Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Archives - Page 6 of 6

February 19, 2010 by SHI Staff

Why does the exchange of money for sex with a child convert a child rapist into a “john”?

A sex offender is a person convicted of a sexual offense, such as rape, sexual assault, or lewdness. Our society treats sex offenders as criminals. We try them in court, and if convicted, sex offenders serve prison time. Once released, they are required to register with the authorities as a sex offender. Megan’s Law, passed in 1996, requires each state to have a way of notifying the public so most states maintain registries, easily available online. It’s easy to find out where sex offenders live, what they look like, and what sex crime they committed. We do this because sex offenders present a threat to children and we want parents to be aware of any threats to their child.

However, there is a group of people you won’t find listed in registries of sex offenders — the buyers (generally men) of sex with prostituted children. These “johns” are rarely listed in sex offender registries because they are rarely arrested or charged when caught having sex with a prostituted child and, if arrested for soliciting prostitution, law enforcement do not identify the victim as a minor.

Sex offenders face hefty fines and/or prison time, but buyers of prostituted children are rarely charged. The few that are arrested often escape punishment; the few who are arrested get off with misdemeanors, light fines and suspended sentences. A large majority of the men arrested in a sting operation in Chesterfield, Virgina last year were given $100 fines and 30-day suspended jail sentences. Some states also allow charges to be dropped if first-time offenders attend “johns’ school”, where law enforcement officials and prostituted women seek to “educate” them as way to change their behavior. “Johns’ schools” are never appropriate for the buyer of sex with a child – this is child rape and should be prosecuted as a serious felony.

Even more disturbing – law enforcement are more likely to arrest a minor on prostitution charges and let the buyer go free. One situation highlighted in the National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking is particularly revealing. Police in Las Vegas approached a parked truck after observing it pick up a girl. The police report reflects that the 50-year-old man was observed with $45 in cash hanging from his pocket and lotion on his hands. The 12-year-old girl stated that he was paying her for a sex act. The police arrested the girl for prostitution and sent the man on his way.

We have full databases of names, faces and addresses for sexual predators in our neighborhoods, but we turn a blind eye to the people who walk among us who are paying to have sex with children. Why the difference?

As a society, we’ve placed a priority on protecting children from sex offenders and predators in our neighborhoods. Yet we haven’t placed the same priority on protecting or helping prostituted children who are being coerced, recruited and forced into the sex trade. We need to start arresting the buyer and treating him as a sex offender and start rescuing the prostituted child and treating her as the victim. Without proper law enforcement, demand for prostituted children will continue to exist.

Protecting our children is a high priority for every state – adding the names of those who buy sex from a child is an important step in protecting all children from exploitation.

February 12, 2010 by SHI Staff

Breaking the Silence against Child Sex Trafficking in America

There was a time when “domestic violence” didn’t exist. Merely forty years ago, society was silent when women were violated in the home; yet today, domestic violence is strongly prohibited, and programs and funding are in place to prosecute the abuser and protect and support the survivors.

Today we struggle with the problem of domestic minor sex trafficking – the exploitation of America’s children through prostitution, pornography and sexual entertainment. Prostituted children are raped multiple times an evening and held under physical and emotional threats from their trafficker — yet they aren’t given the sympathetic treatment that victims of domestic violence receive, even though their situations hold striking resemblances. How can the anti-trafficking movement learn from the success of the anti-domestic violence movement and shorten the time of success from forty years to…less?

In the anti-domestic violence movement women held the key in unveiling domestic violence by talking within their communities, opening shelters and pressing for laws that protect victims, charge abusers, and fund support programs for victims. Ordinary women in communities, at the grassroots level, raised funds and opened shelters. The very first shelter, Women’s Advocates in St. Paul, was opened in 1974 by a group of women who started responding to domestic violence by setting up a hotline and then quickly realized that what women and children needed most was a safe place so they could leave their situation of abuse. They funded the country’s first domestic violence shelter by sending letters to friends and family members, and by applying for every government funding program they could find.

Women led in lobbying for tougher laws and government funding. In doing so, they changed the way we as a society understand and approach domestic violence by giving voice to the problem and tackling the stigma and the silence directly. We now live in a time where acts of domestic violence are automatically recognized as crimes, and victims have support through laws, legal enforcement and government funding.

Today’s “battered wife” is the prostituted child. Victimized and stigmatized into silence and not aware of any place to escape, shelter or redress, these American children of domestic minor sex trafficking are left on the streets, repeatedly victimized and then identified as the cause of the problem of prostitution instead of the victim.

Experts estimate that at least 100,000 American juveniles are victimized through prostitution in America each year. In America, the average age for a child to be lured by a trafficker (pimp) into commercial sexual exploitation is just 13 years old. Once this child falls into the situation of prostitution, it becomes incredibly difficult for her to escape. She is financially dependent on the pimp, and like a victim of domestic violence, it is dangerous for her to try to leave. The hotlines with information, safe shelters to escape, strong laws and legal enforcement to protect them, and funding to support their survival and healing which allowed the battered woman to escape are critical also for the prostituted. These do not currently exist in the number required for a meaningful response to the crime of domestic minor sex trafficking.

The anti-trafficking movement can succeed in fighting the exploitation of children by taking a lesson from the movement to end domestic violence: increase support for the organizations that are raising awareness, setting up shelters, and advocating for tougher laws and government funding, and engage the community networks fully to be the safety net that is so badly needed by those children who are at-risk for trafficking or who have already become victims of this crime. Changing perceptions at the community level will affect the priorities of our leaders.

January 7, 2010 by SHI Staff

What’s Wrong with Calling a Child a Prostitute?

Although the media will tell you otherwise, child prostitutes do not exist in America. However, prostituted children DO exist. The difference? A child cannot be a prostitute because she/he is a victim of commercial sexual exploitation and the federal law defines this child as a victim of sex trafficking. The difference in language is critical if we are to make progress in national efforts to rescue and restore child victims of sex trafficking.

Shared Hope International (SHI) recently published The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children which compiled more than four years of research into the problem of child sex trafficking in America, done with support from the U.S. Department of Justice. The problem of incorrect and damaging labels being applied to child victims of sex trafficking presented itself as a primary barrier to the identification, rescue and proper treatment of these children.

First, it is important to recognize that prostitution is illegal in the United States (except for select counties in Nevada where adults can legally sell sex in licensed venues). Even countries which have legalized prostitution make it a crime to control someone in prostitution (pimping). The United States Congress specifically made it a federal crime to transport juveniles with the intent to engage them in criminal sexual activity one hundred years ago with the passage of the Mann Act (White Slavery Act). The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) reinforced this position by clearly defining severe forms of trafficking to include the use of a child under 18 years of age in a commercial sex act.

The term “child prostitute” implicates the child in the criminal activity of prostitution and contradicts the well-established history in America of acting in the best interest of the child. The term denies the child the legal status of victim of a violent crime, thereby creating a barrier to accessing statutorily mandated victim compensation and services. Stripped of the status of a true victim, the child is seldom if ever afforded appropriate treatment and rehabilitation.

In America, the average age for a child to be recruited by a trafficker (pimp) into commercial sexual exploitation is just 13 years old.

It begs the questions: What is a child doing on the street? And, how does she get there? These children are predominantly girls. They have usually encountered a variety of abusive experiences which increase their risk of vulnerability to a trafficker’s tactical deception. A comprehensive study of 104 juvenile victims of sex trafficking in Clark County, Nevada revealed that 82 percent were runaways, 47 percent were rape victims, and 89 percent used narcotics.

Consider the following situation of a child sex trafficking victim – is this a “child prostitute” or a “prostituted child?”

She is first molested by her mother’s boyfriend at the age of five. With a steady stream of abusive characters in and out of her life, a house full of drug dealing and using, she is befriended by an older man at 12 years old who promises to care for her and give her a life far safer than her own. Young, vulnerable and eager to be loved, she accepts. However, the promises aren’t fulfilled. She is forced to stand on the streets, scantily clad in the early hours of the morning…approaching strangers and forced to sell her body for sex, hand jobs, acts that seem completely foreign to her. Forced to fulfill a quota of $1000, she services up to twenty men a night – handing every penny to the pimp to avoid being beaten. She is arrested time and time over and misunderstands her innocence when she is constantly labeled a prostitute by law enforcement. She misunderstands her relationship with her pimp, whom she protects from law enforcement because she believes she is ‘loved’ by him. She misses her 14^th and 15^th birthdays. By the time she is 16, she can’t imagine a life any different. She claims ownership over her job because, well, she doesn’t see a way to escape and she’s beginning to think it’s the only thing she’ll ever be good at doing.

How can these victimized girls call out for help if they don’t even realize their right to be rescued? When law enforcement arrests the prostituted child as a child prostitute, when social service providers call her a prostitute or promiscuous, when her trafficker rewires her mind to make her believe that this life is all she is worthy of, how can we help our girls realize otherwise? The key to rescuing and restoring our American girls is to label them appropriately as prostituted children.

From the media to law enforcement and members of the community, we all have a part to play in the proper identification and response to America’s prostituted children. Terminology that accurately depicts these children as victims will lead to their identification by first responders as victims of domestic minor sex trafficking – prostituted children. SHI research has found that domestic minor sex trafficking victims more readily disclose information about their exploitation when they are addressed as survivors. Furthermore, having a single label for the crime allows multiple agencies, communities, and regions to effectively track, research, and intervene in a single coordinated effort.

A prostituted child deserves freedom from commercial sexual exploitation. A first step we can take in moving this liberation forward is to change perception through a careful use of the label we are applying to the victim. Each one of these enslaved children is a prostituted child.

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