The bill would provide safe and stable housing, access to education, employment, and life-skills training to children rescued from forced prostitution.
It would also provide the children with treatment for drug or alcohol addiction. In many cases, abducted children who are forced into prostitution become dependent on addictive substances provided by their abusers.
The bill would make an exploited child immune from criminal prosecution for prostitution. Instead, the child would be treated as a victim.
Key Focus
President Donald Trump has made combatting child trafficking and sexual exploitation a key focus of his administration.In April, he signed a bill allowing states and victims to fight online sex trafficking. The bill provides law enforcement and victims with tools to fight sex trafficking.
Around the world, an estimated 4.8 million people are sexually exploited, according to the International Labor Organization. Twenty-one percent of those, or over 1 million, are children.
The bill in the Pennsylvania Senate would also provide training to police officers to identify sexually exploited children, as well as in methods to use in interviewing them about sexual abuse.
It also provides for paying for the removal of the tattoos traffickers placed on children as an identifying mark.
Last year, the Department of Homeland Security initiated a total of 833 human trafficking cases. Over 1,600 arrests were made and 578 individuals were convicted.
One in seven children who are reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was a victim of child sex trafficking.
While there are no accurate estimates on the size of the underground sex economy, the Urban Institute estimates that the combined worth of the underground sex economy in eight major cities in the United States is between $40 and $290 million.
“For far too long, Backpage.com existed as the dominant marketplace for illicit commercial sex, a place where sex traffickers frequently advertised children and adults alike,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement in April.
“Backpage has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from facilitating prostitution and sex trafficking, placing profits over the well-being and safety of the many thousands of women and children who were victimized by its practices,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth A. Strange said in a statement.
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