youth justice disabled people legal guardianship: illustration of an antique 2-sided scale with colorful pastel cloud background

Opinion: Vulnerable youth need justice, and legal aid needs community

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Everyone deserves access to justice. Eight years ago, I took a chance that the community would show up to support legal services – and justice – for vulnerable kids and young adults. 

I’ll never forget the first client who walked through our doors or any of the clients I’ve represented. As I step down from leading Arizona Legal Women and Youth Services (ALWAYS) and turn the reins over to a brilliant successor, I can’t help but reflect on all that I’ve learned, felt, and hoped during my time running a legal aid center. At ALWAYS, we serve human trafficking survivors and children and young adults affected by homelessness, abuse, and the foster care system. With the exception of trafficking survivors, everyone we serve is 24 years old or younger.

sex trafficking: Closeup of beautiful, serious young black woman with reddish afro

Opinion: Girls of Color, Native Girls Have Been Sex Trafficked Since Colonization, Slavery

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While awareness of sex trafficking has grown, too little attention is given to how this terrible violence impacts girls of color. In Washington, D.C., Courtney’s House is the only survivor-led program serving trafficked youth. Of the young people who receive services from Courtney’s House, 87% are girls of color. 

This disparate impact is not limited to girls in the D.C. area but is evidenced across the country. In King County, Washington, 84% of child sex trafficking survivors are girls and 52% of child survivors are Black even though Black girls comprise a mere 1% of the population. In 2017, among survivors receiving services in Minnesota, nearly 75% were BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) and 50% of all survivors were girls and young women under age 25 (compared to boys and young men who comprised 6% of all survivors). 

The disproportionate rates at which girls of color are trafficked is not coincidental.

Black girls: Desperate black girl puts her hands in her hair

Opinion: Bring Back Black Girls Before They’re Herded Into Foster Care, Justice System

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The #SayHerName movement that was launched in 2014 by the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies has gained immense momentum amid a number of nationally recognized murders of Black women at the hands of police. A goal of the campaign is to bring to light the oft overlooked stories of Black women and girls who have needlessly and unjustifiably perished in their encounters with law enforcement. 

#SayHerName is an important, overdue and necessary movement. It is a vigil for Black women and girls who have fatal interactions with the legal system and is crucial to honoring those lost and to educating society on the all too common, yet underacknowledged, realities of being a Black female in America. While we recognize the importance of #SayHerName, we want to shed light on a population of Black girls who are entangled in America’s custodial systems and seemingly missing in plain sight. These girls are placed under the control of institutions that were avowedly designed to protect and/or rehabilitate young people but that often do just the opposite and, in turn, create a new population of victims. 

These systems have the capacity to inflict irreparable physical and psychological harm, which in some instances has led to the untimely deaths of Black girls.

sex trafficking: Homeless teenage girl sitting near brick wall outdoors

Youth At Greater Risk For Being Sex Trafficked If Homeless, LGBTQ, Minority

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Sexual crimes are prevalent domestically and globally, and sex trafficking — people brokering other humans for sex — is no exception. Data suggest about 4.5 million people are currently trafficked, 945,000 of whom are children. Across the U.S., over 40% of cases investigated between 2008 and 2010 involved minors. 

The problem is widespread, but research has identified several common risk factors for domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST): age, ethnicity, sexuality and housing status. These risk factors are briefly elucidated here, and guide our recommendations for future research, practice and policy. Trafficking is defined as “recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.” Further, a commercial sex act is “induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age,” so age is a critical aspect of DMST. 

In fact, DMST victims are often young.

specialty court: little girl with calm look near brick wall.

Specialty Courts Are Models of Care for Sex Trafficked Youth

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The continued criminalization of youth experiencing commercial sexual exploitation in the United States has resulted in an over-representation in the juvenile justice system that requires robust and immediate response mechanisms.

How Ohio’s Restore Court Focuses on Helping Sex Trafficked Youth

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Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) has recently received much needed attention, but is by no means a new issue. Researchers have tried to approximate the scope of the problem, but it has proven extremely difficult to produce an accurate estimate of children who are victims of or at risk for CSEC in the U.S. State-level prevalence rates are equally difficult to produce, but a recent report estimated that more than 1,000 U.S.-born minors are sex trafficked in Ohio annually and thousands more are at risk for victimization.

I Was a Kid in Solitary Confinement

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My young parents didn’t have the skill sets to properly raise me, which at a young age caused me to search for acceptance in other places. I began running away at the age of 13 and quickly got heavily involved in drug use.

How LA County Began to Face Its Big Problem With Youth Being Sex-Trafficked

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Michelle Guymon is a hero in the world of child sex trafficking prevention.
Seven years ago, she had no idea Los Angeles County had a child sex trafficking problem
Now Guymon is director of the Child Trafficking Unit for the Los Angeles County Probation Department and is part of the group that aims to make LA’s efforts to combat child sex trafficking a model for the nation.

The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story

Report: Girls Face ‘Sex-Abuse-To-Prison Pipeline’

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The numbers are huge: An Oregon study found that 93 percent of girls in the state’s juvenile justice system had been sexually or physically abused at some time. South Carolina research found that 81 percent of girls in its system had experienced sexual abuse.