Help Revive A Teen

Many teens who fall prey to sex traffickers are adolescents who ran away from home due to family issues or because they lack a safe/permanent home life. While on the streets, they’re often lured into prostitution—usually within two days. These adolescents are often promised money, food, gifts a place to stay, and/or drugs. Pimps also try recruiting adolescents through coercion, which can include psychological manipulation or the use of gifts. Sometimes, the teens don’t realize they are getting into a sex trafficking ring. Many times, these runaways are girls, but sex trafficking victims can be boys, too. Other adolescents vulnerable to sex traffickers are those in the foster care system. Exploiters target these children because they know they have no stable home life or emotional connection to family. Teens living in foster or group homes are vulnerable especially if they’ve been abused in the past. Offering acceptance, love, connection, and financial stability, the traffickers try to seduce these adolescents. Even if adolescents want to leave, they often can’t. Their exploiters may threaten to beat them, starve them, hurt their family, or any other sort of punishment. Oftentimes, the traumatized adolescent may have a complicated relationship with their abuser. They may even think the abuser protects rather than exploits them. California has a huge sex trafficking problem, especially when it comes to adolescents. That’s not largely highlight or broadcast on the news. According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC), the largest majority of the human trafficking cases reported in the U.S. each year originate in California. In fact, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are three of the ten worst child sex trafficking cities in the U.S. (California Against Slavery). Human trafficking is one of San Diego’s worst criminal issues —second only to drug trafficking.