Institute for
Justice & Advocacy

It is imperative that all children who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation are rightfully identified as victims of child sex trafficking. This legal designation enables a child’s ability to access protections, services, and justice that are specifically designed for impacted young people. To support proper identification, the core child sex trafficking law should include all children with experiences of commercial sex, including those exploited by a buyer, regardless of whether the child has, or identifies, a trafficker.

Children who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation are not prostitution offenders; contrarily, all children with experiences of commercial sex are victims of sex trafficking and should be identified and responded to as such. State prostitution statutes should be clearly inapplicable to persons under 18 years of age, regardless of whether trafficking victimization is formally alleged or established.

To ensure that survivors of child sex trafficking are immune from liability for crimes related to their victimization, state non-criminalization laws should encompass offenses beyond prostitution, including juvenile status offenses, misdemeanors, and felony offenses. These protections should be available to child victims who are alleged to have committed such offenses due to compelled, forced, or coerced criminality, as well as crimes committed out of survival, so long as a nexus between the offense and trafficking victimization is established. Doing so accounts for the actual dynamics of trafficking, the nature and extent of control exerted by sex traffickers, and the influence of trauma on the decision-making processes and behaviors of sex trafficking survivors.

All minors should be afforded the child-centered, rehabilitative approaches unique to the juvenile justice system. Children who have experienced trafficking victimization face disproportionately higher rates of juvenile justice involvement, including for offenses related to their exploitation. Yet their victimization may be overlooked or misidentified—particularly for children who may not recognize their own victimization and/or whose victimization goes unrecognized by others. As such, ensuring that child-centered responses are broadly available to all justice-involved youth provides critical protections to those who have experienced exploitation.

It is imperative that survivors who are unjustly criminalized whether due to the absence of robust non-criminalization laws or the systems’ failure to recognize victimization—have the opportunity to present evidence of their trafficking experience during sentencing. As such, state law should allow courts to depart from statutory mandatory minimum sentences when there is evidence of trafficking victimization, past trauma, or based on the young person’s age.

Survivors who are unjustly criminalized due to coerced, compelled, or forced criminality, criminality reflecting survival, or the consequences of trauma and victimization should have the opportunity to seek relief from continued incarceration. Specifically, state resentencing processes should provide criminalized survivors with an additional chance to have trafficking- or trauma-related factors influencing their involvement in criminal offenses re-considered. Additionally, state law should remove or limit offense-based and procedural barriers that could prevent survivors from accessing this critical form of relief.

Trafficking victims are commonly compelled to commit criminal offenses. Beyond the immediate harms caused by criminalization, related convictions create significant barriers to short- and long-term success and wellbeing, including, but not limited to, the ability to obtain stable and accessible housing, meaningful and safe employment, and educational opportunities. To prevent ongoing discrimination and harm, state law should allow children and youth who have experienced exploitation to seek vacatur relief for convictions tied to their trafficking victimization.

Survivors of child sex trafficking often have complex needs that cannot be addressed by a single agency or service provider. It is important that child sex trafficking victims not only receive a broad array of treatment but also that treatment is specialized to the unique trauma associated with commercial sexual exploitation. Further, these services should be provided through a number of entry points, including those that do not require involvement in child-serving systems, such as child welfare or juvenile justice. As such, the process for coordinating access to community-based services should be established statutorily to ensure consistent, ongoing, comprehensive, statewide access to services for all impacted children and youth.

Over the years, state legislatures have made significant changes to state laws addressing care and protection for child sex trafficking victims. However, such advancements cannot be fully implemented without adequate funding; as such, states’ legislatures should make appropriations to specifically support specialized CSEC services and a continuum of care through community-based services or non-governmental organizations.

Crime victim compensation (CVC) is a valuable tool for receiving support to offset the financial impact experienced by crime victims, including costs associated with receiving physical and mental health care or lost income. However, many states’ CVC laws prohibit or reduce financial awards based upon a number of factors, including, but not limited to, the timeliness of a victim’s report to law enforcement and cooperation in a related investigation, the victim’s contributory fault, and CVC filing deadlines. However, these factors are incompatible with the realities of trafficking victimization. To ensure CSE minors have access to critical financial support to increase stabilization and healing, CVC laws should provide specific exceptions to all ineligibility factors for victims of sex trafficking and CSEC.