Child Trafficking and The Foster Care System

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

Human trafficking is a $150 billion “industry” that profits from selling human beings for the purposes of sex slavery, labor, or even humans selling their organs for profit due to exploitation. This project is focused on sex slavery of children that come from the foster care system. Sex trafficking is defined as “The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, soliciting, or advertising of a person for a commercial sex act, in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.” There are many things that put children at risk of being trafficked such as poverty, having low self-esteem, running away from an abusive family—including foster families, being “thrown away” by their families (e.g., kicked out for being gay, etc.), being tricked on social media into thinking they’ve been given a modeling gig or another job that is too good to be true, and being “boyfriended in.” This project focuses specifically on those children that have been trafficked out of the foster care system and why they are at an increased risk of being sex trafficked.

Authors

• Isabel Mendez, Dalton State College

• Natalie Johnson, Dalton State College