Child exploitation

A study of child sexual exploitation released Sept. 10 and understandably lost in the news that followed the next day is worth revisiting because it shows that the problem is far more widespread than previously thought and crosses lines of race, class and gender.

The three-year study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that tens of thousands of children in the United States, Mexico and Canada annually become victims of pornography and prostitution. The researchers, Richard Estes and Neil Alan Weiner, wanted to know about the extent and causes of child exploitation in North America. In the United States, they talked to more than 1,000 children, law-enforcement officers and human-service workers in 17 cities and found that between 300,000 and 400,000 children here are victimized by sexual exploitation annually.

Many of these children have run away or been thrown out of their homes. Of those who ran away, “a disproportionate number of street youth have histories of recurrent physical or sexual abuse at home and took to the streets in a desperate effort to bring their abuse to an end,” according to Dr. Estes. But running away merely places these children at further high risk of abuse as these children end up victimized from a range of assailants, including gangs, organized sex-crime rings and pimps.

Here are some noteworthy conclusions from the study. Girls and boys are equally likely to be victims of sexual abuse but boys are less well served by government agencies like police or human services. Almost all perpetrators of sexual assaults are male – 47 percent of who were relatives and 49 percent acquaintances, such as a teacher, coach or neighbor. Only 4 percent were strangers. The typical victim is white and middle class, although poverty plays some role in the likelihood of experiencing sexual assault. The authors conclude that official counts serious underestimate the actual number of children exploited, and that, not surprisingly, some criminal networks profit significantly from this exploitation.

The authors provide 11 recommendations for reductions this problem that include spending more time targeting sexual exploiters for punishment and less time trying to catch the children; increasing the penalties for sex crimes against children; expanding federal task forces on sexual exploitation; and devoting more time understanding the perpetrators of these crimes. The recommendations are not especially exciting. They contain no high-tech killer program to wipe out the problem. They demand a lot of thoughtful study, some federal funding and long-term awareness. Whether they are enacted depends on how serious state and federal politicians believe the problem to be.

With so much else going on, it may be hard to get these officials to focus on sexual exploitation of children, but the issue is serious and should get in Congress and state legislatures the full and in-depth hearing it deserves.