Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

Yordi, 20, is wan after a harrowing escape from horrors in his home country, Honduras. It is mid-July. He sits in a corporate ICE detention facility in rural Folkston, Georgia, staring into a computer screen that connects him to his 29-year-old brother Suamhirs Piraino-Guzman, thousands of miles away in Seattle.

Much of the advocacy and public health response to commercial sex and exploitation is focused on the victims, the majority of whom are female. But there is another way to address the issue, and that is to reduce demand by intervening with the pursuers of paid sex, a group almost entirely made up of men.

Nola Brantley is a sex trafficking survivor and advocate in California. Even though she primarily works with girls and young women, Brantley is concerned about another hidden demographic of trafficked children: boys and trans youth.

New Mexico’s Judge John J. Romero, Jr. has accepted an appointment on the National Advisory Committee on the Sex Trafficking of Children and Youth in the United States. In this role, outlined in the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2014, Romero will advise the Attorney General, the Secretary of the U.S.

In foster care most of her life, 17-year-old Amber* finally found a little stability at R.I.S.E. House. After cycling through 35 foster and group homes, she developed relationships at R.I.S.E. and was poised to graduate from high school.

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.