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New Post has been published on http://www.globalnewsy.com/world-news/2013/04/21/stronger-action-vital-to-halt-child-sex-trafficking-opinion/391/

Stronger action vital to halt child sex trafficking: Opinion

Kevin Ryan, president and CEO of Covenant House International, urges the government to take stronger action to protect victims of child sex trafficking. Ed Murray/The Star-Ledger

By Kevin M. Ryan

Child sex trafficking is much more prevalent in our country than most people would like to believe. The FBI estimates 100,000 children are sold for sex in the United States, and four out of five of these young victims are U.S. citizens, not shipped here from another country.

Across the country at our Covenant House shelters for homeless kids, there is an all too common story that leads a young person to being forced into sex slavery — a teenager who is homeless or estranged from his or her family is picked up at a train station or on the streets and then is offered some form of security or safety, which eventually ends up being in return for forced sex labor.

During the past two years, Covenant House and Fordham University surveyed hundreds of homeless youths in New York City. The results of that study, which will be released later this year, show almost half of the youths interviewed who had engaged in commercial sex activity said the main reason for their initial entry into prostitution was because they lacked a safe place to sleep.

What is striking about these results is just how similar the New York teenagers’ stories are to accounts I heard last summer when I visited our safe houses for trafficked children in Nicaragua and Honduras. In both Latin America and the United States, young people recounted how pimps lurk in bus stations, fast-food restaurants and other places where vulnerable youths congregate to lure them into prostitution by promising basic essentials they lack: food, clothes, shelter and love.

It was much the same for the two young victims we stood with early this month in a Canadian courtroom to hear the verdicts read in the first-ever human trafficking prosecution brought by Toronto police. Their exploitation and suffering resulted from a lack of options in their lives. That story is repeated over and over among the 61,000 young people Covenant House reaches across the Americas each year.

Early this month I joined advocates, law enforcement leaders and senior Obama administration officials for the White House’s inaugural Forum on Human Trafficking. The event was billed as an opportunity to strengthen our national fight to end slavery and, as the day progressed, it became plain certain critical steps must be taken now to prevent as many youths as possible from suffering childhoods of abuse, exploitation and forced sexual or labor servitude.

First, state and federal agencies need to train more police and social workers on the frontlines to identify human trafficking. Nevada and Nebraska recently became just the seventh and eighth states to make available to state police the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s new, interactive online training program to help law enforcement detect human trafficking.

More states must follow their lead. During her tenure, former New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram ensured that law enforcement officers and child welfare workers began receiving specialized training to recognize the signs of human trafficking — in short, to determine if a prostituted person is a minor or is being compelled to sell sex through “force, fraud or coercion.”

With such training, police officers are more likely to present trafficking victims with help, rather than handcuffs. Enhanced training will continue to be important in New Jersey as the State Police continue their massive preparations for an anticipated uptick in advertised commercial sexual advertising of trafficked persons, including children, in connection with the 2014 Super Bowl.

Second, many more states need to enact Safe Harbor Laws ensuring that prostituted minors are not arrested, and instead are sheltered and helped to escape the bonds of sex slavery. Up until just five years ago, in every state in the nation, minors arrested for selling sex were treated as offenders and frequently sent to jail.

That began to change when New York passed the nation’s first Safe Harbor Law in 2008. Since then, nearly a dozen states have followed suit. In Kentucky, for example, minors who violate prostitution laws receive immunity, and those who are charged with loitering or violating curfews are referred to child welfare services rather than to the courts if they are suspected of being trafficked.

Third, states need to provide resources to help trafficking victims escape the circumstances that led to their enslavement. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) has noted that as of 2010, fewer than 50 beds were available nationally for the 100,000 children caught up in the commercial sex trade. While some states provide safe houses for rescued survivors, in most cases they are subject to the availability of funding. With almost $9 million available in funds from the federal government, in part through the newly reauthorized Trafficking Victims Protection Act, such statewide programs should become more common and more accessible.

Some states are helping fund these efforts by going after pimps and johns where it matters most: the wallet. In 2009, Nevada passed a bill that fines pimps convicted of trafficking 14- to 18-year-olds $100,000, while those selling children under 14 are fined $500,000. Connecticut is considering a bill that would freeze the assets of accused traffickers, and 11 other states are weighing laws that would allow for the forfeiture of assets used in the course of prostitution.

The needs of trafficked youths can be overwhelming: They often have few family ties and have fallen years behind in school. They need shelter, medical care and counseling. Given how difficult it is to escape prostitution, with many victims fearing for their lives if they try to escape, it is crucial that states and the federal government take up the cause of trafficking victims with more determination and focus, so these children and teenagers can have the bright, safe futures they deserve.

Kevin Ryan is president and CEO of Covenant House International, a nonprofit charity serving trafficked and homeless youth with a network of shelters across six countries. He previously served as New Jersey’s first child advocate and first commissioner of children and families.