Every year, federal and state governments pour millions of dollars into combatting sex trafficking through local and federal law enforcement agencies. But the emerging link between the child welfare system and child sex trafficking in the United States underscores the need for a new tactic, one that addresses the social origins of child sex trafficking.

At the end of July, the FBI’s Innocence Lost initiative, the wing of the agency tasked with addressing domestic child sex trafficking, conducted its annual three-day Operation Cross Country. During these 72 hours, federal agents across the country “recover” juvenile victims from sexual exploitation and arrest their exploiters. This year, the agency boasts that it saved 105 children and arrested 152 pimps. According to U.S. law, anyone under 18 and involved in the sex trade is considered sexually trafficked.

However, what happens to those who are “rescued” is unclear. Whether the children are placed in juvenile justice proceedings or the Department of Social Services, the story of the rescue mission as the FBI tells it ends when the handcuffs go on—often both on the exploited young person as well as his or her exploiter. (A video montage of Operation Cross Country VII accompanies the FBI’s press release.)

Julianne Sohn, spokesperson for the San Francisco division of the FBI, explained to AlterNet that the agency couldn’t account for what happens to the youth after they are “recovered” because local law enforcement agencies have varying policies on how to handle teens.

“If you’re 17 years old and sex-trafficked in New York you are literally a victim and a criminal at the same time,” Chrystal DeBoise told AlterNet. DeBoise is the co-director of the New York-based Sex Workers Project, an organization advocates for both sex workers and trafficking victims.

The Sex Workers Project has helped to decriminalize individuals who have been sex trafficked and charged with prostitution by successfully lobbying for the Vacating Convictions Law, passed in 2010 in New York, which allows a trafficked individual to have her record cleared.

But DeBoise notes there is still a long way to go: “Over 50 percent of our clients are trafficked and they tell us that the arrests were some of the most traumatizing parts of their trafficking experience.”

“It’s shocking to believe that you could be trafficked and for the rest of your life you have a prostitution record,” DeBoise said. “It is shocking.”

These FBI sweeps also result in the netting of adult sex workers. The data for Operation Cross Country in the Bay Area reveals that while its ostensible focus is to rescue child victims, the program results in a markedly higher arrest rate for adult sex workers: for the 12 children rescued, 65 sex workers were arrested in the Bay Area alone. During Operation Cross Country in 2008, the FBI recovered 47 juveniles while arresting 518 prostitutes.

Prioritizing criminal justice proceedings to combat child sex-trafficking has resulted in a paucity of services devoted to helping children most vulnerable to sexual exploitation: those in foster care. Depending on the city, 50 to 80 percent of child victims are or have been involved in this part of the child welfare system. The correlation has led many advocates to argue that funding needs to be redirected away from law enforcement and toward social services that are designed to work with traumatized children.

“People are beginning to realize that juvenile justice is not appropriate to serve sexually exploited children. People are frustrated that those kids are going to the criminal justice system rather than the foster care system, which is designed to help kids,” Kate Walker, from the National Center for Youth Law, told AlterNet. Earlier this year, Walker authored a publication for the California Child Welfare Council examining the needs of victimized children and how the welfare system should address them.

Southern California Congresswoman Karen Bass has proposed legislation to the House of Representatives that she hopes will address the cyclical relationship between foster care and child sexual exploitation. In April she reintroduced Strengthening the Child Welfare Response to Human Trafficking Act (SCWRHT) that had died in committee last year. (After being elected to Congress in 2010, Bass co-founded the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth and has since been a strong advocate for extending services to foster youth.)

SCWRHT would establish training programs so child welfare agencies could better detect children at risk of becoming victims and respond to those who have already been traumatized and victimized. The legislation would also extend services to trafficking victims up to the age of 21.

Bass has distinguished herself by focusing on the social roots of sex trafficking, rather than investing in law enforcement and tougher penalties. Explaining why she voted against last November’s Proposition 35, which increases fines and penalties for convicted human traffickers, she said: “I worry that just like with Three Strikes, when there is a horrific crime we come up with an extreme response and the net gets cast too wide.”

“It’s not my focus to increase penalty, because I am also worried about the pimps.” According to one case study, approximately 25 percent of pimps come out of the child welfare system.

In 1990—fourteen years before she would make the transition to electoral politics—Bass founded and directed Community Coalition, a grassroots organization based in South Los Angeles dedicated to strengthening black and latino communities ravaged by economic injustice, the War on Drugs, and poor quality schools.

After being elected to Congress in 2010, Bass co-founded the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth and has since been a strong advocate for extending services to foster youth.

Like Bass, Kate Walker believes that with reform, the child welfare system has the potential to serve as a support network to child victims. “I think the child welfare system has a ways to go in terms of setting itself up to adequately serve these children, like prevention curriculum that includes teaching about exploitation, healthy relationships and ways to protect yourself.”

But while advocates may agree that improving the child welfare system is essential to addressing child sex trafficking, there is persistent ambivalence among policy advocates on whether locking up sexually exploited children is necessary in order to save them.

“There is a big divide in the field: should we be locking kids up or should we meet them where they’re at and provide them what they need,” says DeBoise.

Bass’ bill would create “specialized, long-term residential facilities or safe havens serving children who are human trafficking victims.”

One such safe house in Florida was forced to shut down within weeks of opening after one girl left the grounds and was raped. This recent tragic incident has led some legislators and social workers in Florida to conclude that it may be necessary to keep the premises of safe houses locked so that inhabitants cannot leave freely.

However, as DeBoise points out, “We don’t consider locking up any other victim the way we do with this population. It wouldn’t occur to us that we should lock up a victim of, say, domestic violence, if she continued to go back to her abuser.”

“When looking at the population of runaway kids involved in prostitution, there’s a tendency to treat them as criminals and force them into care.”

Casting further doubt on the incarceration model, Walker notes that one method of rehabilitating victims of sexual exploitation in California has been to send them out of state, far away from their exploiters. “Some of these places are on top of a mountain so the kids can’t run. But then they are just exploited upon their return to their communities.”

“I want to look at providing more services in the communities from which they come, because those are the communities that need them. When kids run away [from foster care] they are doing so because we are not providing something that someone else is; we’re not adequately meeting their needs,” explains Walker.

Speaking as a psychotherapist, DeBoise argues it is essential that services enable the youths to opt into therapy and shelter of their own volition: “We need shelters that are open and that have a high level of sophistication in the staff. We need to acknowledge that people can leave and they can also come back. When we work with those principles, we are successful. It’s not a problem to keep our clients, they don’t run away.”

DeBoise urges people to look at the phenomenon of domestic sex trafficking as part of a larger picture: “I think the way to end trafficking is to take seriously poverty and its consequences, racism and its consequences, sexism and its consequences. Trafficking is at the intersection of all these things.”

This post was written by C. Silver.  For the original post, go to:  http://www.salon.com/2013/08/15/far_too_many_kids_move_from_foster_care_into_the_sex_trade_partner/

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

I was tasked with assessing a man regarding his sexual addiction.  

Unfortunately, his tale was all too familiar.  

As he sat across from me telling me that he is now considered a sexual offender and must register with the local police every time he moves, he started to unfold his story.  He told me that he had found his Dad's stash of Playboy and Hustler magazines when he was just eight years old.  

That is a bad sign...  The earlier a man is exposed to porn the greater are his chances that he will become addicted and the greater are his chances of getting into legal trouble.

The more he looked at porn, the more he wanted to look at porn.  (Interesting cycle, don't you think?)  The more he looked at porn, the more he fantasized about doing what he was watching on the porn movies.  

The more he watched porn, the less developed his social skills became.  This happens because porn causes a man to be selfish and just think about his own pleasure.  Friendships are unnecessary.  Girls are unnecessary because the girls in porn movies and magazines are always accessible and there for a man's pleasure.

It's a terrible cycle that entraps a man.  He wants to approach girls but fears rejection.  He wants to do the things he fantasizes about but he fears she will say no.  Finally, his isolation led him to frustration and he decided he would act upon some of his fantasies.  

A really weird thing about men addicted to porn is that they think that women are turned on by seeing male genitalia.  The porn that men watch gives a terribly distorted perspective of sexuality.  In actuality, women are more attracted to an intimate relationship than the male physique.

This man started to act upon his fantasies from the porn that he had been viewing over the years.  

One of his fantasies was that he would "accidentally" leave his zipper down and a woman would notice and become aroused.   He would walk around in grocery stores with his zipper down, fantasizing about his inevitable sexual encounter.  He was disappointed that no women noticed.

So, he developed another plan.  He decided that he would sit in his car close to the exits of stores with his pants open and hope that women would see and become aroused.  That didn't work either.  

So, his next step would be to call women over to his car, "to ask a question" and hope that with his pants open, they would notice, be sexually aroused and want to be with him.   He continued to be very disappointed.

He thought, because of his distorted perspective of women and sexuality, that what women were wanting to see was that he was sexually aroused, that he was erect, ready for sex.  So, he would sit in his car and fantasize about a woman jumping into his car and they would drive to a secluded place for a sexual encounter.  

One morning, while he was sitting in his car masturbating and fantasizing, he rolled his window down and asked a woman to come over because he had a "question" he wanted to ask her.  She approached his car, looked at him and where his hand was and instantly became repulsed.  She noted his license plate and called the police when she got home.  

She made a report to the police and he was arrested and prosecuted.  His prosecution was made public, his family was embarrassed and he lost his job.  

As he finished his story, I asked, "have you gotten rid of your porn?"  I knew his answer would be "no."  I was right.  The court wanted recommendations at the end of my assessment.  My recommendations were necessary:  no cable tv, no vcr/dvd player, no internet, no smart phone, no porn.  If he was caught in possession of any of these items, he would go to prison.  Also, he needed intensive counseling.  If this failed, then he would need residential treatment.

However, when the judge found out that he had not given up his porn, he acted swiftly.  This man immediately went to prison.  

Wouldn't it be nice if all of my stories ended in a positive note?  

This is a depressing, disgusting story.

Porn wins.

"Behold, you have sinned against the LORD and be sure that your sin will find you out."

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

"Of all bad men, religious bad    
          men are the worst."  

This quote from C.S. Lewis in his book, Reflections on the Psalms, addresses an issue in the church that is frequently overlooked by Christians.  People who are not Christians have no trouble with this quote and believe it wholeheartedly.  However, in the church we tend to overlook bad behavior from our brothers.  Are our churches just some sort of fraternity where we overlook these "imperfections"?  God's Word states that individuals that wink,  to signal that one is in the club, to get away with something are dirty, rotten scoundrels.   Unfortunately, these men have crept into the church.  God's Word describes them as waterless springs and twice dead.

This week and next we will be discussing different personalities that are in positions of authority in the church.  Remember that the individuals in these posts are fictitious.  However, as we go thru some of the behaviors, you will recognize them as actual people that you have encountered in the church.  I know.  I have met each of these men.  You may even recognize yourself in some of these men. I know that I recognize elements of these men in my own personality and it concerns me.  If they are you, ask God to change you.  Only HE can give true, lasting change.

Here are some of the men we will be discussing:  The Histrionic Religious Bad Boy, The Narcissistic Religious Bad Boy,  The Anti-Social Religious Bad Boy, The Passive-Aggressive Religious Bad Boy, The Avoidant Religious Bad Boy, The Overscrupulous Religious Bad Boy and The Chaotic Religious Bad Boy.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

Though he looked the part, Daniel Walker was not a typical Western visitor to brothels in Asia.  Playing the part of a lonely tourist, Walker was actually an undercover agent investigating the sex trade industry in various locations around the globe.  Knowing his life would be in danger if he were exposed, Walker was moved by more than a paycheck.  In his book God in a Brothel, it becomes clear that Walker's overriding motivation to rescue girls and women trapped in this brutal form of slavery was God's great love for each and every one of them.  

Human trafficking is a present-day reality about which many of us would prefer not to think.  No modern invention, it was the situation in which God's people suffered under the rule of the Egyptians, enslaved to construct Egypt's buildings as forced laborers.  In the midst of their suffering -- just as in the midst of our own experiences of suffering -- it would have been tempting to give up hope in the God who had called them His own.  And yet, instead of relinquishing trust, the Hebrew people continued to cry out to God for deliverance for four hundred years.  The One who loved them heard their cries, saw their misery, and was concerned for their suffering.  

In the midst of suffering, it's tempting to believe that God does not care or that God has abandoned us.  The truth is that bodies which are used and abused, broken and beaten, matter deeply to God.  God does not turn away from the suffering of a young woman being trafficked for profit.  God does not ignore the cries of  the needy.  Rather, the One who used Moses to deliver His people out of captivity is the One to whom you can turn in the midst of your suffering.  

God sees your suffering and hears your cries.

This post is taken from Today in the Word, June 3, 2012.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

I just got a disturbing call from a good friend.  He told me that his son went missing in the middle of the nite.  He and his wife were frantic trying to find him.  Later, in the early morning, their son showed up on the doorstep.  This boy is a young teenager.

He and the police are putting pieces of the puzzle together to try and figure out what happened.  From what they can surmise, it appears that a man stole their boy right out of their house and sexually assaulted him.  

How did this happen?  My friend is an excellent father, he is diligent and watches over his children well.  How could a man come into their home and do this?  

Well, this creep came in thru their internet connection.  They are learning that this man made a friendship with their son thru chatrooms and other social media.  In fact, this predator specifically contacted this boy thru an app on his iPad.  This man won their son's confidence to the point where he walked out of their home into the car of the man waiting outside, in the middle of the night.

My friend and his wife have talked to their son about the internet, put in place the proper barriers and have done an excellent job at being great parents.  It's hard to believe that this sort of thing could happen in their home.

Why tell you this?

I am using this example as a warning to all parents and kids out there.  You can never be too careful.  You are NEVER alone on the internet.  People are not always what they appear to be on the internet.

As you finish reading this, please don't do these three things:
1)  Don't judge my friend.  He is an excellent father.
2)  Don't tell my friend what he should have done differently.
3)  Don't think that this could never happen to your family

As you finish reading this, please do these four things:
1) pray for my friend and his family as they get thru this horrible ordeal
2) pray that they find a good, competent, licensed Christian counselor
3) pray that the police catch this predator and that he turns from his sinfulness
4) pray for your kids, teach them, watch them, love them, protect them, pray that such an occurrence never happens in your family.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.