2012 Trafficking In Persons Final Report.pdf - NCJTC Home

FINAL REPORT
There are a number of contexts within which juvenile sexual exploitation has been found to occur. Some
homeless youth trade sex for a place to stay, food, clothing or drugs (Green, Ennett, & Ringwalt, 1999; Maloney,
1980; McCarthy & Hagan, 1992). Other youth are kidnapped and forced into prostitution with the use of coercion,
drugging and violence (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2012). Others enter prostitution
through a relationship with a man (a pimp or trafficker) who seems to show them love and affection (Nixon,
et al. 2002; Williamson & Folaron, 2003). Some are sexually exploited by criminal organizations and gangs.
According to a study undertaken in 1998, the average age of entry into sexual exploitation appears to be
approximately 14.1 years with a range of 10 to 18 years (Nadon et al., 1998). Eighty-nine percent of the youth in
this study were 16 or younger when they were first sexually exploited. In a comparison study of 21 sexually exploited
juveniles with 221 at-risk youth in a midsized city, Bell and Todd (1998) found that the sexually exploited
youth were significantly more likely to have experienced physical and sexual abuse, not to be living with their
families, to have irregular school attendance and to have previous involvement in delinquency. In a study of 261
high-risk street-involved youth Stoltz et al. (2007) found that childhood sexual abuse and childhood emotional
abuse were independently associated with victimization by child sexual exploitation after controlling for social
and demographic variables. Childhood emotional abuse is thought to reduce the coping skills and self-confidence
girls need to deal effectively with the high-risk situations they encounter in adolescence, thus increasing their
dependence on survival strategies such as trading sex for a place to stay, clothing or protection (Roe-Sepowitz,
forthcoming, Stoltz et al. 2007).
Child Labor Trafficking
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) defines labor trafficking as: “The recruitment,
harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force,
fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.”
Unlike sex trafficking, labor trafficking requires “force, fraud, or coercion” even for those under 18 years of age.
On June 1, 2012, the International Labor Organization released its second global estimate of forced labor
which estimates that modern slavery around the world claims 20.9 million victims at any time (U.S. Department
of State, 2012). Children represent 26% of all these forced labor victims (5.5 million) (International Labor Office,
2012). Child victims in the United States may be either documented or undocumented (International Labor
Office, 2012).
Labor trafficking of children occurs in diverse contexts in the U.S., including domestic service--where
children work in employers’ homes 10-16 hours per day with very low or little wages; agriculture--where
children work (often alongside their parents) in brutal, unsanitary, and dangerous conditions; and other service
industries, such as restaurants--where children are often given low or no wages, and may sometimes be required
to engage in commercial sex (Polaris Project Fact Sheet, 2012).
One little-recognized form of child trafficking is peddling of candy, magazines, and other consumer
products and traveling sales crews. Street peddlers often “work long hours with little pay, in extreme temperatures,
and with no access to bathrooms, water, or food; work for activities or prizes they never receive; and work
alone in strange neighborhoods or cities.” (Polaris Project Fact Sheet, 2012)
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