Commercially Sexually Exploited Children

Kate Walker Brown, an attorney at the National Youth Law Center (NCYL), has been recognized by the California Department of Social Services (DSS) with an award for her leadership in improving services and supports for commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC). 

As California seeks to better address the needs of commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) in its child welfare system, providers in the state should be increasingly tailoring their services with a harm reduction approach.

As new reforms change the way group homes in the state operate, the struggles of a facility that aims to help sexually exploited children in the Bay Area illustrates the uncertain future of services for the vulnerable group.

According to research released in January, the nine states that enacted safe harbor laws by 2012 were found to lack adequate funding for services necessary to aid commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC).

On February 18, the Child Sex Trafficking Subcommittee of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s Task Force on Anti-Human Trafficking discussed the county’s plan to serve commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) under a new program launched by the state.

New funding is raising the profile of commercially sexually exploited children, and hopes that California can do a better job to protect them. A recent infusion of funding from both the state and federal government, as well as a push from Governor Jerry Brown, has sped up California’s efforts to create a comprehensive plan to better serve commercially sexually exploited children, or CSEC.

Over the past few years the sexual exploitation of children has become a popular theme in mainstream news. Along with deserved attention, the children who endure this exploitation and the service providers who try to help them have seen an unsettling misappropriation of blame in the language used to describe victims, as opposed to perpetrators of what amounts to sex crimes.

The purpose of this research it to estimate the likelihood that a recent cohort of children would be exposed to sexual abuse and sexual assault by age 17 in the United States.