News & Updates

Rights4Girls Executive Director Yasmin Vafa sat down with Mother Jones to discuss the Jeffrey Epstein case and its similarities to the child sex trafficking cases we see every day. To read the full article, click here

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Media Contacts:

cherice@rights4girls.org

Tanya.Weinberg@georgetown.edu

 

Arrests of D.C. Girls Rising Sharply

While arrests of boys in D.C. have declined over the past decade, girls’ arrests have nearly doubled, new research by Georgetown Law’s Juvenile Justice Initiative and Rights4Girls finds

 

WASHINGTON (March 22, 2018) – Arrests of girls in the District of Columbia have increased dramatically, even while overall youth arrests are down, according to new research released today by Georgetown Law’s Juvenile Justice Initiative and Rights4Girls.

From 2007 to 2016 annual arrests of boys in D.C. fell 22 percent, while arrests of girls have swelled by 87 percent.  On average, girls are being arrested at younger ages and for less serious offenses than boys, suggesting that girls’ behavior is increasingly being criminalized, according to the new report, Beyond the Walls: A Look at Girls in D.C.’s Juvenile Justice System.

“In many ways, the District has been a national leader in reforming the juvenile justice system and investing in vulnerable boys,” said coauthor Eduardo Ferrer, policy director of Georgetown Law’s Juvenile Justice Initiative. “But this report shows that those efforts have overlooked girls, who now make up one in four youth arrests in the city, up from one in seven a decade ago.”

The new findings lay out in stark relief numbers that fit with disturbing national trends for girls and juvenile justice, including a sexual abuse to prison pipeline, the criminalization of girls’ behavior in schools, and evidence that adults view black girls as less innocent, and as needing less protection than white girls.

Drawing on data collected from several D.C. agencies via Freedom of Information Act requests, the new report finds that black girls are being arrested at rates more than 30 times greater than that of white girls and white boys.  Of girls facing the most serious consequence within the juvenile system – commitment to the custody of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services – a startling 97 percent are black.  The vast majority of these girls have been charged with non-violent, non-weapons offenses, and pose no danger to public safety, the report says.

“We hope these findings serve as a wake-up call that the District is unnecessarily criminalizing a growing number of vulnerable black girls for behavior that is not dangerous,” said Yasmin Vafa, executive director of Rights4Girls and a coauthor of the report. “Girls in the juvenile justice system are largely growing up in poverty and often coping with multiple sources of trauma, including sexual abuse, family instability and neglect.  We must find a way to better serve them.”

Read the report here.

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RIGHTS4GIRLS media contact:

cherice@rights4girls.org

GEORGETOWN LAW media contact:

Tanya.Weinberg@georgetown.edu

 

Rights4Girls, in partnership with Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Trustlaw, recently released a report on innovative court protections for child sex trafficking victim witnesses. The report, Survivor Protection: Reducing the Risk of Trauma to Child Sex Trafficking Victims, describes ways to extend existing courtroom protections afforded to other victims of gender violence and child abuse, to survivors of child sex trafficking who testify at trial.

Across the country, the message is spreading that there is No Such Thing as a ‘child prostitute’ and that child sex trafficking victims are in fact victims of gender-based violence and child abuse who should be met with protections and support. However, the critical need to protect child sex trafficking victims who testify in criminal proceedings—a process that can be traumatic even when a survivor wishes to testify as part of their healing journey—is often overlooked. Though a myriad of protections exist for other survivors, particularly victims of child sexual abuse, these safeguards are not often extended to child sex trafficking victims in the courtroom setting. Even when child sex trafficking victims do have access to courtroom protections, their availability is limited or the methods are not utilized.

Survivor Protection provides a national overview of various state-based legal protections for child victim witnesses as well as their limitations. Importantly, the report offers key findings and policy recommendations to improve protections for child sex trafficking survivors by reducing the risk of trauma and prioritizing the psychological and emotional well-being of this vulnerable population.

Rights4Girls Executive Director Yasmin Vafa was invited to deliver the keynote address at an event hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Stolen Youth in Seattle, WA on the impacts of race, gender, and economic inequality on child sex trafficking.

“Sex trafficking is rooted in multiple systems of oppression that have long contributed to the exploitation of people of color in this country for generations through colonization and slavery. To really understand sex trafficking in this country today, we have to understand it in the context of a long legacy of racial and gender violence that continues to perpetuate the exploitation, and often times the criminalization, of our young women and children of color,” said the Rights4Girls Executive Director. Watch the speech and accompanying panel discussion that was moderated by Susan Long-Walsh of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Val Richey of the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office here.

Rights4Girls’ Yasmin Vafa sat down with NPR’s All Things Considered to discuss Cyntoia Brown, Bresha Meadows, and the abuse to prison pipeline for girls:

In a moment when the country is grappling with issues of sexual misconduct and the abusive treatment of women and girls, a murder case involving a then-teenager who says she was forced into prostitution is back in the national spotlight more than a decade after the key events took place.

A number of A-list celebrities, including Rihanna, LeBron James and Kim Kardashian West, have taken an interest in the case of Cyntoia Brown, a 29-year-old serving a life sentence for the murder of a Nashville man in 2004.

Brown says she was forced into prostitution when she was 16 and repeatedly raped and abused by her pimp. That year, a 43-year-old man picked her up in a parking lot and took her to his home for sex, where she says she thought he was going to kill her for resisting him. That’s when she fatally shot him.

When she was tried as an adult in the murder, the jury rejected her claim of self-defense. Now, though, advocates say her case should be reopened so she can be seen as the victim of sex trafficking that she was.

Along with broader issues about the justice system, advocates are also highlighting this case as an example of what they call the “sexual abuse-to-prison pipeline.” Yasmin Vafa, the executive director of the human rights organization Rights4Girls, tells NPR’s Michel Martin about her research into the “pipeline” and why the way the criminal justice system treats victims of human trafficking needs to change:

“I think that what is interesting about Cyntoia’s case is that she was arrested back in 2004, which was a year before our federal anti-trafficking laws even contemplated the fact that Americans could even be victims of sex trafficking. And so now of course we know all these years later that not only are American citizens able to be victims of sex trafficking, but in fact the vast majority of sex trafficking victims here in the United States are U.S.-born and are U.S. citizens.

Many of them, like Cyntoia, are girls of color, many of them have suffered multiple instances of childhood sexual abuse, have had some interaction with the foster care system. And so her story really shows a narrative of so many young women and girls that we know.

In a number of states that had available data looking at girls in the [prison] system, the overwhelming majority of girls behind bars had suffered instances of sexual and physical violence. In some states like South Carolina it was 81 percent of girls; in places like Oregon it was upwards of 93 percent. So when we looked at those high rates of traumas together, with the most common offenses that girls were being arrested for, it really made clear that it was that victimization that was driving the [arrest].

So sometimes that looks like a young girl who’s running away from an abusive home or foster care situation who is then arrested for the offense of running away. And sometimes that looks like a girl who is engaging in substance abuse to cope with the years of trauma. And in the most extreme cases, it looks like what happened to Bresha Meadows, what happened to Cyntoia Brown — in the case that they were actually forced to take more extreme measures to protect themselves as a result of society essentially failing them.

And I think that it’s not a coincidence that the whole issue of Cyntoia Brown has made a kind of resurgence during the wake of these “me too” disclosures because I think it shows what “me too” looks like for some of our most vulnerable girls.”

To listen to the whole interview, click here.

Washington, D.C. – Rights4Girls, a human rights organization working to end gender-based violence against vulnerable young women and girls in the United States, applauds the release of Latesha Clay, a victim of child exploitation whose initial sentence was a clear miscarriage of justice. Rights4Girls Executive Director Yasmin Vafa issued the following statement announcing Latesha Clay’s release from custody:

“One year ago, 15-year-old Latesha Clay was sentenced to nine years in adult prison. Today, Latesha walked out of court after having spent over a year appealing her case. Latesha’s case garnered national attention because as facts about her case began to unfold, it became clear that she had been the victim of extensive abuse, neglect, and exploitation and that her initial sentence was a clear miscarriage of justice.

Latesha’s charges stem from an incident in which two adult men were robbed in a hotel room after responding to a sex ad on Backpage.com. When the men arrived at the hotel to meet 15-year-old Latesha, two other individuals robbed them. As a result, Latesha was charged with robbery and sentenced as an adult.

Upon further investigation by Michigan’s State Appellate Defender Office, it became clear that throughout her life, Latesha had been exposed to extreme trauma and exploitation that interrupted her education, forced her and her two small children into homelessness, and delayed her emotional and intellectual ability to understand her victimization and access safety. To make matters worse, Latesha was incarcerated in an adult correctional facility which required her to be held in isolation, separate from the adult inmates.

Fortunately, due to the zealous advocacy of her incredible team of appellate attorneys from Michigan’s State Appellate Defender Office, Dykema Gossett PLLC, and child trafficking experts from University of Michigan Law School’s Human Trafficking Clinic, today Latesha’s initial convictions were vacated and she was released from custody. Having pled guilty to lesser charges, she will continue to be supervised by the court but will have the opportunity to live in the community and obtain the services that will allow her to heal from a lifetime of trauma and care for her two small children.

Like too many girls across the country, Latesha fell victim to the abuse to prison pipeline that criminalizes girls for their experiences of violence and trauma. Instead of being seen as a victim of crime, Latesha was punished and ultimately criminalized for her exploitation. Today, Rights4Girls celebrates her release and applauds the unrelenting efforts of her advocates to ensure that Latesha did not become a victim of the pipeline, but that she receive the services and support she needs and deserves.”

Rights4Girls commends the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation’s recent report and examination of Backpage.com for its role in facilitating child sex trafficking. The Subcommittee’s report findings are beyond troubling and suggest that Backpage has played a much more significant role than previously believed by editing ads to remove words such as “schoolgirl,”or “amber alert” that strongly indicate child exploitation, instead of removing or reporting such ads. The Subcommittee’s findings make clear that this is not about attacking civil liberties—it’s about holding bad actors accountable for the harm they cause our most vulnerable children,” says Rights4Girls Executive Director Yasmin Vafa. “For years, survivors and their families have urged lawmakers to examine Backpage.com’s role in perpetuating online exploitation. We are grateful to Senators Rob Portman and Claire McCaskill for leading these efforts to seek justice for the countless survivors exploited through Backpage.