Study illuminates tragedy of trafficked children in Florida
Every year, an estimated 2 million children worldwide are exploited in sex trafficking. Also, the number of child victims of labor trafficking is expected to escalate due to the current global economic crisis. And regardless of whether we are ready to believe the stark reality, some kids in America were exploited in sex or labor trafficking during the holidays.
While the hidden nature of human trafficking reduces the availability of reliable data on the number of child victims in the United States, we now have a clearer depiction of the childhood circumstances that lead certain children down a treacherous pathway into the dark and exploitative crime of human trafficking.
In a study published last month in the American Journal of Public Health, we and our colleagues compared the level and type of childhood adversity experienced by boys and girls exploited in human trafficking to the childhood adversity experienced by similar boys and girls of the same race/ethnicity, household income level, and from the same locality. This study was the first to examine the childhood histories of more than 900 girls and boys detained by the Florida juvenile justice system who had each been the subject of an official abuse report and child protective investigation related to human trafficking.
We found that girls and boys exploited in human trafficking experienced more childhood adversity — including childhood sexual abuse, emotional abuse, emotional and physical neglect, and family violence — than the matched sample of similar youth. Most disturbing, we found that boys who had experienced childhood sexual abuse were 8.2 times more likely to be exploited in human trafficking than boys without a history of sexual abuse. Similarly, sexually abused girls were 2.5 times more likely to be exploited in human trafficking than similar girls who did not report childhood sexual abuse.
Being abused is the only way of life many of these boys and girls have known, and they may possess very little hope of escaping to something or someone better.