| THE RESCUE OF PHANTOM CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING VICTIMS AND OTHER BEDTIME STORIES | |
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| Written by Norma Jean Almodovar | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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THE CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE ARE BEING RELOCATED TO OUR NEW FBI DATA LINKS PAGE THE REMAINING CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE WILL CONTAIN FBI STATS ON THEIR ARRESTS OF MINORS AND THEIR INABILITY TO FIND THE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING VICTIMS THEY CLAIM EXIST. PLEASE BE PATIENT AS WE UPDATE THE TWO PAGES. THANK YOU.
Sex Trafficking of Minors: How Many Juveniles Are Being Prostituted in the US? (revised in 2012) Michelle Stransky and David Finkelhor
from the Crimes Against Children Research Center
"There have been many attempts to estimate the number of juveniles who are being prostituted (or trafficked) within the United States. These estimates range from 1,400 to 2.4 million, although most fall between 300,000 and 600,000. BUT PLEASE DO NOT CITE THESE NUMBERS. READ ON. A close look at these diverse estimates reveals that none are based on a strong scientific foundation. They are mostly edu‐ cated guesses or extrapolations based on questionable as‐ sumptions. They do not have the substance of typically re‐ ported crime statistics, like the number of robberies or the number of child sexual abuse victims. The reality is that we do not currently know how many juveniles are being prostituted. Scientifically credible estimates do not exist. The most often cited estimates on the prostitution of juveniles (also known as domestic minor sex trafficking) will be described here and their source, along with the major problems with their validity."
And it gets worse:
"Despite the fact that the General Accounting Office estimates are obsolete, current groups concerned with child welfare still use this estimate....
As this critique of estimates suggest, there is currently no reliable estimate of juveniles who are prostituted in the US. Some current estimates are based upon “gut hunches” and “guesstimates” from almost thirty years ago. Others offer defi‐ nitions of sexual exchanges that may not actually constitute prostitution. Also, the methods used to create these estimates are often difficult to find, making them methodologically sus‐ pect. Organizations may recognize these problems but continue to cite such poorly calculated estimates.
People concerned about the problem very much want there to be a number that they can cite. Because other people have cited numbers, there has come to be a “collective intuition” about the rough magnitude based on these earlier claims. But in reality there is little scientific substance behind any of them. This is not an uncommon phenomenon in social problem analysis and has been called the “Woozle Effect” (Gelles 1980). The “Woozle Effect” occurs when one writer reports an estimate based on a typically weak methodology or “guesstimate” that is subsequently cited by other writers, but without the first writer’s caveats (Gelles 1980). Estimates of prostituted juveniles seem to have taken this path: the “gut hunches” of one author and the compiling of such hunches by the General Accounting Office have seemed to provide a basis for contemporary estimates of juveniles who are prostituted, despite the fact that the General Accounting Office states that the estimates in the literature are “general perceptions” (General Accounting Office, 1982).
What are journalists and scholars to do?
It is our suggestion that in the absence of any estimates with any good scientific basis, that scholars, writers and advocates stop using the unsubstantiated estimates and simply indicate that the true incidence is currently unknown. It is very frustrat‐ ing to write about a topic and not have an estimate of its magni‐ tude, but we believe that continued citation of unsupported estimates gives them credibility. Even writing that “No one knows how many juveniles are being prostituted, but estimates have been made from 1,400 to 2.4 million,” contributes to the problem. It gives people the impression that these are knowl‐ edgeable estimates about the current situation and that the real number lies somewhere in the middle of that range, which it may not.
For brief treatments of the problem, one can say simply: “Unfortunately, there are no credible or supported estimates about the size of the problem.” For more extended treatments of the problem, one can cite some of the statistics, but then indicate that these numbers are based mostly on guesses or extremely imprecise and speculative methodologies. It would be a good idea when citing any numbers to be sure to include the low end estimate from law enforcement of 1,400, since this is among the most recent and clearly defined of the estimates, and counters the assumption that all the estimates are large.
Why do they make this claim? All you need to do is look at their 990 tax returns and see how their donations from private and public organizations increase every year that they tell those lies. Being a 'victim pimp' pays far better than being a sex worker rights activist, that's for sure! You can read more about this and the numbers that don't add up by going to the "2012 Polaris Project Crisis Calls" (we have not yet added the charts and tables which show that somebody has a serious math problem and can't add up their own paltry numbers).
contents of this page are being relocated to another page. please check back soon to find the link for this information. Links to the FBI Bureau of Criminal Statistics 1981- 2011 CLICK ON YEAR TO GO TO THOSE STATS- CLICK ON LINK BELOW YEAR TO VIEW THE FBI UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS PAGES FOR EACH YEAR- NOTE: SOME UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS ARE ONLY AVAILABLE BACK TO 1995
Documents listed by type: For your convenience, the documents are available as pdfs, xls spreadsheets and Numbers spread sheets. "Numbers" is a Mac application in the iWorks Suite. "Numbers" will open the xls spreadsheets too.
To view the pdf
documents you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader or
Pro
The following are links to the documents we downloaded from the FBI website. You can visit the FBI website and follow the steps to find the same information by clicking here: GUIDE TO FINDING GOVERNMENT STATISTICS
JUST HOW SERIOUS IS THE 'CRISIS' OF UNDERAGE PROSTITUTES NATIONWIDE? HERE ARE THE ARREST/ RESCUE STATISTICS FROM THE FBI 2008 TO 2013 [these are the numbers and stats provided by the US Government, and are not estimates or guesses- but the number of persons actually taken into custody by law enforcement agents]
From 2011 to 2013: there were 75% more cities in 2013 than in 2011 in which this sting took place, with 75% more agents in 2013 than in 2011, and yet there was a mere 34% increase in victims rescued/ arrested? Conclusion: in 2012 and 2013, It took a combined additional 1,800 more agents in 36 more cities to rescue ONLY 36 more victims... percentage wise... that is a decrease from 2011... Over the three years shown in this table, It took a total of 8,500 agents to rescue 253 victims... According to the Polaris Project (and other sources) there are an 'estimated 100,000- 300,000 children trafficked into prostitution EACH YEAR' so, after subtracting the 253 children rescued in these annual sting operations, we are left with a deficit of 299,747 child victims (using the 100,000 per year figure x 3). The number of minors arrested in 2011 as noted in the FBI Bureau of Justice Statistics was 741 females and 232 males (973). The arrest statistics for 2012 and 2013 are not available yet. So in 2011, there were 69 children rescued/ arrested during this sting operation and 973 rescued/ arrested throughout the year 2011 for a total of 1,042- IF the 69 child victims were NOT included in the 973 arrest statistics. If they WERE included, then in 2011 there are 99,027 'sex trafficking' minors unaccounted for, but if not and the total number of rescued/ arrested minors is 1,042- then there are approximately 98,958 missing sex trafficking victims. It means that with all the resources used to find those victims, law enforcement agencies managed to find only 1% of the guesstimated number of victims (at 100,000) or if we use the 300,000 guesstimated child victims, they rescued/ arrested about .35% of all the guesstimated child victims. No matter how you slice it, that is not a very good return on the resources spent. Considering that it is much easier to find victims who are being 'sold' over the internet than it was in the days when cops had to go out and search for them on the streets, it doesn't say much about the competence of the law enforcement agencies charged with finding all those victims.
Operation Cross Country VII (2013) "Recovering Victims of Child Sex Trafficking" (by which they mean "arresting victims to save them" 07/29/13
JULY 26 to July 28 "Operation Cross Country—a three-day nationwide enforcement action focusing on underage victims of prostitution—has concluded with the recovery of 105 sexually exploited children and the arrests of 150 pimps and other individuals. The sweep took place in 76 cities and was carried out by the FBI in partnership with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) as part of the Bureau’s Innocence Lost National Initiative. It is the seventh and largest such enforcement action to date." Forty-seven FBI divisions took part in Operation Cross Country VII, along with more than 3,900 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers and agents representing 230 separate agencies. Highlights of this latest 'rescue/ arrest' of primarily 16 and 17 year old 'children'
Operation Cross Country VI (2012) June 20 through June 23 2012 by Federal Bureau of Investigation with cooperation from local police departments and the State Police and National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) -FYI: WHEN THE GOVERNMENT SAYS CHILDREN WERE 'RESCUED,' THEY MEAN 'ARRESTED'- AS INDICATED BY THE ARTICLE IN THE CHRISTIAN POST MARCH 2, 2013: PENNY YOUNG NANCE SAID "And add insult to injury, VAWA promotes the decriminalization of prostitution of minors by prohibiting the charging of a minor for a prostitution offense. Pimps, traffickers, and gangs everywhere cheer wildly with a new opportunity to exploit minors in the sex industry by telling them that it's not illegal and they won't get arrested.... Do people really think this is a good idea? It worked just great for Germany, Australia, and the Netherlands, where child prostitution actually increased after prostitution was legalized. Brilliant move, folks." [EXCEPT IT DIDN'T INCREASE IN GERMANY AT ALL, AS INDICATED IN THIS CHART, AND MS. NANCY GAVE NO SOURCE FOR DOCUMENTING THE OTHER COUNTRIES, WHICH IS JUST AS LIKELY THAT SHE LIED ABOUT THEM AS WELL, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT PROSTITUTION ABOLITIONISTS DO- THEY LIE AND NO ONE CALLS THEM ON IT!] If there were only 79 children arrested (rescued) that means that each child rescue/ arrest required 31 law enforcement agents per arrest; and if those 104 alleged pimps shared 79 child prostitutes, how did they make any money at all? That would be .75 prostitutes per pimp- how on earth did any of those alleged pimps make ANY money off their pimping efforts? Yet the cops had 4 days to find more victims and pimps... does this sound like there is a crisis? And how old were the 'children'? The ages of the arrested/ rescued children were not noted in the press release of this rescue operation.... but we know from the arrest stats from the FBI that the majority of underage persons arrested were 17... which, in many states, is over the age of consent. So why are they still considered 'children' unless the persons who call them 'children' have a vested interest in making people believe that most prostitutes are children? Perhaps because they get more money from the gullible public and the government when they are called children rather than teenagers or just 'minors'?
PREVIOUS STING OPERATIONS MULTIPLE AGENCIES
RESULT IN VERY FEW CHILD ARRESTS- PLENTY OF ADULTS (It
should be noted that the purpose of these sting
operations was to find and 'rescue' minors. The US Government considers anyone
under 18 as a 'child.' Many of the 'children'
'rescued' were 17. We believe it is misleading to
designate all teenagers as 'children' but without
that designation, neither the government or the
'Rescue and Rehabilitate' organizations would garner
nearly the financial support from the public that
the emotional concept of 'poor little children'
being forced into prostitution. We do not condone
child sexual exploitation by ANYONE, but we also do
not condone the use of terminology that misleads the
public into believing something that is simply NOT
true. A 17 year old teenager is not a child. The age
of consent in many states is 16. The US government
does not recognize the age of consent lower than 18,
so regardless of the actual status in any particular
state, all persons under 18 are 'children.')
Prior to the inception of
the "Operation Cross Country' stings, the government
called previous sting operations "Innocence Lost." From the 2005 report, "Sex
traffickers or pimps debriefed by the FBI indicate
approximately 20-40
percent of the victims forced/recruited into
prostitution are juveniles." [To
which we reply, the majority of persons IN prostitution
are NOT forced and recruit themselves... and given the
low number of juvenile arrests/ rescues, this certainly
seems to confirm our theory. It is very important to
read every word in these documents, because wording can
mean the difference between 'fact' and 'guestimate'
which we call 'fabrications for the purpose of
forwarding the prostitution abolitionist agenda.'
Regardless of how high a 'guestimate' of victims there
may be, all we can safely rely on is the number of
reported arrests, complaints From the FBI 2005: "Exploiting Americans on American Soil- Domestic Trafficking Exposed" " According to a study by the University of Pennsylvania, a child is defined as any male or female under the age of 18, and with that, they have detailed there are approximately 300,000 youth currently at risk of becoming victims of commercial and sexual exploitation. Other organizations [which have a vested interest in postulating the highest number of victims as they need these high numbers to raise the millions of dollars from gullible citizens] have estimated this number is as high as 800,000.We do not currently have a definitive number for the serious problem of child prostitution itself, although judges, police, and outreach workers report both the increase in the numbers and a decrease in the ages of the children involved. Unfortunately, we know of no studies to date that specifically and primarily address juvenile prostitution. Accurately quantifying the existing problem of victimized children (as opposed to “at risk”) is difficult for a variety of reasons. For example, in the case of children exploited through prostitution, many of the prostituted youth are charged with some other offenses such as substance abuse; thus data that relies on crime reports masks the true prevalence of the problem." Chris
Swecker HMMMMM.... How about the
2001 study "Commercial Sexual Exploitation of
Children in the US, Canada and Mexico" (now
only found on the Hawaii.edu website- it has been
removed from its original location)? Doesn't that
study count? [sounds like he is making excuses for the government being unable to find the hundreds of thousands of alleged 'prostituted children'- and notice that he uses the words "at risk" because these are not actual 'estimated' victims, rather they are persons under 18 who may or may not become 'victims' of sex trafficking... many journalists leave out those words and simply claim that 'there are 300,000 children annually who are trafficked into prostitution' and are never called on their 'oversight'- because the many prostitution abolitionist organizations, who rely on journalists like Lisa Collacott to spread their gospel of lies, misrepresentations and rhetoric, hand out press releases making these claims and the journalists simply publish the press release as a news story, without doing any investigation of the 'statistics' whatsoever. In stories like this "Human and Child Trafficking on
the Rise" Ms. Collacott asserts that "There are approximately 100,000
to 300,000 human trafficking victims in the
United States...." By 'human trafficking
victims' she means sex trafficking victims who are
children... Don't you think that if there WERE
300,000 or 800,000 children missing and working as
prostitutes, the cops/ feds and other government
agencies which spend millions of dollars annually
ought to be able to find MORE than the numbers of
'rescued' children that we have noted above and
below? Like the 2,200 children recovered from
the streets nationwide from 2003-2012
(10 years) for a total of 220 minors per year
arrested....] The non profit
"rescue and rehabilitate" organization which
apparently spoon fed the statistics to Ms.
Collacott is Colorado based "Restore
Innocence" which
is, according to the article, dedicated to
"helping victims of child trafficking."
The organization is "working on opening a safe
house where victims can be restored and
reintegrated back into society. Victims would
receive counseling and medical treatment as well
as receiving help in getting a job or into
college." “Our big vision is to open the
Cinderella House which is an all-encompassing
after-care facility. Once the girls are rescued
and taken off the street they would come to us for
healing and restoration,” said Michelle
Korth, founder and executive director. “It’s
getting them on their feet before they are out in
society and having a safe place for them even
after they leave. They can know they’re cared for
and loved and they can come back for holidays.
We’ll always be in their lives. It’s not just a
program where they come and leave.”
The article says that the average age of 'victims'
Restore
Innocence works with is 18-year-olds, perhaps because they
cannot find the 'child victims' whom they are
dedicated to help. All they need is a few million
dollars from the government and the public and
they can make their Cinderella dreams come true...
if only they can find some of those poor child
victims... No indication of what they will do with
all that funding if they simply cannot find all
the 'victims' to fill that Cinderella house...] "During FY 2004, the
Criminal Investigative Division initiated 67
Innocence Lost investigations which
led to
118 arrests, 26 indictments, and the conviction of
22 pimps and madams. To date in FY
2005, 31
additional cases were opened and there have been 163
arrests, eight complaints, 13 indictments, and 10
convictions. Since the inception of Innocence Lost,
80 children have been recovered as a result of
this national initiative." BUT THERE
ARE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THEM ACCORDING TO THE
VICTIM PIMPS... HOW DOES THE RECOVERY OF '80
CHILDREN' SCORE AS ANY SORT OF VALIDATION OF THESE
LIES? DOES ANYONE STOP TO COUNT HOW MANY 'JOHNS' WOULD BE NECESSARY TO KEEP ALL THESE VICTIMS BUSY? WE DID, AND THE NUMBERS ARE IMPOSSIBLE... YOU CAN FIND THOSE NUMBERS HERE: "DO THE MATH V-A" AND "DO THE MATH V-B" "The almost 90,000
cases of child sexual abuse reported each year
fall far short of the actual number. Abuse
frequently goes unreported because child victims are
afraid to tell anyone what happened and the
legal procedure for validating an episode is difficult.
(American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry)
[MORE
ABOUT THE DECLINE IN CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION BELOW] Of
all [JUVENILE] victims of sexual assault reported to law
enforcement agencies
"Despite what
children are taught about "stranger danger," most
child victims are abused by someone they know and
trust. When the abuser is
not a family member, the victim is more often a
boy than a girl. The results
of a three-state study of reported rape survivors under
age 12 revealed the following about offenders:
Advocates for Youth, 1995 SO, WE HAVE 90,000 REPORTED CASES OF CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION (BY SOMEONE OTHER THAN A PREDATOR BUYING SEXUAL SERVICES) A YEAR THAT WE KNOW OF, AND THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS UNTOLD RESOURCES PURSUING THE LEAST NUMBER OF ACTUAL VICTIMS? More utterly nonsensical,
idiotic actions by a government which doesn't have to
provide any real data connected to real world persons in
order to pass legislation to pursue their ultimate goal
of 'eradicating' ALL prostitution, regardless of the age
and consent of the sex worker, or of the harm inflicted
on the sex workers AND the 'children' whom the laws are
ostensibly meant to protect:
[from the FBI website:] In June 2003, the FBI, in conjunction with the Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, launched the Innocence Lost National Initiative. Their combined efforts were aimed at addressing the growing problem of domestic sex trafficking of children in the United States. In the nine years since its inception, the initiative has resulted in the development of 47 dedicated task forces and working groups throughout the U.S. involving federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies working in tandem with U.S. Attorney’s Offices. To date, these groups have worked successfully to rescue more than 2,100 children. [NOTE- over 9 years, that's approximately 233 children per year... most of whom were 17 years of age, according to the number of arrested children from the FBI website] Investigations have successfully led to the conviction of over 1,000 pimps, madams, and their associates [NOTE: if these 'over 1,000' pimps and madams who were convicted had to share 2,100 children, that would give each convicted pimp approximately 2.1 underage prostitutes to exploit... not very profitable, so WHERE ARE THE OTHER CHILD VICTIMS????????] who exploit children through prostitution. These convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple life sentences and the seizure of real property, vehicles, and monetary assets. Major Cases
Maya,
22, voluntary sex worker and escort in Richmond: "According to Fedotov's Vienna-based office, only one out of 100 victims of trafficking is ever rescued." How would we ever know this, if the only way of counting victims is by the number of victims arrested/ rescued? The article continues "The U.N. crime-fighting office said Tuesday that 2.4 million people across the globe are victims of human trafficking at any one time, and 80 percent of them are being exploited as sexual slaves." How would we know if this percentage is even close to being an accurate number of NON sex trafficking victims, because non sex trafficking victims ARE NOT ARRESTED- as the labor into which they are trafficked IS NOT ILLEGAL? There are either 193 or 196 countries in the world, depending on which source you find. If smaller countries have fewer 'victims of trafficking' and larger countries have more victims, is there an average number of victims that can be extracted from the conflicting number of alleged human trafficking victims world wide? That's difficult to say because we don't have an accurate count of actual victims, only 'guesstimates' from biased sources. Let's say that all countries had an equal number of victims- which would be an estimate of 12,244 per country based on the 2.4 million claim from 2012. If the other claims of 27 million victims worldwide is more accurate, then it would be more like 137,755 victims per country per year. Let's give the US 3 times the number that a very small country might have- so let's say the US has 413,265 victims... but according to the US Government 2011 report on human trafficking from January 2008 to June 2010, it investigated a mere 2,515 possible cases of human trafficking. And it determined, at the close of the report, that of the 2,515 cases, 30% were found to be actual cases of human trafficking, 38% NOT human trafficking and the remained undetermined. So, if we start out with the presumption that there are 413,265 human trafficking victims in the US at any given time - or that the number represents an annual figure, WHERE ARE THE VICTIMS? The report says "Among trafficking incidents opened for at least one year, 30% were confirmed to be human trafficking, 38% were confirmed not to be human trafficking, and the remaining incidents were still open at the end of the study period." Here's how it breaks down by year: TOTAL CASES INVESTIGATED:
WHERE
ARE ALL THE VICTIMS HIDING? Is our government SO
incompetent that even with 47 different agencies
and HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars in funding to
find victims, it cannot find at least 10% of the
alleged number of victims? And if the government
stopped arresting adult prostitutes who are NOT
victims, might the government agencies and task
forces be able to find more of the alleged child
victims? Returning to the high number of child sexual exploitation cases of children who are NOT "prostituted"? Where is the concern for the 90,000 yearly cases of child sexual exploitation at the hands of parents, siblings, neighbors, babysitters, teachers, preachers, priests, boy scout leaders, law enforcement officers, Hollywood producers and agents? In other words, for the vast majority of victims who are not in any way being 'sold' or 'enslaved'? Here are some statistics also from the government and universities that can be found in the documents linked below:
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