Sex Trafficking: The Girls Next Door
Vanity Fair has a great story about child sex trafficking and prostitution in All-American Hartford, Connecticut. Here's an edited excerpt of this excellent piece:
There are more young American girls entering the commercial sex industry—an estimated 300,000 at this moment—and their ages have been dropping drastically. “The average starting age for prostitution is now 13,” says Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (gems), a Harlem-based organization that rescues young women from “the life.”
The ...
Child Welfare Response to Child Trafficking
Human trafficking is arguably one of the most disturbing human rights abuses of our time. The United States Department of Justice has estimated that between 14,500 and 17,500 foreign men, women, and children are trafficked into the United States each year.
While estimates indicate that thousands of child trafficking victims exist in the United States, very few have been identified and recovered. Between 2001 and 2009, only 212 foreign minors were successfully recognized by U.S. authorities as victims of trafficking.
Human trafficking is a relatively new issue and emerging ...
Supreme Court Tosses Child Welfare Fourth Amendment Case
Nearly a decade ago, a state child protective services worker and a county deputy sheriff interviewed then 9-year-old S.G. at her Oregon elementary school about allegations that her father had sexually abused her. They did not have a warrant or parental consent to conduct the interview. S.G. eventually stated that she had been abused. Her father stood trial for that abuse, but the jury failed to reach a verdict and the charges were later dismissed.
S.G.’s mother subsequently sued on S.G.’s behalf for damages under 42 U.S.C. §1983, alleging that the in-school ...
Harvard’s Berkman Center Sells Out to the Man – AGAIN
Once again, Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society has sacrificed the public good for the large corporate interests which fund this so-called "academic research center." Fed at the special interests trough by some of America's most powerful Internet corporations such as AT&T, Google, Microsoft, and AOL, Berkman has been openly hostile to victims of online exploitation and child pornography. (See this blog's Cyber Conflict of Interest - Harvard Law School's Berkman Center Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown)
Not surprisingly, Berkman is at the forefront ...
Second Circuit Nixes Student Newspaper’s Sex Ed Cartoon
In late December 2004 or early January 2005, the faculty adviser of the Ithaca High School newspaper, The Tattler, excised a cartoon and article written by a former IHS student entitled: “Alumni Advice: Sex is fun!” The cartoon depicted a doorway with the phrase “Health 101” written over the door. Near the doorway, a teacher pointed to a blackboard that contained eight drawings of stick figures in various sexual positions with the phrase “Test on Monday” written on the blackboard underneath the drawings.
In the February 2005 issue of ...
Lesson 1 for Presidential Candidates: No daycare for sex offenders
The Minneapolis City Pages' reported yesterday that presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty pardoned sex offender Jeremy Giefer in October 2008 so his wife could open a day care center in their home.
This is the same home where Giefer was having sex with his daughter for six years prior to his pardon. He would often make his daughter have sex with him or perform oral sex on him as a favor before he would give her permission to do things. He put her on birth control when she was 15 years old so that she wouldn't get pregnant when he raped her without a condom. The abuse ...
Facebook – 7.5 MILLION users under age 13
According to newly released figures from Consumer Reports, an estimated 7.5 million Facebook users are children under the age of 13, out of the 20 million or so minors who use Facebook each year. Also among this group of minors using Facebook, more than 5 million were 10 and under. A Consumer Reports survey found that their accounts were largely unsupervised by their parents, exposing them to malware or serious threats such as predators or bullies.
Facebook requires users to be at least 13 years of age, according to their terms of service.Facebook warns children under the ...