ABSTRACT
Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Sex Trafficking of Foster Children and Youth: Experiences that increase a child’s emotional or physical vulnerability can also be risk factors for commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. These experiences include a history of neglect or abuse, intimate partner violence, low self-esteem, poverty, child welfare involvement and foster care placement. These vulnerable youth may be lured into a sex trafficking situation using promises, psychological coercion, alcohol and/or substance use, threats and violence. This chapter examines the disproportionate involvement in sex trafficking of youth who were maltreated as children; differentiates the needs and problems between child sexual abuse and victims of human trafficking; reviews and critiques child welfare’s current response and treatment practices; and provides a framework for developing an effective child welfare response to trafficking including practice and policy recommendations.
