The Free Market in Child Pornography

More than six years after the international law enforcement community began desperately searching for the child pornography victim known as the Disney World Girl, justice remains allusive for Masha Allen. Despite two Congressional investigations in 2006 and pressure from Nancy Grace and Oprah, none of the perpetrators involved with her international adoption have been brought to justice. Despite the involvement of almost 30 lawyers since Masha was rescued from Matthew Mancuso in 2003 (including the prosecutor and lead investigator in the much-hyped Caylee Anthony investigation), not one of the many child welfare institutions and organizations who ...

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 explanations offered for these downwardly expanding demographics are various, ...

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 area of knowledge for most social service, legal, and law enforcement profess...

Tolerating Consensual Incest

No death penalty here folks. Last week, Columbia University professor and Huffington Post blogger David Epstein was charged with having a sexual relationship with his 24-year-old daughter. Joining such notable perverts as pedophile photographer Matthew Mancuso and child rapist Patrick Kennedy, Epstein was described by one of his students as a "very nice guy" who was recently placed on administrative leave. According to the New York Daily News, Epstein and his child had a three-year sexual relationship and often exchanged "twisted text messages." Too bad Epstein didn't commit his crime in Florida where Masha Allen's father, Matthew Mancuso, was ...

Congress Holds Hearing on Child Sex Trafficking

On Wednesday, the House Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on DOMESTIC child sex trafficking. At the hearing, former Congresswoman Linda Smith testified that more than 100,000 children are exploited in the sex trade in the United States every year: "Domestic minor sex trafficking is the name we have given to the sexual exploitation of U.S. citizen children through prostitution, pornography and sexual entertainment," she said. "The name reflects the fact that this exploitation is human trafficking as defined in the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. The crime therefore is a federal crime of trafficking and the victims should ...

Protect NCMEC?

The National Association to PROTECT Children, which describes itself as "a national pro-child, anti-crime membership association. . . . committed to building a powerful, nonpartisan force for the protection of children from abuse, exploitation and neglect," recently issued this rare rebuke of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) paid its CEO over $1.3 million in salary and compensation in 2008, the St. Petersburg Times reported last week, in an article now drawing fire from the group. "In 2008, the latest year for which records are available, [Ernie] Allen made ...

Should Possessors of Child Pornography Pay Restitution to the Child?

FindLaw columnist and Cornell law professor Sherry Colb takes on a question involving my client that has sharply divided courts: Should a person who is found to have committed the crime of possessing child pornography be required to pay restitution to each child who appears in those images? The question has been posed very sharply recently, because images of one child victim -- whose pseudonym is "Amy" -- have been at issue in 350 criminal cases across the country. Moreover, the difference in the amount of restitution awarded in those cases is dramatic: Two Florida judges together awarded over three million dollars; a California judge awarded only ...

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