Last week The New York Times published the second and last article in their series on runaway children and brought to light the connection between the economic recession and the proliferation of sex trafficking. With a job market that is increasingly exiling not only legitimate careers but especially the unskilled labor of teenagers, more and more children bear the brunt of their parents’ frustration through abuse or are evicted because of rising costs of living. After detailing the process by which these runaway children eventually arrive in police stations as criminals despite their victimization, the article concludes with the chilling suggestion that a new police unit in Dallas has found an effective method of helping the children and prosecuting the pimps but issues of government funding prevent its implementation across the nation.

Here’s how it works. Terrible home life exacerbated by increased financial pressure compels children as young as ten years old to runaway. These runaways are too young to care for themselves by legitimate means (ex. holding a part-time job, which is not up for hire in this economy regardless of their age), are afraid of law enforcement because they don’t want to be sent home, and therefore become vulnerable to pimps that offer the security of clothes, food, shelter, and relationships. First, sex presents itself in the “normal” context of a boyfriend relationship with the pimp. Then it escalates into sex with the pimp’s friends and finally crystallizes into sex for money with any paying client. The progression of this abusive, convoluted relationship is controlled by the pimp, who calculates the timing for maximum tractability. Although some pimps are even forthright enough to tell the children they are pimps, their vulnerable situation will not necessarily mean they can act in response to that information. The children are legally a great risk for the pimp to assume, but the dividends in their marketability usually pay off. To paraphrase one pimp quoted in the article, sex is too valuable to give away for free in the context of a relationship—especially when you have no other resource on which to establish your income.

Even if police succeed in bringing in a prostitute in for questioning, they have great difficulty in getting her to “flip” on their pimp. The longer the life on the street, the more cemented the relationship—even when it incorporates violent behavior. Additionally, the police have no resources for taking care of these victims when they are unwilling to become a witness for the prosecution:

“If a 45-year-old man had sex with a 14-year-old girl and no money changed hands, she was likely to get counseling and he was likely to get jail time for statutory rape, Sergeant Fassett said. If the same man left $80 on the table after having sex with her, she would probably be locked up for prostitution and he would probably go home with a fine as a john.”

Sergeant Fassett then designed a unit that could intercept these victims on more minimal criminal terms and handle them as what they are: High Risk Victims. He made the connection between runaways and sexual exploitation explicit and approached the problem from a new angle that allowed the law to intervene on the victim’s behalf. The Dallas Police Department documented tremendous success in picking up prostitutes for minor crimes like truancy, establishing a trusting relationship with them while they are in counseling, and eventually partnering with them to prosecute the pimps.

The article concludes, however, by sharing that this success has yet to be duplicated anywhere else because federal funding disputes are crippling the reorganization of police departments to accommodate this program.

At the outset, we are reminds us that “Atlanta [is] one of the only cities where local officials have tried to keep data on the problem.” But an abundance of data without effective action does not move children off the street and into safety. The new human trafficking hot line established in Atlanta is one more step toward implementing action, but securing the financial resources necessary for large-scale operations remains a hurdle for the fight against human trafficking. Fighting the most lucrative business in the world demands investing our own capital.

What are YOUR thoughts on financing the fight against human trafficking? Government-funded police units seem to be effective because of Sergeant Fassett’s new categorization of “high risk victim,” but with national security and health care issues pulling much of the country’s attention (and capital) away from domestic concerns, how can we alert people to the need and then appropriate financial resources toward enabling our communities to engage in this battle? Should we rely on federal funding? If not, what other avenues of finance could be tapped?

--Author: Jessica Reis
--Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/us/27runaways.html
“Running in the Shadows: For Runaways, Sex Buys Survival”
by Ian Urbina
published: The New York Times, October 26, 2009
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