Today, throughout urban, rural, and tribal regions of the nation, girls are being bought and sold.  Many of these girls are runaways from troubled homes or foster care placements where they have been abused or thrown away by their families.  They are abducted or lured by traffickers and then routinely raped, beaten into submission, and sometimes even tattooed by their traffickers.  Instead of treating these girls as victims in need of services, they are treated as perpetrators and routinely put behind bars.

Child sex trafficking in the U.S. has attracted organized crime and gangs because criminals have discovered it is more profitable and less risky to sell girls than, for example, drugs.  Yet punishment for traffickers and buyers is minimal.  Buyers are very rarely charged or convicted of solicitation or pandering, let alone statutory rape or child sex trafficking.  Demand is high because a sale can be executed quickly, conveniently, and anonymously over the Internet.  In most situations, it is the sexually exploited child who ends up incarcerated for “prostitution,” despite not even being old enough to provide consent. In fact, each year more than 1,000 American children are arrested for prostitution, leaving them vulnerable to re-traumatization in the juvenile justice system and subject to arrest and juvenile records that may hinder them from accessing future jobs or education opportunities.

Internationally, there are many organizations that support and serve victims of sex trafficking.  However, in the U.S. there are drastically inadequate services for domestic victims.  Federal systems that benefit foreign victims of trafficking in the U.S. do not adequately contemplate American victims that share the same experiences of victimization, vulnerability, and violence.

Rights4Girls works to ensure that all victims of trafficking are able to receive the same support systems and opportunities to heal.

When girls with economic stability are hurt by sexual violence, the protective layers of functional schools, safe neighborhoods, and access to mental health services tend to buffer them from further victimization. For marginalized girls and young women, the experience of sexual abuse too often lands them behind bars.  In fact, sexual abuse is a primary predictor for justice involvement in girls.  Nationally, approximately 73 percent of girls in the juvenile justice system report past histories of physical and sexual abuse– but figures in some states are even higher.  For example, a study on delinquent girls in South Carolina revealed that 81 percent of girls reported experiences of sexual violence. An Oregon study found 93 percent of girls in the juvenile justice system had suffered physical or sexual abuse. The connection between sexual abuse in girls and their ultimate incarceration is not coincidental– sexual abuse is a direct, contributing cause of girls’ detention.

Therefore, whereas boys experience the “school to prison pipeline,” for girls–and particularly girls of color– it is too often, a sexual abuse to prison pipeline that ensnares them in the justice system. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention (OJJDP), more than 600,000 girls are arrested in the U.S. annually, and nearly 12,000 girls under the age of 20 are detained or committed daily.  Nearly half of these girls are detained for nonviolent offenses such as truancy, running away, and alcohol and substance use—all behaviors that are significantly correlated with suffering and coping with trauma.

Rights4Girls works to disrupt this harmful and unjust pathway to prison for girls by educating policymakers on the abuse to prison pipeline, advocating for alternatives to detention, and promoting criminal and juvenile justice reform efforts that expressly contemplate girls and young women of color, especially those who have experienced violence or exploitation.

Learn more about the Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline for Girls and our work to dismantle this pattern of injustice for girls.

Once girls become involved in the juvenile justice system they must navigate a punitive system designed for males that is ill-equipped to deal with the specific needs of girls. Once incarcerated, girls are subject to harmful and degrading conditions of confinement that often exacerbate their existing trauma. The traditional methods of asserting authority and order, isolation approaches, and severe discipline characterizing juvenile detention are inappropriate for girls given their abuse histories.  Often, girls are subject to solitary confinement and restraints– practices that are especially injurious to victims of sexual and physical violence.  Girls are strip searched throughout the duration of their detention, including when returning from family visitation hours, after a medical visit, or at the completion of a work shift.  Moreover, detention is not safe for girls.  Girls consistently report being physically and sexually assaulted by staff and other youth while behind bars.

Finally, pregnant girls in detention are sometimes subject to shackling during transport, labor, or delivery.  While there is limited data available on pregnant and parenting system-involved girls, a report by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency found that of the 1,000 girls participating in a statewide study, 16 percent had been pregnant while incarcerated.  Of those girls who had been pregnant while in custody, 29 percent had been placed in physical restraints, including shackled at the wrists, belly and/or ankles, during labor, delivery and/or post-delivery.

Rights4Girls advocates for justice reform that contemplates the specific needs of girls and young women, especially given their unique pathways into the system. We educate policymakers on the need for a trauma-informed, gender-responsive, and culturally appropriate juvenile justice system so as not to re-victimize or harm girls who have been incarcerated.

In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the intersection between child welfare involvement and an increased vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation. Data reveals that across the country, many, if not most, identified survivors of child sex trafficking in the U.S. have had previous child welfare involvement– either through foster care or in the context of abuse or neglect proceedings.

For example, of child trafficking victims in Alameda County, California, 55 percent were from foster youth group homes, while in Florida,  the state’s anti-trafficking task force director estimated that 70 percent of victims were foster youth. Unfortunately, many of the services and protections developed for abused children within the child welfare system are rarely afforded to trafficked girls. In fact, in most states, child welfare and child protective services cannot intervene in such cases since the abuse is typically carried out by someone other than the parent or caretaker. Without child welfare as a viable resource, and in the absence of formal protocols mandating a child welfare response, law enforcement is often called in to intervene. As a result, child victims are arrested and detained for prostitution or other nonviolent offenses related to their exploitation, instead of being seen and treated as victims of child abuse and trafficking.

Since 2011, Rights4Girls has been working to educate Members of Congress on the connection between child welfare and child trafficking. In fact, we organized the first ever briefing on the issue in 2012 and later worked to organize the first-ever Congressional hearings on the subject in 2013.  As a direct result of these advocacy efforts, in 2014, the President signed important legislation into law reforming the child welfare system and helping to protect foster youth from this type of exploitation. Rights4Girls was proud to work on the 2014 Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act. This groundbreaking law now requires state child welfare agencies to screen children for sex trafficking, document and report those numbers, and connect child victims with appropriate services.  The law also helps prevent trafficking by requiring agencies to report any child missing from care to both law enforcement and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Rights4Girls is proud to partner with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) on the National Judicial Institute on Domestic Child Sex Trafficking. Rights4Girls worked with NCJFCJ to conceptualize, develop, and then launch the first Institute in 2014. Since then, we have conducted a number of judicial trainings throughout the country educating judges on how to identify and improve their response toward trafficked youth and ensure that no trafficked child is criminalized for their victimization. Our intensive two-day judicial workshops explore the most current topics in victim behavior, identification, perpetrator dynamics, ethics, and judicial decision-making within the context of child sex trafficking cases. As faculty experts, we educate delinquency, dependency/family, criminal, and tribal court judges on how to recognize child trafficking victims in their courtrooms so that youth may be afforded the services they need, instead of being routed into the justice system as perpetrators. The Institute also provides information on the importance of multi-disciplinary approaches to trafficking and the need to coordinate across child welfare, juvenile justice, education, healthcare, and law enforcement to provide appropriate treatment interventions to child victims.

To date, we have trained over 400 judicial officers nationwide and we will continue to work with NCJFCJ to educate and empower judges to discover ways in which they can better serve this population.

Click here to learn more about the Institute.

Rights4Girls is dedicated to protecting the rights of young women and girls here in the U.S. Whether it is through our work educating lawmakers on child sex trafficking, opposing human rights violations against our girls behind bars, or advocating for alternatives to detention and comprehensive services for abused or exploited girls– Rights4Girls is devoted to defending the rights of our girls.

In 2011, Rights4Girls co-founded the Girls at the Margin National Alliance with The National Crittenton Foundation– a coalition of over 200 local, state, and national organizations reaching across disciplines and systems to address root causes of the complex issues confronting girls and young women at the margin, including family and community violence, sexual abuse, racism, sexism, poverty, and other forms of adversity. The Alliance provides a platform and community for our members to connect with each other, share information about policy initiatives and campaigns, and to learn about policies, opportunities, and resources at the federal level. In June of 2016, we were invited to present on the Alliance and its policy goals at the United State of Women Conference. We also partnered with the White House Council on Women and Girls to bring girls and service providers from all over the country together to discuss the various issues impacting marginalized girls, and to engage in solution-focused discussions in the areas of education, child welfare, juvenile justice, child sex trafficking, and pregnant and parenting girls.

In 2015, we petitioned the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) to examine the United States for continuing to arrest and incarcerate child victims of sex trafficking. Together with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, we asked the Commission to explore the condition of child victims of sex trafficking in the United States and how the U.S. has failed to prevent states from enforcing prostitution laws against such children even when such laws conflict with state, federal, and international law. Rights4Girls was grateful to Kerry Kennedy for assisting our petition by demonstrating how the United States is not fulfilling its international human rights obligations and falling behind other member-states in responding to child trafficking victims. The resulting hearing helped expose the human rights violations that child victims of commercial sexual exploitation suffer in the U.S. at the hands of state authorities instead of receiving the care and assistance to which they are entitled.