csec Archives - Shared Hope International

August 29, 2013 by SHI Staff

School’s In Session (Part 2 of Keeping Watch Over Schools)

Kids are heading back to school and jumping into another year of learning. Let’s make sure that they are learning about how to stay safe within the school system as well.

This second post of a two part blog presents ideas for how you can prepare yourself, students, and their schools to fight sex trafficking.

Yellow buses are populating the streets again as children and teens are starting a new school year. Let’s make sure that they, their schools, and you are all armed and ready to defend against sex trafficking. Below are three action steps that lead to a lesson plan for prevention, rescue, and restoration.

Educate yourself: You are already on the right track here. You are reading this blog. Chances are you have explored Shared Hope’s website to learn more about sex trafficking in the United States and around the world. If you have not, then we encourage you to do so. There are plenty of resources to answer your questions on sex trafficking. Shared Hope also has a YouTube channel and a Vimeo channel that feature news clips, our DEMAND. Documentary, and much more. Shared Hope would also like to invite you to attend Sharing the Hope. This event will feature three riveting days of education and celebration. There you will learn from the nation’s top leaders on how you can take action to fight sex trafficking and save one life at a time.

Educate students: The previous blog urged you to talk to children and teens. You can find tips on how to talk to them about sexual abuse here. And, as was suggested before, you can use Chosen to open the door to discussions on sex trafficking. Young people will be impacted by the stories told in the documentary by two teenage girls who escaped the snares of commercial sexual exploitation. When you order Chosen, guides, discussion questions, and action ideas are included in your purchase. You can use these tools to organize a viewing in your church, community center, or even at your local middle school or high school. For those kids that are not yet pre-teens, be sure to broach the subject in an age appropriate manner. And do not forget to talk about solutions! If all we talk about is the darkness, then it can leave young people afraid and overwhelmed. Give them hope.

Educate teachers: The first line of defense against trafficking and sexual abuse is so often the educators, school staff, and volunteers that interact with children on nearly a daily basis. If your local district does not have a program in place that teaches these individuals how to spot and respond to signs of sex trafficking, then push for one. The Department of Education has recognized the need for school employees to be aware of this issue. They created this fact sheet to provide an overview of what trafficking is, how to identify potential victims, and what to do.

It takes an entire community to tackle this issue, to protect our children and teens from traffickers. We all need to work together to continue to save these precious lives.

August 27, 2013 by SHI Staff

Keeping Watch Over Schools

Kids are heading back to school and jumping into another year of learning. Let’s make sure that they are learning about how to stay safe within the school system as well. This first of a two part blog discusses the connection between sexual abuse and sex trafficking.

It is difficult to imagine someone with whom children are trusted everyday could possibly abuse that trust. Unfortunately, it does happen. In our school systems there are those that use their position to get close to children in order to sexually abuse them. In some cases, this goes beyond sexual abuse and into trafficking.

We see more cases of a school employee sexually abusing a child than we see of a school employee trafficking one. However, a childhood history of sexual abuse leaves a minor more vulnerable to sex trafficking, which multiple studies have confirmed. “For example, a study of 106 adult women in Boston who were incarcerated for prostitution-related offenses or had ever been arrested for prostitution-related offenses found that 68 percent of the women reported having been sexually abused before the age of 10 and almost half reported being raped before the age of 10 (Norton-Hawk, 2002)” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Human Trafficking Into and Within the United States: A Review of the Literature, 2009).

Some school employees have also had a hand in trafficking minors. For example, in June of this year a New York trafficking survivor came forward and shared her story. Brianna was nine years old when her school janitor kidnapped her, raped her, and then sold her to a pimp. Eventually she escaped, only to fall into the hands of another pimp. She was arrested at 13 for prostitution and made to testify against her pimp. ““This man who owned me as a slave, who sold me to child rapists, who profited off of my body deserves to be punished more harshly,” Brianna said. There was also a California case this year in which a Moreno Valley school board member attempted to recruit two underage girls to become a part of the prostitution ring he ran out of his home. During the course of his trial it was revealed that in addition to the three women he was already prostituting, he attempted to draw in two minors.

So what can you do in this situation? Talk to children and teens! You can use Chosen as a tool to open the door to conversation and to make them aware of the dangers of sex trafficking. Shared Hope created this documentary, which tells the story of two teenage girls who were tricked into trafficking.

Teach students about appropriate and inappropriate interaction with school employees. Show them that you are open to listening to them if they feel unsafe around or have been abused by someone in the school system. People generally believe that school employees are often falsely accused of sexual abuse. “In a 1991 review of false or mistaken accusations of sexual abuse, Yates concludes that the majority of false accusations occur in custody cases and that in other circumstances, the incidence of false accusations appears rare” (U.S. Department of Education, Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature, 2004). Victims of sexual abuse need to know that they will be heard because so often an abuser will tell them that no one would believe them if they say anything. We have to remain vigilant to ensure that they understand that they will be protected and defended.

In the next blog, you will learn more about the steps you can take to protect children and teens in schools.

July 24, 2012 by Guest

ESPN Supports Domestic Child Sex Trafficking? Village Voice Media Makes Sports Channel a Culprit

Do you watch ESPN? Great channel, right? Did you also know that ESPN is inadvertently supporting the sex trade of American children? ESPN Inc. advertises through Village Voice Media – who in turn advertises American children on their classified escorts site Backpage.com.

Shared Hope International has documented over 200 children who have been sold for sex on Backpage.com in the United States, most victimized in the last 3 years. Shared Hope believes that just one trafficked child is enough reason to act. However, Village Voice Media, the parent-company of Backpage.com, has taken no responsibility for the victimized children and refuses to shut down their escorts’ site to deter the growing number of victims. Also, Village Voice Media is projected to make $26 million this year from their online escort section alone.

Multiple states are trying to take action to protect children from being exploited through online classified sites like Backpage.com’s adult section through legislative action but currently the company is claiming protection under the 1^st Amendment and the Communications Decency Act of 1996 which states that a business is not liable for third-party content. Nonetheless, 51 Attorneys General, 19 U.S Senators, 2000 multi-faith religious leaders, 53 leading anti-trafficking experts and organizations and over 250,000 people have stood up and demanded that Village Voice Media shuts down Backpage.com’s escort section. And it is definitely time for Village Voice Media to listen to them.

At this point, Village Voice has proven that they are uninterested in losing revenue made off the commercial exploitation of our children; therefore it is time for Americans to rise up in defense of our children being sold on Backpage.com.

ESPN is one of 40 companies which U.S. Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Richard Blumenthal (D- Conn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) wrote a letter in April 2012 asking them to withdraw their advertising from Village Voice Media. Multiple companies including Starbucks, T-Mobile and AT&T removed advertisement from Village Voice newspapers because they did not want to be associated with domestic child sex trafficking.

As a consumer you have a great deal of power, so it is up to you to harness that power for the protection of children from sex slavery and sex trafficking. Inform these companies that you want domestic child sex trafficking eradicated and for that to happen, they must stop advertising with Village Voice Media. If they don’t, you will be forced to remove your economic support from their company.

Businesses identified by the Groundswell Campaign who continue to support child sex trafficking by advertising with Village Voice Media:

2929 Entertainment
American Apparel, Inc.
American Automobile Association
Android
Angelika Film Center
Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc.
Arizona Diamondbacks
Atlantic Broadband
Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau
Bacardi USA, Inc.
Blick Art Materials
Blue Man Productions, Inc.
Brooklyn Museum
Buffalo Wild Wings
Cancer Fund of America, Inc.
Champs Sports
Charter Communications
Cirque du Soleil
Clear Channel Communications, Inc.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY – New York State Psychiatric Institute
CraftWorks Restaurants and Breweries, Inc.
Dave and Busters
Denver Botanic Gardens, Inc.
Diageo PLC
Disney
ESPN, Inc.
Focus Features (Moonrise Kingdom)
Foot Locker, Inc.
Foursquare
Guitar Center
H.D. Buttercup
Hard Rock Café
Harrah’s Resorts
HOOTERS
Houston Symphony
Hyatt Hotels Corporation
Icelandair
J&R
JR Electronics
KCRW
LA Philharmonic
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
Landmark Theatres
Lincoln Center Theater
Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation
Lululemon
Marriott International, Inc
Mayo Clinic
Mesa Arts Center
MetroPCS
MGM Resorts International
Mike’s Hard Lemonade Co.
Miller Light
Minnesota Orchestra
Minnesota Wild
Monsanto
MOUNT SINAI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE – Mood and Personality Disorders Research Program Department of Psychiatry
MTV2
New Belgium Brewing Company, Inc.
P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, Inc.
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.
St. Louis Rams
The Bowery Presents
The Salvation Army
Ticketfly
Total Bank
Toyota Motor Corporation
United Way Worldwide
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Denver
Veo optics
Walt Disney Pictures
Warner Brothers Entertainment
Whole Foods
YWCA of Minneapolis
YWCA Twin Cities
Zagat

“How many kids need to be exploited before they [Backpage.com] change their business model?” – Ernie Allen, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

November 17, 2011 by SHI Staff

Part 4: Hotels, Planes, and Taxis, Oh My! The efforts to stop facilitating child sex trafficking

The fourth component of the Protected Innocence Initiative is “Criminal Provisions for Facilitators.” Hotels are perhaps one of the most well recognized facilitators in the sex trafficking industry. At hotels young children are taken by their traffickers and sold to dozens of men a night. Airlines and taxis also act as facilitators in the sex trafficking industry.

Through the Protected Innocence Initiative, Shared Hope is providing recommendations on how to strengthen state laws to adequately penalize and criminalize the facilitation of child sex trafficking. These measures include criminalizing the facilitation of trafficking through the state human trafficking law and making the promotion of child sex tourism illegal.

Recognizing the critical role facilitators play in the exploitation of children, some hotels and airlines have taken it upon themselves to no longer act as facilitators in the child sex trade. Here are some of the positive steps hotels and airlines have taken in order to stop child sex trafficking.

Airlines are often used by traffickers to transport their victims to domestic and international locations. Carol Smolenski, U.S. Director of End Child Prostitution, Child Prostitution, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT), says that sex tourists fall into two categories “preferential child abusers” or “situational child abusers.” “Preferential abusers” have a preference for having sex with children, while “situational abusers” may not be particularly interested in children, but may try having sex with them to try something new, particularly while abroad. Smolenski believes that the second group may be educated through public awareness campaigns to change their behavior. For instance, in order to discourage child sex trafficking, Air-France runs in-flight videos against child sex tourism. These videos are played on 94 of the airline’s long-distance flights and are viewed by up to 46,000 passengers a day. Ten other airlines have also used the video, though currently no United State’s airlines have agreed to show videos discouraging child sex tourism on their flights.

U.S. airlines have taken a stand to fight child sex trafficking through the “Flight Attendant Initiative” which was designed by Innocence at Risk. The “Flight Attendant Initiative” requires airline personal to be educated on recognizing and reporting human trafficking on flights. Flight attendants also wear wristbands with the National Human Trafficking Hotline (1-888-373-7888) so they can report suspicious activity from the air. So far, one third of American Airlines’ 19,000 flight attendants received the training. It is expected the program will soon expand to other airlines.

A second industry that has taken a stand against child sex trafficking is the hotel industry. ECPAT released a document entitled “The Code” that hotels and travel agencies may sign to show they are working to combat child trafficking. Since it’s inception in 1998, 1,030 companies have signed the ECPAT Code of Conduct to combat child sex trafficking, though only six American companies have signed.

These efforts, combined with stronger state penalties for those individuals and organizations that facilitate the sale of children, will help end child sex trafficking. To find out the level of your state’s legal response to facilitators, join us on December 1 when we release all 51 state Report Cards at the National Association of Attorneys General winter meeting in San Antonio, Texas. We hope you’ll tune in the rest of the week for more information on the initiative.

October 23, 2011 by SHI Staff

Part 1: Victims or perpetrators: Who goes free in the “Land of the Free”

The words “human trafficking” often conjure images of dark, grungy alleys in countries such as India and Thailand. Though awareness is growing, the 100,000-300,000children that officials estimate are forced into prostitution each year are often not regarded as trafficking victims, though legally defined as such by the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), because the laws in some states fail to specifically criminalize domestic minor sex trafficking.

That is why Shared Hope International launched the Protected Innocence Initiative. The Protected Innocence Initiative is the first proactive study to effectively combat domestic minor sex trafficking by analyzing and grading six areas of law within every state’s legal framework. The first area of analysis under the Protected Innocence Legislative Framework is criminalization of domestic minor sex trafficking. Under this component, we are analyzing and grading every state’s law on it ability to specifically criminalize domestic minor sex trafficking and define minors used in commercial sexual exploitation or prostitution as human trafficking victims. Click here to learn more about this component.

One young girl, Kelly, spoke out about her sex trafficking experience in Virginia saying, “I carried around guilt that I thought I was a prostitute. I thought that I had made the decision. I didn’t really understand that someone had taken advantage of me and manipulated me.” Kelly was forced into the sex industry by a pimp after she ran away from home. However, despite being trafficked at a young age and finally seeking help, Kelly’s pimp could not be charged with sex trafficking of a minor because the state does not currently have any law directly criminalizing domestic minor sex trafficking.

Stories like Kelly’s have become all too common in today’s society. Through the Protected Innocence Initiative, Shared Hope International seeks to help victims like Kelly by making sure the laws properly criminalize domestic minor sex trafficking.

In order to truly make a difference, American’s must realize that sex trafficking is not some far off phenomenon, but a reality within our own borders. Sex trafficking happens within every state and every city. To combat this, each state must work to strengthen or create legislation to criminalize domestic minor sex trafficking. It is only through these efforts that one day America will escape the horrors of modern day slavery and be able and call itself “The Land of the Free.”