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From November 2001 NASW NEWS Reseacher Cites 'Epidemic' of Sexual Abuse
Estes, principal investigator and author of the study, revealed that between 300,000 and 400,000 children annually are the victims of commercial sexual exploitation in the U.S., meaning that they are involved in sexual acts in exchange for money, food, shelter, clothing or drugs. Estes is a professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania and an NASW member. He stressed that only 4 percent of all cases of confirmed child sexual abuse in the U.S. are perpetrated by strangers, leaving the gaping probability that a child will be commercially and sexually exploited by someone he or she knows. "This [knowledge] requires a level of vigilance in our society that I don't think many people are prepared for," Estes said. In front of a bank of television cameras and reporters, Estes said that children who are commercially sexually exploited — those involved in pornography or prostitution or trafficked across country and state lines for sexual purposes — represent a "continuum of abuse," having often been abused at home before they fled to the streets. "The irony is that they become revictimized over and over again once they leave home," he said. For instance, 40 percent of girls engaged in prostitution on the streets acknowledge that they were the victims of abuse and assault at home. Estes said that another thread connecting victims of child pornography, prostitution and trafficking is the unequal power relationship between the exploiter and the child in every single case, a relationship that works to the benefit of the exploiter and against the human rights of the child. "The effects of this [abuse] are long lasting," Estes said. "This will impair the child for life." Estes and his co-author, social work researcher Neil Weiner, said that patterns of child sexual exploitation are fueled by: the use of prostitution by runaway and throwaway children to provide for their subsistence needs; the presence of pre-existing adult prostitution markets in the communities where large numbers of street youth are concentrated; previous history of child sexual abuse and child sexual assault; poverty; the presence of large numbers of unattached and transient males in communities, including military personnel, truckers, conventioneers and sex tourists; membership in gangs; the promotion of juvenile prostitution by parents, older siblings and boyfriends; recruitment of children by organized crime units for prostitution; and, increasingly, illegal trafficking of children for sexual purposes to the U.S. from developing countries in Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Central and Eastern Europe. Despite the size of the problem, there is no national plan to deal with it, according to Estes and Weiner. "This is an epidemic, in our view," Estes stated. Both researchers stressed that a cultural message must be sent that children are off limits sexually. The researchers used a combination of field research — including interviews, focus group meetings and conferences — and statistical surveys to collect the data for the study, "The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico." For details: http://caster.ssw.upenn.edu/~restes/CSEC.htm Back to NASW NEWS Contents
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