors, as all diversion programs do, is a flawed response in the context of sex trafficking victimization. This design is not only incompatible with trauma, it is incompatible with justice.

First, placing requirements on exploited youth ignores the reality that survivors of sex trafficking commonly deny victimization and oftentimes must reach emotional, psychological, physiological, and spiritual stability before they can begin to safely and productively process and treat their exploitation. Secondly, mandatory participation in services fails to recognize that a key element of providing a protective response to survivors is refraining from repeating behaviors that mimic the behaviors of the exploiter, including conditioning protection on a survivor’s compliance with certain expectations or rules. Lastly, requiring satisfactory participation in services negates the integral role that flexibility plays in responding to trafficking victimization. Healing is not linear; it is imperative that service responses allow for setbacks and pauses in order to ensure emotional safety and sustainable recovery. In addition to clashing with a requisite trauma-informed approach, diversion programs designed for commercially sexually exploited minors send mixed messages that survivors are somehow accountable for their own trafficking victimization.

While we acknowledge the legislative intent to protect and serve child survivors, we know there is a better and more developmentally appropriate and victim-centered way. Alongside survivors and ally practitioners in the field, we have been developing and advancing laws and policies that are designed to truly serve and safeguard the child, addressing the many layers of trauma and harm suffered, and equipping the survivor with tools for self-empowerment and freedom from both victimization and juvenile or criminal records.

We urge South Dakota, as well as the remaining 19 states that have limited or no protections, to develop and pass legislation that provides an empathetic, JuST response to youth survivors of sex trafficking.

For more information on protective responses for youth survivors and your state’s efforts to develop non-punitive avenues to services and care, please review the recently updated Stop the InJuSTice 2019 Toolkit and the 2019 Protected Innocence Challenge State Report Cards.

[1] The Texas legislature passed House Bill 1771 on May 27^th which removed criminal liability for minors under 17 for prostitution offenses. Despite strong support from the anti-trafficking community, Governor Abbott vetoed the bill, stating his concern for “unintended consequences.”
[2] February 6, 2019 House Judiciary Committee hearing on House Bill 1063.
[3] S.D. Code Ann. § 26-8B-2.
[4] Research is increasingly demonstrating the cyclical effect of juvenile probation and the seemingly inevitable fate of violating its terms due to relentless scrutiny and stringent requirements that run can conflict with behaviors that are an inherent part of healthy adolescent development.

August 7, 2019 by Sarah Bendtsen

How to Make an Ocean Rise – Celebrating Cyntoia Brown’s Release

“Ripples. When you create a difference in someone’s life, you not only impact their life, you impact everyone influenced by them throughout their entire lifetime. No act is ever too small. One by one, that is how to make an ocean rise.” –Danielle Doby, Author

Eight months ago, we learned that Cyntoia Brown, a survivor of child sex trafficking, was

facing a potential turning point in her life story. In 2004, at 16 years old and in the throes of life experiences that no child should have, Cyntoia killed a man who had purchased her for sex. Despite overwhelming evidence of horrific childhood trauma and current exploitation, she was tried as an adult and convicted of murder. Instead of providing protection and services appropriate for Cyntoia’s trafficking victimization, the state handed her a sentence of life in prison.

Almost 15 years into her sentence, and after years of tireless cries for justice by advocates across the country, we learned that Cyntoia’s case was being considered for clemency. And so we turned to you—advocates from all walks of life—to demand justice for Cyntoia. In less than three weeks, 4,590 of you took action, signing a petition to Tennessee Governor Haslam, asking that he use his authority to grant clemency to Cyntoia. We celebrated when, on January 7th, the outgoing Governor Haslam stood on the side of justice and granted clemency to Cyntoia. And we celebrate again as we witness Cyntoia’s long-awaited release from prison today.

We celebrate this moment of justice for a survivor. We celebrate the policy advancements this specific case, and the resulting dialogues have inspired. We celebrate as we anticipate the effect Cyntoia’s case will have on other survivors of sex trafficking who may face unjust responses from the juvenile and criminal justice systems. We celebrate because we see an ocean rising.[easy-tweet tweet=”We celebrate as we anticipate the effect Cyntoia’s case will have on other survivors of sex trafficking who may face unjust responses from the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” user=”SharedHope” hashtags=”SharedHope, StoptheInjustice” url=”https://sharedhope.org/2019/08/07/how-to-make-an-ocean-rise-celebrating-cyntoia-browns-release/” template=”dark”]

When you took action, you impacted Cyntoia’s life. Resultantly, we know Cyntoia will have an extraordinary impact on her community and in this movement. The ripples from your signature, your call, your social media post will continue. Because of that, we know we have arrived at the door of critical and sustainable change.

With both immense admiration for Cyntoia’s strength and gratitude for the relentlessness of fellow advocates from across the county, we remain steadfast in our commitment to pursue justice for all survivors of sex trafficking. We invite you to join along and seek protection, not punishment, for youth who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation. Together, we can make the ocean rise.