Child Sexual Exploitation

Next month, Los Angeles County’s child protection department plans to shut down two centers meant to serve as children’s first stop on their traumatic journeys into foster care. The Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) says that the closure of the so-called Children’s Welcome Center and Youth Welcome Center – little more than three years after the first was opened – is an appropriate response to a state lawsuit, and good for children.

By the time youth are referred to WestCoast Children’s Clinic for mental health services to help them heal from commercial sexual exploitation, it has likely been going on for years. Despite their having interacted with child welfare, juvenile justice, school, or health care systems, for many of these youth, the fact that they are being trafficked, or sold for sex, has gone unnoticed by professionals in a position to help them.

On a late winter evening about three years ago, Barbara Hernandez stood in front of half a dozen members of the Riley Elementary School Parent Teacher Association in Long Beach, Calif.