Newsletter: Spring 2006: Homegrown Trafficking

Rachel Lloyd Enlarge in a new window

Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) is the only agency in New York with specific services for sexually exploited young women. We invited Rachel Lloyd, GEMS Executive Director, to discuss the issue of domestic trafficking.

Mention the issue of the comercial sexual exploitation of youth, and many are quick to point fingers to such places as Thailand and the Philippines. Yet right here in the United States, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 American adolescents are commercially sexually exploited annually, according to a 2001 University of Pennsylvania study. Statistics show that as many as 90% of prostituted youth have been sexually or physically abused. Many have run away from home to escape such abuse only to encounter far worse on the streets.

While there has been a dramatic increase in the attention and funding given to trafficking programs, domestic youth continue to be largely ignored in the legislation, funding and services covered by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Distinctions are made between poor 'children' abroad and poor 'youth' in the US, and even at home between middle-class 'victims' and lowincome, predominately young women of color who are viewed as willing participants in prostitution.

Hard data for sexual exploitation in New York City is scarce and ranges in the extremes from an unsubstantiated estimate from a non-profit that 5,000 adolescents are used in prostitution daily. The number of individuals under age 18 charged with prostitution climbed over five years from 74 in 1997 to 212 in 2002 - a 187% increase at a time when overall prostitution arrests in New York City have dropped. As the only social service provider in New York City specifically providing services to young women involved in sexual exploitation, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, GEMS, has seen its referrals increase dramatically and the average age of its participants drop from 17-19 in 1999 to 14-16 today. Domestic girls are trafficked from area to area and state to state, although this is rarely recognized as trafficking per se. A well-established trafficking route brings girls up and down the East Coast, often depending on the warm weather in various locations. Contrary to being viewed as victims, sexually exploited young women are seen as criminals or delinquents, and as willing participants in their own abuse. It is indicative of the double standards inherent in current attitudes towards domestic sexually exploited youth, that in
New York a young person under the age of seventeen cannot legally give informed consent to sexual contact, yet if the young person is deemed as a 'prostitute' then not only is she/he believed able to give consent, but will also be charged with a violation or misdemeanor.

Sexually exploited girls and young women need a vast array of services and support in order to make safe and healthy transitions. They are not just exposed to violence in their homes and communities but endure some of the most brutal and heinous acts of physical and sexual violence daily. For most of the girls GEMS serves, violence and abuse has permeated their entire short lives.

Rachel Lloyd is the Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) Executive Director. [more]

← previous article | next article →