Online Enticement: www.missingkids.org/theissues/onlineenticement

This involves any individual who communicates with a minor via the internet with the intent of committing a crime of sexual exploitation or abduction. This term can involve any of the following criminal acts:

• Sextortion – where a child is groomed to provide sexually explicit images and carry out a face-to-face sexual encounter
• Engaging in online sexual conversations
• Selling and/or trading minor’s sexually explicit images

The following act can occur on a number of media platforms including:

• All types of social media
• Messaging Apps
• Gaming platforms

What to look out for if you think your child is being enticed online:

• Engaging in sexual conversation/role playing as a grooming method, rather than a goal
• Asking the child for sexually explicit images and vice versa
• Developing a rapport through online compliments, likes and shared interests
• Sending or offering personal explicit images
• Lying about their age – often pretending to be younger
• Offering incentives including:
  • Money/food
  • Alcohol/drugs
  • Hotel accommodations/transportation

Child Trafficking Response Unit 2018: Harm Reduction Information

The Harm reduction model was put into place to reduce the overall impact on dangerous/risky behavior over a period of time as opposed to the immediate elimination of those behaviors. The use of this model helps build safety and identifies the support network available to a young person who has been exploited.

“Utilizing a harm reduction approach This creates a tension with the acknowledges that change is helping professions—social workers, difficult, and that it may take a mental health clinicians, and period of time before a youth is probation officers, among others— willing or able to leave an exploitive whose objective is to protect and situation.”

– Child Trafficking Response Unit

The Harm Reduction Model addresses the following risky behavior factors often present in exploitive situations:

• Limited resources
• Unsafe relationships
• Substance use
• Risky sexual encounters
• Running away

*Note: The focus is placed on the above factors as opposed to focusing on the exclusively on the exploitation itself.

“Harm reduction is essentially a language that programs and providers must learn to speak in order for every aspect of youth engagement to be rooted in its principles.”

– Child Trafficking Response Unit

 

When youth are in imminent danger they may be forceably removed from the situation – Here are a few ways to use the harm reduction approach during this process:

• Have open honest conversations with regards to why they are being moved, this allows them to feel part of the decision process eliminating the threat of feeling forced into doing it.
• Ensure systems of care so that the youth doesn’t feel deprived of the needs the prior exploitation was fulfilling.
• Recognition and affirmation are key even when there is the slightest positive step forward.
• Redefine success but rather allow the youth to give you their definition of what that looks like.

“Harm reduction assists in building up a young person’s self-sufficiency and empowers them to be the primary practitioners of their own life.” – Child Trafficking Response Unit

There are three factors that are essential for better engagement with youth:

• Training
  • Practitioners need direct support, coaching and guidance from their superiors to effectively employ this strategy
• Learning
  • There must be a consistent approach across disciplines to ensure better engagement with youth and work against factors that may cause the youth to further retreat into their exploitive situations and disengage from services.
• Discussion
  • Key stakeholders will be provided with harm reduction materials to be disseminated by steering committees who will be responsible for encouraging the development of harm reduction policies and procedures within interagency protocols.

Below are samples of practical strategies from subject matter experts on how their agency has adopted and employed the harm reduction strategy to be used as a guide on how to implement the strategy within their specific roles:

Classified as any child under the age of 18 who is missing or has run away on their own accord. This population of minors is extremely vulnerable and often become homelessness. The most common risk factors for runaway minors include the following:

• Prior missing incidents
• Drug/ Alcohol abuse
• Mental Illness including suicidal thoughts and self-harm
• Child sex trafficking
• Unattended medical conditions including special needs and unplanned pregnancies
• Gang involvement
• Online Enticement

The community can help reduce endangered runaways by:

• Become a partner that provides resources and education to help protect families and minors
• Support victims and their families by offering:
  • Counseling
  • Interventions
  • Mental health services
  • Support groups
• Raise awareness by:
  • Visiting website with missing child posters
  • Signing up for missing child alerts with organizations like The Adam Program

• National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
• Downloadable PDF: Autism Wandering Tips

Misinformation is dangerous, and in the age of the internet and social media, it can spread fast! When it comes to child trafficking, it’s important to know and share the FACTS. Help us squash the myths and stop child trafficking in Ventura County.

Myth: Child trafficking always involves kidnapping and/or violence. Fact: Child trafficking does not always involve kidnapping or violence. In fact, kidnapping is rare. Many human traffickers employ psychological means such as manipulation, trickery or threats to coerce victims into providing commercial sex or exploitative labor.

Myth: Traffickers target victims they don’t know. Fact: Victims and survivors have been trafficked and abused by people they know and trust such as a neighbor, teacher, coach, mentor, youth leader or even family members, such as a parent, sibling, grandparent, aunt, or uncle.

Myth: Social media and tabloid stories about sex trafficking (including fabrication) help to raise awareness. Fact: Sensationalizing stories is dangerous as it spreads misinformation and encourages misidentification.

Myth: Only girls are victims and survivors of sex trafficking. Fact: Boys are also victims and survivors of sex trafficking, and those that identify as LGBTQ are seen as particularly vulnerable.

Myth: Children in active trafficking situations always want help getting out. Fact: There are many reasons why victims may not seek help. In some instances, victims lack the ability to physically get out—such as transportation or a safe place to live. Others are ashamed or afraid for their safety. Some victims have been so effectively manipulated that they do not identify as being controlled by another person.

Myth: Child trafficking only happens overseas. Fact: Child trafficking occurs in major cities and small towns around the world, including Ventura County.

Myth: Trafficked minors are always held captive against their will (e.g., duct taped in a basement). Fact: Victims are very rarely held physically against their will. Most commonly, they are controlled mentally and emotionally.

Myth: Human trafficking only happens in person. Fact: According to THORN, more than 70% of sex trafficking happens online. Predators often target minors on social media, chat rooms, and gaming websites (Common Sense Media). These predators will sometimes attempt to seduce vulnerable adolescents by appearing caring and considerate, pose as other teens in an attempt to obtain sexual material, and find public photos of minors online to spread around and then target them.

Myth: Child trafficking only happens in illegal or underground industries. Fact: Child trafficking can and does occur in industries such as catering and restaurants, garment and textiles, agriculture or horticulture, construction, cleaning services, health and beauty services and more. 

Myth: All child trafficking involves sex. Fact: Though there is much more awareness around sex trafficking in the U.S., experts believe that there are actually more incidences of labor trafficking worldwide.   

Sources:

https://www.thorn.org/, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ and https://polarisproject.org/myths-facts-and-statistics/

• Human Trafficking in America’s Schools Complete Downloadable Guide
• Human Trafficking in America’s Schools Website

A Guide for Caregivers to Prevent Child Trafficking