By Linda A Smith Samantha Healy Vardaman Melissa A Snow

The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children 7would ensure the classification as victim for the child.The pervasive misunderstanding of the definition of human trafficking at critical leadership levels offirst responder organizations and agencies across the nation is preventing progress in enforcement ofthe federal and state laws criminalizing the sex trafficking of domestic minors. Furthermore, the generalpublic has not yet come to understand that U.S. citizen and lawful permanent residents under age 18who are engaged in commercial sex acts are victims of trafficking. With vast misperception that humantrafficking requires movement of the victims across a border or a state line, many cases of domestic minorsex trafficking are going unrecognized and therefore undocumented as trafficking. This misperception isperpetuated by the continuing failure of the U.S. Congress to appropriate the funds authorized for servicesand shelter for domestic sex trafficking victims, though funding for victim services has been appropriatedfor services for the foreign-born human trafficking victims.Who are the Traffickers?Traffickers, also known as pimps, 11 are those persons who profit by receiving cash or other benefits inexchange for the sexual use of a minor by another person. Shared Hope International found familymembers, friends, and “boyfriends,” as well as strangers who befriend juveniles and come to dominatethem, operating as traffickers/pimps of minors in every location researched. Notably, minors inprostitution nearly always have a pimp — someone who they view as their protector but who in fact ismanaging and benefitting from the sexual exploitation of the child.The FBI apprehended a Missouri man at a Niagara Falls, New York, shopping center. He waswanted by authorities for sexually exploiting a girl through various means, including training herto become a dominatrix, over the course of more than five years starting when the girl was just12 years old. Authorities charged the man with seven felony counts of commercial sex traffickingof a minor in Missouri. The mother of the girl was also charged as actively complicit in the sextrafficking of her daughter. U.S. Attorney John F. Wood of Missouri noted that this case wasunprecedented because the mother was charged with sex trafficking her own child. 12A staff member at WestCare Nevada, a shelter for at-risk youth in Las Vegas, suggests that statisticsunderestimate the number of familial traffickers; potentially as many as 30% of domestically traffickedminors who receive services through WestCare Nevada are exploited by family members. 13 Intervieweesfrom all 10 assessed locations recounted cases in which parents or guardians have acted as traffickers/pimps; however, there was a stated reluctance and/or lack of awareness to view such exploitation as sextrafficking. This was particularly true when there was a non-monetary exchange as part of the transaction,such as a mother allowing a person to have sex with her daughter for drugs. 1411These two terms are used interchangeably when discussing the commercial sexual exploitation of children as, under federallaw, any person profiting through the commercial sexual exploitation of a child (under the age of 18) is defined as a humantrafficker.12U.S. Department of Justice Office of the United States Attorney Western District of Missouri Press Release, May 12, 2008.http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/mow/news2008/barkau.ind.htm. Accessed on April 9, 2009. Also, Charlton, B. “Man, womanindicted in sale of child for sex acts.” The Associated Press. May 13, 2008.13Kennedy and Pucci, Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Assessment Report — Las Vegas, Nevada, pg.106.14Struble, Linda. Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Assessment Report — San Antonio, Texas, (Shared Hope International:May 2008), pg. 42.