Human Trafficking and more specifically, Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, has made a concerted impact into social services in the U.S. I have been working with Commercial Sexually Exploited Youth my entire career and formally in the Trafficking Prevention realm since 2005, after the federal government passed Federal Anti-Trafficking Law, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 is the first comprehensive federal law to address trafficking in persons. The TVPA was reauthorized through the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2003, 2005, 2008, and 2013. Because I’ve focused so much of my work on disenfranchised and homeless youth, Trafficking prevention as always been a consistent charge of my work. Hopefully, some of these articles will give further your personal and professional insight into the issue of Human Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth!

Labor and Sex Trafficking Among Homeless Youth

Between February 2014 and June 2016, researchers from Loyola University New Orleans’s Modern Slavery Research Project (MSRP) were invited by Covenant House International and ten of their individual sites in the United States and Canada to serve as external experts to study the prevalence and nature of human traf cking among homeless youth aged 17 to 25. MSRP researchers interviewed 641 homeless and runaway youth who access services through Covenant House’s network of shelters, transitional living and apartment programs, and drop-in centers. Youth were invited to participate, on a voluntary basis, in a point-in- time study about work experience. Semi-structured interviews were conducted using the Human Traf cking Interview and Assessment Measure (HTIAM-14) to assess whether youth had been traf cked for sex or labor in their lifetimes.