"Commercial
sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors are often-overlooked
forms of child abuse," said Richard Krugman, co-chair of the committee
that wrote the report, and vice chancellor for health affairs and dean
of the University of Colorado School of Medicine."Our national, state,
and local laws and policies should recognize that and provide these
children and adolescents with the support they need. Right now, they are
often invisible to us, and when we do recognize them, we fail to see
them as victims and survivors of abuse and violence.We hope our report
will help open our nation's eyes to a serious domestic problem in need
of solutions."
Commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking
of minors refer to a range of crimes, including recruiting or
transporting minors for the purpose of sexual exploitation, exploiting
them through prostitution, or exploiting them through survival sex
(exchanging sexual acts for something of value, such as shelter or
food), among other offenses. Young victims and survivors of these crimes
face both immediate and long-term social, legal, and health
consequences. As directed by its charge, the committee focused its
report on exploitation and trafficking of minors who are citizens or
lawful permanent residents of the U.S. and its territories, but urged
readers and policymakers to consider the broader implications of its
recommendations as they apply to all children and adolescents.
Despite
the gravity of the problem, there is no reliable estimate of the scope
or prevalence of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of
minors, the report says; estimates of the number of prostituted children
and adolescents in the U.S., for example, have ranged from 1,400 to 2.4
million. These crimes are overlooked and almost surely underreported
because they frequently happen at the margins of society and behind
closed doors, and the young people involved often do not recognize
themselves as victims of abuse. Those especially vulnerable to
exploitation include youths who have been neglected or abused; those in
foster care or juvenile detention; lesbian, gay, transgender, and
bisexual youth; racial and ethnic minorities; and homeless, runaways,
and "thrown-away" children who have been asked or told to leave home.
Efforts
to prevent the commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of
children in the U.S. are largely absent, the report says, and though
efforts to respond to these problems are emerging, they are generally
insufficient, uncoordinated, and unevaluated.Many professionals who
interact with youth -- such as teachers, health care providers, and
child welfare and law enforcement professionals -- are either unaware
that trafficking and exploitation happen in their communities or lack
the knowledge and tools to identify and respond to young people who are
at risk.
Commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of
minors should be understood as acts of abuse and violence, the report
says.All states have statutory rape laws specifying that a child under a
certain age cannot legally consent to having sex and must be treated as
a victim of a crime.And federal law on sex trafficking recognizes
children as victims.However, in most states, commercial sexual
exploitation and sex trafficking of minors often are viewed through the
lens of prostitution laws. As a result, laws allow prostituted minors to
be arrested and charged with crimes instead of treating these sexually
exploited minors as victims of crimes.These children and adolescents may
be subject to arrest, detention, adjudication or conviction, and
commitment or incarceration; they may have permanent records as
offenders.
The report calls for all national, state, local,
tribal, and territorial jurisdictions to develop laws and policies that
redirect young victims and survivors of commercial sexual exploitation
under the age of 18 away from arrest and prosecution and toward systems,
agencies, and services that are equipped to meet their needs.A small
but growing number of states have enacted "safe harbor" laws designed to
send young victims of exploitation to agencies that provide supportive
services instead of sending them to the criminal or juvenile justice
systems.
The U.S. departments of Justice, Health and Human
Services, and Education, working with other partners, should support
national, regional, state, and local efforts to raise awareness of these
crimes, the report says.These efforts should include training for
professionals and others who routinely interact with minors. Health care
and child welfare workers, the education sector, and the private sector
have an important role to play in preventing, identifying, and
responding to these problems.Efforts should also include campaigns to
raise public awareness and specific strategies for raising awareness
among children and adolescents. In addition, in the absence of an
exhaustive list of resources for victim and support services, a digital
information-sharing platform should be created to deliver reliable,
real-time information on how to prevent, identify, and respond to the
problem.
Despite the hard work of prosecutors and law enforcement
in many jurisdictions, individuals who sexually exploit children and
adolescents largely escape accountability, the report says. All
jurisdictions should review and strengthen laws that hold exploiters,
traffickers, and solicitors accountable for their role. These laws
should include a particular emphasis on deterring demand, both through
prevention efforts and penalties for those who solicit sex with minors.
In
addition, the report recommends that the departments of Justice, Health
and Human Services, and Education collaborate and partner with others
to implement a national research agenda to advance understanding of this
kind of exploitation and develop evidence-informed interventions to
prevent youth from becoming victims and to assist those who have been
exploited.
"It's time to direct greater effort to preventing this
kind of abuse, identifying young people who have become ensnared in it,
and developing effective approaches that can enable them to reclaim
their lives," said committee co-chair Ellen Wright Clayton, Craig-Weaver
Professor of Pediatrics and professor of law at Vanderbilt University.
The
study was sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention in the U.S. Department of Justice. Established under the
charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine
and the National Research Council provide independent, objective,
evidence-based advice to policymakers, the private sector, and the
public. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of
Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make
up the National Academies.
Report:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18358
Archbishop
Silvano Tomasi, (R), Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy
See to the Office of the United Nations in Geneva, and Vincenzo Buonomo,
(L), of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See prior to the UN
torture committee hearing on the Vatican, at the headquarters of the
office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Palais Wilson,
in Geneva, Switzerland. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA
