1. What is the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC)?
Module 1:
What is the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC)?
“It’s not a choice, no one just wakes up and wants to do this. You can’t just walk away…”
- CSEC Survivor

2. What is CSEC? Objectives…
Dispel commonly held beliefs and stereotypes that promote CSEC
Define terms needed to discuss and understand issues of CSEC
Understand the forms and prevalence of CSEC within the U.S.
Frame issues of CSEC in a regional context and understand the scope and forms of CSEC in your community
Increase awareness and sensitivity to CSEC issues to promote victim centered programming, investigation, prosecution, and medical treatment

3. What are some myths and stereotypes about CSEC or sexually exploited youth?

4. Terminology Exercise
What terms are used or have you seen used when talking about sexual exploitation and trafficking?
Talk about…
Who is included?
Who is left out?
What is gained by using this term?
What is lost by using this term?

5. Sexually Exploited Trafficked Not worthy of compassion
Prostituted
Choice??
Abuse
Violence
Rape
Trauma
Disease
PTSD
Abuse
Violence
Rape
Trauma
Disease
PTSD
VS.
Worthy of compassion
Not worthy of compassion

6. These situations contradict our expectations and assumptions.
They are some of the most difficult
that we deal with.
There are ways we can
disrupt this cycle if we understand
how it operates.

7. Tough Questions for Service Providers

8. Tough Questions for Service Providers:
How do you engage with a child who doesn’t want to engage?
How do you get CSEC victims to understand exploitation when they don’t think they are being exploited?
How do you deal with a child who you have been working with long term, who is making positive progress in his/her life, who understands the dynamics of exploitation, who goes back to the life?
How do you work with a girl who has a “boyfriend” and says she is in love with him?
How do you engage with sexually exploited kids on the street?
How do you deal with a child who is actively recruiting other youth from your agency?
When recruiters and pimps know the location of your agency what should you do?

9. CSEC is…. The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is:
Sexual acts involving youth in exchange for something of value, or promise thereof, to the child or another person or persons.
Treating a child as a commercial and sexual object.
A form of violence against children.

10. CSEC includes: street prostitution pornography stripping
erotic/nude massage
escort services
phone sex lines
private parties
gang and organized crime-based prostitution
familial pimping
forms of Internet-based exploitation

11. Intersections of Abuse
Child Sexual Abuse
Sexual Exploitation of Children
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
Domestic violence
Intimate partner violence
Sexual violence
UNDER 18 INVOLVED IN SEX INDUSTRY
Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking
THIRD PARTY PROFITS FROM EXPLOITATION OF YOUTH IN SEX INDUSTRY 11

12. Southwest Crisis Center
Sexual Exploitation
Sex act for something of value ($, food, shelter, drugs)
Survival sex
Stripping or pornography
Prostitution and sex trafficking
Were going to break up each one of these areas to talk about similarities and differences
Southwest Crisis Center

13. CSEC in the United States
At least 100,000 to 300,000 youth are at risk for commercial sexual exploitation annually in the U.S. (Estes and Wiener, 2001)
“At least 100,000 children are used in prostitution every year in the U.S.” (The National Report on DMST: America’s Prostituted Children, 2010, Shared Hope.)
The most common age of entry into the commercial sex industry in the U.S. is years old. (US Department of Justice, Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section)

14. CSEC in the United States
The National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Throwaway (NISMART) children estimate that 1.6 million children run away from home each year in the U.S.
Advocates estimate that 1 in 3 teens approached by an exploiter within 2-3 days of becoming homeless will enter the commercial sex industry via this route.

15. CSEC in Rural MN Factors that contribute in many rural communities
Close knit, small town personality, friendly yet closed
Traditional values, hard working and self reliance
Rural areas face higher poverty rates
Higher demand for low skill labors
Rapid change for transient male population
Top sex trafficking cases in rural areas
Commercial front brothels (strip clubs, message parlors)
Truck stop based sex workers
Hotel, motel
Internet
Escort delivery services (especially to hunting shacks)

16. who do you think is buying children for sex?
Addressing Demand
If at least 300,000 children are estimated to be at risk for CSEC in the U.S….
who do you think is buying children for sex?

17. Buyers – who are they? Men Employed Old / young All races and cultures
Single / married
Daughters, sons
Employed
Men with money
Ten Buyers Arrested in Prostitution Sting

19. A look at Southwest Minnesota…

20. Addressing Demand Reflection Questions:
Why do you think there is such a huge demand?
What factors in our society contribute to demand?

21. Handout 1.5

22. Factors Influencing Demand
Presence of Adult Sex Industry
“Without equivocation….the presence of pre-existing adult prostitution markets contributes measurably to the creation of secondary sexual markets in which children are sexually exploited. [We] find no support for the legalization of prostitution in the U.S., especially given the relationship that we can confirm to exist between adult and juvenile sexual exploitation”.
The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, Estes & Weiner (2001)

23. Factors Influencing Demand
Acceptance of Violence Towards Individuals in Sex Industry
A Canadian commission found that prostituted women are 40 times more likely to be murdered than their non- prostituted counterparts.
Special Committee on Prostitution and Pornography, Pornography and Prostitution in Canada, 350,(1985).

24. Factors Influencing Demand
Dehumanization of Prostituted Women
“They were objects. In my mind, they never had families or anything."
Joel Rifkin, in a statement to the police in admitting to the murders of 17 prostituted women, many of whose names he could not remember, 1994.

25. Factors Influencing Demand
Dehumanization of Prostituted Women
"I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex. I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up, without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”
Gary Ridgway, (The ‘Green River Killer’) in a statement to the Court in which he pled guilty to murdering 48 women and girls, 2003.

26. Factors Influencing Demand
Dehumanization of CSEC Victims
Of Gary Ridgway’s 48 admitted victims, 27 of those victims were between the ages of years old. The Green River Killer was therefore one of the largest child serial killers in the US ever, and the largest known killer of CSEC victims, yet the fact that many of his victims were children/youth is never mentioned because they were viewed as ‘prostitutes’.

27. Dehumanization of CSEC Victims excerpts from online “reviews”
As far as treating women as objects – well hell yeah we are seeing whores after all. Sure they may be nice people with hopes and dreams – but for that hour or half hour they are mine to play with.
You can make her your sex toy for whatever you want, if you know how to crack her.
If these are the things that they are writing about victims what must the treatment be like?
Can you see the entitlement?
I could have walked out because it crossed my mind she was being trafficked. [I went ahead anyway.] How ever the whole experience was a big disappointment and [men] should avoid big time.
Southwest Crisis Center

28. Factors Influencing Demand
Internet Pornography
There are over 100,000 sites offering illegal child pornography and hundreds of thousands more offering legal ‘teen’ or ‘ barely legal’ pornography. In 2006, there were over 20 million searches using the words ‘teen porn’ or ‘teen sex’.
25% of total search engine requests are porn-related.

29. Reflection Questions: Why do you think that our society doesn’t address demand more?

30. St. Cloud – Behind the Blinds

31. Nightline – Hidden America

32. Activity: Who? What? Where? Why?
Handout 1.7

33. Activity: Who? What? Where? Why?
Directions for groups:
Based on your knowledge and experience, choose one of four sets of questions: Who? What? Where? or Why?
In your group, review the set of questions you selected. Be as specific, detailed, and reflective in your responses as possible. Record your answers on a piece of easel paper.
Choose one group member to present your responses to the whole group.