Stopping the Foster Care to Child Trafficking Pipeline

The crisis of child trafficking and exploitation in the U.S. is finally capturing our attention. But a critical part of the story has not been told. Most of the children who are being bought and sold for sex in our nation are foster care children. In the states that are tracking these children the following, devastating numbers reveal that:

• In 2013, 60 percent of the child sex trafficking victims recovered as part of a FBI nationwide raid from over 70 cities were children from foster care or group homes.
• In 2012, Connecticut reported 88 child victims of sex trafficking. Eighty-six were child welfare involved, and most reported abuse while in foster care or residential placement.
• In 2012, Los Angeles County, California reported that of the 72 commercially sexually exploited girls in their Succeed Through Achievement and Resilience (STAR) Court Program, 56 were child-welfare involved.
• In 2007, New York City identified 2,250 child victims of trafficking. Seventy-five percent of those experienced some contact with the child welfare system, mostly in the context of abuse and neglect proceedings.

Our very broken foster care system has become a supply chain to traffickers.  (more...)

Stopping the Foster Care to Child Trafficking Pipeline