By: Linda A. Smith Samantha Healy Vardaman Melissa A. Snow

The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children 31
minor, suggesting an exploitive relationship based on the age difference alone. 97
According to statistics from the National Runaway Switchboard, between 1.6 and 2.8 million children run
away from home each year. Traffi ckers, as well as buyers, strategically prey upon runaway children because of
their mental, physical, and fi nancial vulnerability (inability to secure jobs due to transient nature and age).
Various factors leave youth vulnerable to traffi ckers.
The primary factor of vulnerability is the child’s age. Pre-teen or adolescent girls are more susceptible
to the calculated advances, deception, and manipulation tactics used by traffi cker/pimps — no youth is
exempt from falling prey to these tactics. Traffi ckers/pimps target locations where they know that youth
are going to be — schools, malls, parks, even shelters and group homes. Often, their primary method of
manipulation is to secure a seemingly loving and caring relationship with the youth to establish trust and
allegiance. Traffi ckers/pimps will often invest a signifi cant amount of time and effort to establish this
foundational relationship. The more time they invest in the romance period the more tightly they can
psychologically bind the victim, similar to domestic violence exercised on a child’s vulnerable mentality.
This “romantic” period ensures that as the relationship deteriorates to abuse and exploitation the youth
will remain loyal and hopeful that someday the loving relationship will return.
Any child can become a traffi cking victim, and domestically traffi cked minors are diverse in terms of
ethnicity, age, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and gender. However, traffi ckers are particularly
able to take advantage of certain specifi c life-characteristics that leave holes in a child’s social and
emotional safety net. Youth who come from dysfunctional families in which there was abuse or trauma are
particularly vulnerable to a traffi cker’s/pimp’s method of recruitment and control.
“We’ve seen young girls being exploited and there’s no common thread as far as black, white, Asian,
upper, upper-middle class, lower-middle class, poor house home, single, double. That varies.” 98
— Sergeant Ernest Britton, Child Exploitation Unit, Atlanta Police Department
History of Abuse
A history of abuse is another commonly cited vulnerability that puts youth at greater risk for exploitation.
Both law enforcement and social services have found this commonality among victims of domestic minor
sex traffi cking. For example, the Letot Center, a juvenile justice facility in Dallas, Texas, geared towards
the restoration of commercially sexually exploited children, found that 93 to 95% of commercially
exploited children had been previously physically and sexually abused. 99 Likewise, WestCare Nevada, a
shelter for youth in Las Vegas, found that 71% of domestic minor sex traffi cking victims had been sexually
97 Shared Hope International and WestCare Nevada case review study (2006). Data on fi le with authors.
98 Prostituted Children in the United States: Identifying and Responding to America’s Traffi cked Youth, Seg. 2. Prod. Shared Hope
International and Onanon Productions. DVD. Washington, D.C.: Shared Hope International, 2008.
99 Remarks by B. Fassett. Shared Hope International National Training Conference on the Sex Traffi cking of America’s Youth.
Transcript on fi le with authors.