New Video on Ohio case

Facebook could make a huge impact on sexual exploitation!

Interesting article…

http://www.sharedhope.org/SHIBlog/tabid/75/PostID/59/Sacrifice-made-at-the-cost-of-convenience-–-Sexual-exploitation-on-the-Internet.aspx

SPECIAL REPORT: SEX TRAFFICKING IN COLUMBUS

ABC6 News Report 11/15/2010

COLUMBUS, Ohio – As people throughout
Columbus sleep at night, many young women
are selling sex on the city’s oft-times
dangerous streets.

It’s estimated that more than 1,000 women
each year are forced into a life of sex for
money in Ohio. It’s known as human
trafficking and it’s a scary, sad and stark
reality in Columbus.

ABC6 Investigator Chris Koeberl took to the
mean streets for a very real look at what’s
called “modern-day slavery” by many people.

Below is the link to the video:

http://www.abc6onyourside.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wsyx_vid_7715.shtml

Online sex ads complicate crackdowns on teen trafficking

Behind every adult service ad on the internet is a story.

Sometimes it’s a story of a grown woman who has chosen prostitution as a path to a better life. More often, it’s a story of a woman being forced to sell her body by a pimp.

And then there are the children, and the mothers that miss them.

View Full Story

Rescued Child Prostitutes Not Receiving Help

The FBI saved more than 50 in an October crackdown, but experts say the victims need intensive residential treatment, which they aren’t getting. Such help is in scant supply.

A teenage resident in her room at the Children of the Night shelter in Los Angeles. An expert says intensive, long-term residential treatment gives child prostitution victims their “best fighting chance.” (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times / November 25, 2009)

By Joe Markman

December 8, 2009

Reporting from Washington – More than a month after the FBI announced it had rescued 52 children from “sexual slavery” in a nationwide crackdown on child prostitution, none of the victims is receiving the help experts say is necessary to overcome such trauma and rejoin society.

At least one, a 15-year-old Sacramento girl held on an unrelated charge, remains in a juvenile detention center, according to a Los Angeles Times check of the children’s situations. Others have been sent home or into foster care.

The victims need intensive residential treatment, experts say, and only three such programs exist in the country.

Richard Estes, a social policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on child sexual exploitation, said the “best fighting chance” for victims is “24/7 residential care for a long period of time.”

“This is not a quick-fix situation,” he said. “It really is a rebuilding and remolding of personality and character.”

Many victims are abused long before they are lured into the sex trade, Estes said. Their symptoms often include guilt, anxiety and inappropriate sexual behavior.

“Most of the girls that have run away and are on the streets have run away because of sexual abuse,” he said.

Lois Lee, founder of a 24-bed Los Angeles shelter called Children of the Night, sees the problems firsthand.

“When America’s child prostitutes are identified by the FBI or police, they are incarcerated for whatever reason possible, whether it be an unrelated crime or ‘material witness hold,’ ” she said.

“Then they are dumped back in the dysfunctional home, ill-equipped group home or foster care, and [often] disappear back into the underground of prostitution with no voice.”

Ian McCaleb, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the government “uses a victim-centered approach that provides victims with the services they need in order to recover and to fully participate in the criminal justice process.”

But some of the local law enforcement officials who worked with the FBI on the October bust echoed Lee’s comments. Child victims are often sent home or to foster families after moving through juvenile court, the officials said.

For instance, six children ages 10 to 17 rescued in Toledo, Ohio, were processed through the local children services bureau before ending up in a nonresidential counseling program, Toledo Police Det. Peter Schwartz said.

Experts underscore that sex-trafficking victims struggle to find the care they need once they escape from an industry that may involve at least 100,000 children in the U.S.

Donna M. Hughes, a women’s studies professor at the University of Rhode Island who has researched U.S. sex trafficking, argues that domestic victims are shortchanged by the attention authorities and advocacy groups give to the illegal importation of foreign prostitutes.

“We need more treatment programs,” Hughes said. “There are a number of different programs that have existed for years, but they need more support.”

Lisa Goldblatt Grace, who consulted on a 2007 study for the Health and Human Services Department, said child victims “lack a safe, stable place to live, and that’s part of what made them vulnerable to begin with.”

Grace is program director of the My Life My Choice Project, a nonprofit focused on reaching out to adolescent girls most vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation.

The Health and Human Services Department study found only four residential treatment centers in the United States for child prostitutes, with a total of 45 beds.

Interviews with officials at the centers show that beds remain scarce, and that one of the four — Standing Against Global Exploitation Safe House in San Francisco — no longer offers overnight accommodations. It does, however, provide nonresidential care for victims and helps place them with foster families.

Mollie Ring, the house’s trafficking project manager, said the beds were eliminated because of a money crunch.

The remaining residential programs are:

* L.A.’s Children of the Night, which offers psychological treatment, academic assistance, and personal bedrooms and bathrooms, with 24 beds.

* New York-based Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, founded in 1999 by a former child prostitute, with 12 beds.

* Angela’s House, a nonprofit in Georgia run by the Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation, which is expanding from six beds to eight. The house no longer has a waiting list, program manager Melba Robinson said, but funding remains a “huge issue.”

That adds up to 44 beds — one less than two years ago.

It’s not nearly enough, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He estimated that U.S. child victims numbered between 100,000 and 300,000.

“You can’t just take them home,” Allen said. “The challenge is there are not enough resources” to help them.

Keith Haight, a former Los Angeles police detective who retired in 2008, spent 22 years on the vice squad. He said despite the push in the last few years to help victims, rather than prosecute them as prostitutes, how to do it remained elusive.

“A lot of places don’t want to take responsibility for girls that are known to be sexually active,” he said.

joseph.markman@ latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Child prostitution: Children rescued from sex trade struggle to find care in U.S.

Even rescued children struggle to find care in U.S.

By Joe Markman
Chicago Tribune
view entire Article

November 29, 2009

When the FBI announced a nationwide crackdown on child prostitution last month as part of a long-term initiative to combat domestic sex trafficking, it noted that 52 children had been rescued from “sexual slavery.”

“It is repugnant that children in these times could be subjected to the great pain, suffering and indignity of being forced into sexual slavery for someone else’s profit,” Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said at the time.

But a month later, none of those children is receiving the kind of help that experts say they require to overcome the trauma of their experiences, and some are still languishing in local juvenile detention centers, according to a Tribune Newspapers check of the children’s situation.

Experts say the only way to ensure a good chance of recovery for these children is placement in a residential treatment program for such victims, of which there are only three in the United States: in New York, California and Georgia.

“When America’s child prostitutes are identified by the FBI or police, they are incarcerated for whatever reason possible, whether it be an unrelated crime or ‘material witness hold,’ ” said Lois Lee, founder of one of the three centers, Children of the Night in Los Angeles.

“Then they are dumped back in the dysfunctional home, ill-equipped group home or foster care, and (often) disappear back into the underground of prostitution with no voice.”

Experts say victims struggle to find care once they escape an industry that could involve as many as 300,000 U.S. children.

Ian McCaleb, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the department “uses a victim-centered approach that provides victims with the services they need in order to recover and to fully participate in the criminal justice process.”

A report prepared for the Health and Human Services Department in 2007 found four residential treatment centers with a total of 45 beds for child prostitutes in the U.S. Interviews with the centers show bed numbers remain low two years later.

New York-based Girls Educational and Mentoring Services has 12 beds. One of the four mentioned in the 2007 report, The Standing Against Global Exploitation Safe House in San Francisco no longer has beds for trafficking victims, though it offers non-residential care for victims and helps place them with foster families.

Melba Robinson, a program manager at Georgia’s Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation, said the center’s Angela’s House, which usually takes in girls on probation, is expanding from six beds to eight.

Still, with victims numbering in the thousands, advocates say there just aren’t enough treatment options to go around.

jmarkman@tribune.com

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