schools Archives - Shared Hope International

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.

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.