By Linda A Smith Samantha Healy Vardaman Melissa A Snow

72Shared Hope Internationalrestrict the much needed long-term care. In order to reduce re-victimization and aid in full restoration,service and shelter to child victims of sex trafficking should be provided consistently, at least through their18th birthday, as with other child sexual abuse victims.Child protective services (CPS) interactions with domestic minor sex trafficking victims.Confusion over the Mandate of CPSDomestically trafficked minors have experienced both abuse and neglect; however, most CPS workersstate that unless the perpetrator is a family member or “caregiver,” their mandate does not allow them tobecome involved. There are several problems with this often cited complication:1. Even when the trafficker is not a family member, minors are often vulnerable to victimization dueto parental neglect.2. Though the definition of “caregiver” varies from state to state, traffickers have taken control andcare over the child for extended periods of time through the pimp control dynamic. Many statedefinitions would allow for a trafficker to be defined as a caregiver if child protective services choseto address it.3. Taking into account the vast number of domestic minor sex trafficking victims that have historiesof familial abuse, these children either have already had contact with child protective services orshould have but did not.In addition, CPS agencies reported large caseload and limited resources resulting in a highly structuredprioritization process of the complaints received for investigation and action. Several CPS staff reportedthat youth over 15 years old are deemed to be sufficiently capable of calling for help if abuse occursagain; this in spite of the mandate to protect all children under 18 years of age and in spite of abusehaving been reported already. This de facto emancipation of minors is detrimental for victims ofdomestic minor sex trafficking, many of whom fall within this unprotected range of 15 to 18 years ofage. Assessments in many locations found that CPS workers often choose to narrowly interpret theirmandate resulting in significant confusion over whose responsibility it is to provide protection, shelter, andservices to domestically trafficked minors. With different entities unequivocally stating that it is “not theirresponsibility,” these child victims are left without the safety net CPS is intended to provide.Intake Categories Misidentify Domestic Minor Sex TraffickingThe majority of CPS caseworkers interviewed for the assessments were not familiar with humantrafficking terminology or laws; however, they were keenly aware of the situation of one type of domesticminor sex trafficking primarily: familial prostitution. The misidentification of a child sex trafficking victimexploited through familial prostitution is a reflection of the lack of training on child sex trafficking andthe failure of the intake process to include identifiers of domestic minor sex trafficking. CPS agenciesin each state have their own protocols and management; the intake process varies, but most proceduresdictate that allegations are categorized broadly with specifics of the abuse recorded separately in anarrative section. For example, a hotline call reporting a family member selling sex with their child toa landlord typically would be identified in the report as “sexual abuse.” This general categorizationprevents statistics to be calculated for disaggregated types of abuse, such as familial prostitution, becausethe narrative section would not populate the statistics. As a result, information on the prevalence of