Shared Hope International

Leading a worldwide effort to eradicate sexual slavery...one life at a time

  • The Problem
    • What is Sex Trafficking?
    • FAQs
    • Glossary of Terms
  • What We Do
    • Prevent
      • Training
      • Awareness
    • Restore
      • Programs
      • 3rd Party Service Providers
      • Stories of Hope
      • Partners
    • Bring Justice:Institute for Justice & Advocacy
      • Research
      • Report Cards
      • Training
      • Advocacy
  • Resources
    • All Resources
    • Internet Safety
    • Policy Research and Resources
    • Store
  • Take Action
    • Activism
    • Advocate
    • Just Like Me
    • Volunteer
    • Give
  • News&Events
    • Blog & Events
    • Media Center
    • Request a Speaker
    • Host an Event
    • Attend an Event
  • About
    • Our Mission and Values
    • Our Story
    • Financial Accountability
    • 2023 Annual Report
    • Leadership
    • Join Our Team
    • Contact Us
  • Conference
  • Donate
Home>Archives for Commentary

June 15, 2022 by Sidney McCoy

Legislative Update Series: State Juvenile Justice and Access to Services

As Congress heads into Summer Recess and 27 of the 46 states in session in 2022 have adjourned for the calendar year, Shared Hope is doing a legislative update blog series on state and federal laws that have been introduced and enacted with the potential to impact survivors of child and youth sex trafficking. In the first blog we focused on state non-criminalization laws. In this second blog we look at state laws that impact juvenile justice and access to services.

Another priority issue in this year’s state legislative sessions has been juvenile justice. Many children who have been commercially sexually exploited have been involved in the juvenile justice system, either prior to their exploitation or as a result of their victimization. It is critical that juvenile justice agencies, as child serving entities, know how to properly identify victims at risk of child sex trafficking and sexual exploitation and provide access to specialized services to ensure that they avoid harsh punitive measures. A number of states introduced legislation. Notably, Tennessee passed SB1037/HB1100 amends the Code to require the Department of Children’s Services, the Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and other agencies to work together to develop a mechanism to identify and provide services to sexually abused or trafficked children. Additionally, Tennessee legislature passed SB2400/HB2147, which requires the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services to develop screening/assessment tools to evaluate at risk system-involved youth and require distribution to Department of Juvenile Justice for use with justice-involved youth. Additionally, SB2400/HB2147 provides certain protections to child sex trafficking victims in the courts, including raising the age in which minors can use CCTV in a courtroom to testify from 13 years old to 18 years old requiring the juvenile court to consider past trauma or abuse, including trafficking victimization, when deciding of whether to transfer a juvenile to adult court consistent with Shared Hope’s framework. Finally, SB2400/HB2147 provides affirmative defense for minor victims to trafficking charge and provides sentencing mitigation provision based on duress as a trafficking victim

Other notable juvenile justice legislation enacted this year by state legislatures include:

  • California SB827 Repeals provisions that authorize a prosecutor to begin a criminal case against a minor in a criminal court and that would impose an adult sentence for a minor convicted in criminal court and not transferred to juvenile court; authorizes a person who is 19 to 24 years of age to petition for a return to a juvenile facility, to conform with the age of eligibility for a petition to transfer to an adult facility.
  • Maryland HB459/SB691 raises the minimum age a child can be charged in juvenile court to 13, consistent with Shared Hope’s framework and international standards.
  • Nevada AB230 eliminates the mandatory certification of a child as an adult for certain offenses and provides instead for the discretionary certification of a child for criminal proceedings as an adult for all offenses over which the juvenile court has exclusive jurisdiction.
  • New York A8739 increases minimum age for juvenile court jurisdiction to 12 years of age and increases maximum age for juvenile court jurisdiction to include older minors (16 & 17) for certain offenses age for juvenile court jurisdiction.

Access to Services

Ensuring that comprehensive, trauma-informed, individualized services are provided to victims is vital. Without access to services, victims remain at risk of re-exploitation. Shared Hope supports states’ use of multiple entry points for child survivors to receive specialized services, including child welfare, juvenile justice, and non-system involved entry points such as regional navigators or Minnesota’s No Wrong Door model.

A number of states passed legislation that would expand access to services for children and youth survivors of sex trafficking. Tennessee passed sweeping reform, including SB2739/HB2591 which requires the Department of Children’s Services and the Department of Human Services to collaborate to provide recommendations to the General Assembly on resources and services specific to persons from 18 to 24 years of age who have been victims of child sex trafficking. Additionally, Tennessee passed SB2740/HB2592 which requires several states agencies to develop recommendations on the creation of multidisciplinary teams to provide responses specific to child sex trafficking cases and SB2400/HB2147 which requires human trafficking non-profits to sit on child welfare investigation MDTs for all child sex trafficking cases. SB2400/HB2147 also requires child welfare to determine specialized services for child sex trafficking victims and requires Department of Children’s Services to develop policy for serving foreign national child victims.

Other notable juvenile justice bills include Delaware’s HB271 which amends state law to requires the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families to provide transitional services beginning at 16 years old and expands eligibility from under 21 to under 23 years of age which was enacted and Maine’s HP605 which adds child sex trafficking to definition of abuse and removes caregiver barrier for child sex trafficking cases to ensure that victims are able to access services through a child welfare response.

Supporting Resources:

  • JuST Response Council: Protective Response Model

To learn more about state legislation that addresses the needs of sex trafficking victims and to take action in support of this critical issue, please visit Shared Hope’s State Advocacy Action Center.

If you are a lawmaker or advocate seeking to craft strong laws to fight juvenile sex trafficking and wish to speak with Shared Hope’s Policy Team for technical assistance, please visit request a consultation.

 

March 28, 2022 by Shauna Devitt

Walking in the Present: Shared Hope Reflects on Women’s History Month Part 2

By Nancy Winston, Senior Director

For Linda Smith, it all began with a filthy wisp of a girl, bold enough to cling to her skirt as she experienced India’s wretched brothels for the first time. Jolted into suddenly believing what had seemed just too far-fetched—that children were being sold for sex on the streets of Mumbai—the representative from U.S. Congress immediately felt the call to be a champion for those little ones. [Read more…]

March 16, 2022 by Shauna Devitt

Walking Through History: Shared Hope Reflects on Women’s History Month Part 1

By: Shauna Devitt, Senior Communications Manager

In March we celebrate Women’s History Month, a time to commemorate and celebrate women; women in history, women in the workforce, women who are breaking barriers, women working to eradicate sex trafficking. Women like Shared Hope International’s Founder and President, Linda Smith, who has been a pioneer legislator and anti-trafficking advocate, empowering others to join her in the fight to eradicate domestic minor sex trafficking.

[Read more…]

November 1, 2021 by Guest

Pornography and Trafficking: Unpacking the Links

Written by Dr. Gail Dines, a Professor Emerita of Sociology and Women’s Studies

In the 1970s and 80s, feminists argued that prostitution could not be separated from porn, or as Andrea Dworkin so succinctly stated, “porn is prostitution with the camera going.”[i] Over the ensuing decades, however, there have been both theoretical and political attempts to disentangle porn from prostitution, leading to a truncated analysis of both porn and prostitution. In this discussion, I am using the terms “prostitution” and “trafficking” interchangeably because, as Farley writes, “More than 80% of the time, women in the sex industry are under pimp-control, that is what trafficking is.”[ii]

Moreover, “Pornography also meets the legal definition of trafficking if the pornographer recruits, entices, or obtains women for the purpose of photographing live commercial sex acts.”[iii]  Beyond the legal perspective, the linkages between porn and trafficking go much deeper.

To better understand the linkages between porn and trafficking, and how they are similar in some respects (and different in others), the business concept of “value chains” is useful. Value chains refer to the whole range of activities involved in making and selling a product or service, from sourcing components to production, distribution, and consumption. The idea of the value chain is that “value” is added at each stage, though the term “harm chain” is more appropriate for porn and trafficking, because each stage causes harm to women—the sex industry’s “product.” Only the companies and pimps involved make a profit.

The first link in the harm chain is recruitment.[iv] In terms of porn and trafficking, this means grooming and enticing women into the sex industry. Studies show that the recruitment of women into both porn and trafficking relies on the same dynamics. On a macro-level, the most powerful recruiter is a hyper-sexualized porn culture that socializes girls and women to self-objectify and self-sexualize. Yes, it is the culture that grooms girls and women to be pimped into porn and prostitution. As Joanna Angel, a hardcore pornography producer and performer, told Details magazine, “the girls these days, just seem to come to the set porn-ready.”[v] In a similar vein, an incarcerated child-rapist told me in an interview that grooming his ten-year-old step-daughter, whom he later went on to rape, was not difficult because “the culture did lot of the grooming for me.”[vi]

Both the pornographer and the rapist, working from the same “playbook,” recognize and harvest the power of the pornified visual landscape to indoctrinate girls and women into a patriarchal mindset that the only way to be visible— in fact valuable— is to be sexually desired, “hot,” and pornified.

The pimps entice women and girls into the porn industry with promises of becoming a celebrity, with the attendant wealth and visibility this affords. They point to the sex-tapes of celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian that jump-started both women’s climb to fame.

What the pimps fail to point out is that because these women are extremely wealthy celebrities, leaking a sex tape actually amplifies their fame and fortune. If these women were poor and unknown, they’d be saddled with the term “slut” and their lives, as studies have shown, would be upended. And women of color suffer even greater social humiliation and degradation.

The promise of wealth is a powerful form of enticement because the majority of women in the sex industry are poor, and in an ever-growing world of income inequality, have few choices to move up the socio-economic ladder. Women of color are especially at risk of poverty being poor because of the systemic racism that limits access to good schools and job-training programs.

Probably one of the most powerful factors that drives women into the sex industry is, as Donevan argues, childhood sexual abuse. Donevan found this to be “the most common precursor to prostitution, with studies finding that between 60-90% of prostituted persons have been subject to sexualized abuse in childhood.”[vii] Donevan points to a study by Grudzen et al.,[viii] that found that women in porn were three times more likely to have been victims of childhood sexual abuse compared to women who were not in porn.

The “product” of both porn and prostitution is the sexual exploitation of women. The only other industry where the product is the buying and selling of human bodies is slavery, which is why survivors and their allies call the sex industry sexual slavery, not “sex work.”

Men pay for the experience of sexually degrading and debasing a woman, turning her, in their minds, into a “whore” who is deserving of sexual violence. The consumers simultaneously construct, cement, and bolster their sex-class power, as they produce and reproduce women as an oppressed class in the patriarchal relations of production. The monetization of women as “product” is different in porn compared with prostitution, because porn images and videos are mass-marketed and distributed online on an industrial scale through multinational conglomerates such as Mindgeek.[ix]

The chain of harms women suffer in pornography and prostitution have been well documented.[x] Moreover, these harms are not unfortunate “byproducts,” but are central to the value (sexual pleasure) to the user. The more brutal, cruel, and violent the “sex” act, the more the users feel as though they got their money’s worth. Reading the Adult DVD Talk forum, a website where porn users discuss their favorite scenes, makes clear just how much users are indeed on the lookout for scenes where the woman is suffering real pain. A popular thread—called Painful Anal—has numerous posts where fans list their favorite scenes and discuss at great length their enjoyment at watching the woman cry, scream, or show fear.

Once in the revolving door of the sex-industry, the women often end up even poorer than when they started. Lack of health care benefits means that women have to pay out of pocket for treating STIs, bodily injury, and PTSD. The now-shuttered Adult Industry Medical Health Care Association, which was the Los Angeles-based voluntary organization in charge of testing porn performers, had a list on their website of possible injuries and diseases to which porn performers were prone. These included HIV; rectal and throat gonorrhea; tearing of the throat, vagina, and anus; and chlamydia of the eye. Not your everyday workplace ailments, unless, of course, you are being prostituted, on or off camera.

The distribution end of the harm chain for pornography used to look very different from prostitution. The former requires an ecosystem of websites producers, directors, filmmakers, webmasters, web-based payment systems, and distribution networks. Prostitution, on the other hand, was typically a more low-tech and leaner value chain, in which production and consumption were two aspects of the same sexual act— the buying and selling of women.

However, pornography and prostitution are becoming even more inseparable today with the growing popularity of sex camming, where (mostly) women livestream sex acts for men who pay for private shows.[xi] One of the most popular sex-camming sites is Chaturbate, with an estimated 18.5 million unique visitors, just in the US, and has an Alexa rank of 21. Chaturbate, like the other sex-camming platforms, plays the role of pimp by taking 50% of the women’s earnings. It also has a “referral” system where affiliates receive $50 per “model” who signs up via the affiliate site, thus expanding the chain of pimps.

The concept of harm chains is generally used to suggest how harms from making and distributing products such as clothes and coffee can be reduced or minimized. None of these suggestions on how to reduce harm apply to the sex industry. The very nature of this industry is to create harm on the micro level–to the women’s and girls’ bodies–and on the macro level, the normalization, glorification and monetization of sexual violence. The sex industry inherently and irredeemably reinforces a culture and economy that victimizes and subordinates women and girls as a sex-class. The only way to stop the harm chain is to close down the sex industry. Only this will enable women and girls to live a full life in which their civil and human rights are fully valued.

 

Dr. Gail Dines, a Professor Emerita of Sociology and Women’s Studies, is President of Culture Reframed, a research-driven non-profit dedicated to building resilience and resistance in young people to porn culture. She is the author of Pornland: How porn has Hijacked our Sexuality, (Beacon Press), which has been translated into five languages, Her TEDx talk can be seen here.

 

[i] Speech given by Andrea Dworkin at the “Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism” Conference, NYC, April 6th, 1987

[ii] Farley, Melissa & Donevan, Meghan (in press, 2021).

Reconnecting Pornography, Prostitution, and Trafficking: ‘The experience of being in porn was like being destroyed, run over, again and again’

Atlánticas, an International Journal of Feminist Studies, 6 (2)

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] For a more extended discussion of recruitment into the sex industry see Donevan, M. (2021). “In This Industry, You’re No Longer Human”: An Exploratory Study of Women’s Experiences in Pornography Production in Sweden. Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence, 6(3), 1.

[v] Details Magazine, February, 2010.

[vi] For a more detailed discussion, see Dines, G. (2010). Pornland: How porn has hijacked our sexuality. Beacon Press. Chapter Six: Visible or Invisible: Growing up Female in a Porn Culture

[vii] Donevan, ibid.

[viii] Grudzen, C. R., Meeker, D., Torres, J. M., Du, Q., Morrison, R. S., Andersen, R. M., & Gelberg, L. (2011). Comparison of the mental health of female adult film performers and other young women in California. Psychiatric Services, 62(6), 639-645.

[ix] For further discussion of MindGeek see Dines, G, “There is no such thing as IT”: Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry. In Brunskell-Evans, H. (Ed.). (2017). The Sexualized Body and the Medical Authority of Pornography: Performing Sexual Liberation. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

[x] See, for example, Moran, R. (2015). Paid for: My journey through prostitution. WW Norton & Company.

[xi] https://nordicmodelnow.org/2020/10/24/3-dangerous-myths-about-webcamming-debunked/

June 28, 2021 by Jo Lembo

The Choice

Written by Pastor Nick and Jo Lembo

A question asked by many Christians who care deeply about others, especially for the vulnerable and the oppressed is, “Why doesn’t God stop evil people who hurt children?”

It seems there is a conflict between what we believe about our loving God (who knows us personally and gave His only Son to die so that we could have eternal life) and one who appears to be a passive all-powerful God who doesn’t step in, as if he does not care about what is happening to humans on this earth.  Why would Jesus need to be “interceding at the right hand of the Father” if it’s God’s job to stop all evil on the earth? (Romans 8:34)

God’s ultimate goal is to be our Father and Friend, and through this relationship allow us to partner with Him in overseeing our home, planet earth. That is the plan He began in Genesis, and it is what Christ restored at the cross. If God had wanted more creatures just to serve Him, He could’ve made a billion more angels. His first desire is for family, as He created us in His image and likeness, and breathed His very Spirit and nature into us.

“I’ve given you everything to enjoy, but I ask you this one thing: Please don’t eat of this tree.”
Genesis 2:16-17

The answer to the question lies in the Garden where the first man and women were breathed into life by the eternal, loving God who wanted to have a creation to know Him and love Him back. He gave them an entire Garden to love and enjoy, and gave them one choice to show their love and appreciation back to Him. “I’ve given you everything to enjoy, but I ask you this one thing: Please don’t eat of this tree.” You know the rest of the story.  Humans chose to disregard God’s heartfelt request, and they chose their own way.  Humans chose to eat of tree of the knowledge of good and evil, rather than eating of every other tree that was given to them out of God’s heart of love.  So they had to leave the Garden, or they would have lived forever and continued to sin without ever having a way back to relationship with God.

But God immediately stepped in with hope for them when He said, “Because the serpent has bruised your heel, you will toil to bring fruit from the earth, you will have pain in childbirth, but the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head.” God then clothed them in animal skins to replace their own fig leaves because now they had shame where before they had never known they were naked.  (A picture of how He would institute sheep and goat as sacrifices foreshadowing how His only Son would die for all of mankind) Now they knew good and evil whereas before they walked and talked with God every day in the Garden, and shared His heart and love, and fully trusted in Him alone.  Remember, before the fall, this was done out of their own free will, choosing to be with Him, and thus fulfilling His heart desire in His creation, and reaping a life of pure peace.

The Passion Translation – Romans 1 explains what happened as a result:

21 “Throughout human history the fingerprints of God were upon them, yet they refused to honor him as God or even be thankful for his kindness. Instead, they entertained corrupt and foolish thoughts about what God was like. This left them with nothing but misguided hearts, steeped in moral darkness.
28 And because they thought it was worthless to embrace the true knowledge of God, God gave them over to a worthless mind-set, to break all rules of proper conduct.” Romans 1:21, 28

The Bible is full of promises that show us how to find our way back to Him: to choose Him again, by giving up our own selfish desires, and becoming like Jesus, who gave up His life so that we might live forever with Him. The beauty of it is, it is always our choice.  If God takes away humankind’s choice by intervening when others choose evil, then He is also taking away our choice to choose Him. His promise is to always be with us even through our own bad choices, and to walk with us through the hardships of the choices of a fallen and cursed world, where human beings choose to do unspeakably hurtful things to others.

This gives us the chance to choose Him every day where He restores, heals, cleanses, gives new life and new mercy every day.  In that, His miraculous nature is demonstrated through us.  This causes others to see His love and goodness and choose Him too.

 

  • < Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • …
  • 13
  • Next Page >
  • What We Do
  • Newsletter Signup
  • Take Action
  • Donate
Shared Hope International
Charity Navigator Four-Star Rating

STORE | WEBINARS | REPORTCARDS | JuST CONFERENCE
 
Donate

1-866-437-5433
Facebook X Instagram YouTube Linkedin

Models Used to Protect Identities.

Copyright © 2025 Shared Hope International      |     P.O. Box 1907 Vancouver, WA 98668-1907     |     1-866-437-5433     |     Privacy Policy   |   Terms of Service

Manage your privacy
SHARED HOPE INTERNATIONAL DOES NOT SELL YOUR DATA. To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Manage options
{title} {title} {title}
Shared Hope InternationalLogo Header Menu
  • The Problem
    • What is Sex Trafficking?
    • FAQs
    • Glossary of Terms
  • What We Do
    • Prevent
      • Training
      • Awareness
    • Restore
      • Programs
      • 3rd Party Service Providers
      • Stories of Hope
      • Partners
    • Bring Justice:Institute for Justice & Advocacy
      • Research
      • Report Cards
      • Training
      • Advocacy
  • Resources
    • All Resources
    • Internet Safety
    • Policy Research and Resources
    • Store
  • Take Action
    • Activism
    • Advocate
    • Just Like Me
    • Volunteer
    • Give
  • News&Events
    • Blog & Events
    • Media Center
    • Request a Speaker
    • Host an Event
    • Attend an Event
  • About
    • Our Mission and Values
    • Our Story
    • Financial Accountability
    • 2023 Annual Report
    • Leadership
    • Join Our Team
    • Contact Us
  • Conference
  • Donate