Experts at a recent conference, sponsored by and held on the Costa Mesa, California, campus of Vanguard University, discussed little-known facts about child sex trafficking and exploitation as well as its prevention and how to help those affected.
During the two-day event from March 3, Sandra Morgan, the director of the school’s Global Center for Women and Justice, said many child victims of sex or labor trafficking never self-identify as such because they are either too afraid or don’t understand that they are being abused.
Some of the most vulnerable victims, she said, have faced a history of abuse at home, are homeless youth, and are youth close to aging out of foster care.
According to Morgan, Orange County authorities recovered 85 children who had been sexually exploited for profit in 2022, nearly all were residents of the area.
“Someone else is always making a profit off the pain and suffering of a child,” Morgan told The Epoch Times in an interview prior to the conference. “This is why we do this program every year, it’s about prevention [of child exploitation] and early intervention.”
According to Morgan, community members must collaborate with schools and agencies who assist children who have been exploited, as has happened with Vanguard’s five-year partnership with the Orange County Department of Education to provide training and collaboration to staff.
A training program she designed has been used by professionals not only in Orange County, but around the world to help educators and others who work with children to keep them from falling prey.
Morgan said the core premise of early intervention and prevention of child trafficking is to create a sense of “home” and “community” for children by engaging their teachers, local judges, nonprofits, and other adults to create an environment where they feel accepted and safe speaking up.
“My trafficking situation would not have ended if it weren’t for my community,” Givens said at the conference, which had over 100 in attendance.
According to Givens, such a “lack of community” is why many child victims return to their traffickers.
Absent community connections, she said, many children are likely to return to their traffickers due to a false sense of intimacy provided by them, and adults seeking to intervene must be patient.
“[Adults] must give these children a choice in accepting [such] help. Otherwise, they will run away and back to their traffickers,” Givens told conference attendees.
Many children exploited, she said, are likely to have good grades in school, lack behavioral issues, and otherwise seem like “good” kids.
Additionally, she said, children will often resist opening up about their exploitation due to fear, and may even feel a “bond” to their captor.
The answer to these issues, she said, is to avoid trying to change the child’s mind about their experiences or their trafficker. Instead, she urged the audience to earn the trust of the child first by offering help over time.
Titled “Ensure Justice,” the conference marked Vanguard’s 16th anniversary of the program, held annually to educate the public on how to combat trafficking and exploitation moving forward.
