sex trafficking

The federal government’s annual Child Maltreatment publication, released last month, showed a continuing trendline on the report’s central issue. The number of child maltreatment investigations has risen by nearly 10 percent since 2014 – the amount of documented abuse and neglect from those investigations has also increased, but only by about half of 1 percent.

At 15-years old, Sarah* had already moved between a handful of New York City’s foster care agencies. She was a victim of sex trafficking, an illicit industry that disproportionately targets children in the child welfare system.

In Los Angeles, 85 percent of the youth picked up by law enforcement in sex trafficking raids have a history with child protective services, according to a new report that provides details on how the county serves exploited youth in the wake of new California laws.

A dozen foster parents surround the table at the mandated Foster Care Child Sex Trafficking class, listening with perked ears to the class leader. She is a survivor of early childhood sex trafficking.

On Monday nights, a small group of parents gathers on the campus of the University of California-Davis. Each would give anything not to be there. What binds this group together is among every mother and father’s deepest fears.

Much of the advocacy and public health response to commercial sex and exploitation is focused on the victims, the majority of whom are female. But there is another way to address the issue, and that is to reduce demand by intervening with the pursuers of paid sex, a group almost entirely made up of men.

The first day of October 2015 was a good day for Chris Pepper. As content specialist for health programs at the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), Pepper and his team had been working on a revised health education curriculum for the city’s high school students when news broke that California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 329.

Nola Brantley is a sex trafficking survivor and advocate in California. Even though she primarily works with girls and young women, Brantley is concerned about another hidden demographic of trafficked children: boys and trans youth.

The Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice & Research at the University of Pennsylvania recently completed a multi-city research study on the prevalence of sex trafficking among homeless youth, with a special emphasis on child welfare risk and protective factors.