[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PREVENTING AND ADDRESSING SEX
TRAFFICKING OF YOUTH IN FOSTER CARE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 23, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-HR09
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
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COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
DAVE CAMP, Michigan, Chairman
SAM JOHNSON, Texas SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan
KEVIN BRADY, Texas CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington
DEVIN NUNES, California JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington XAVIER BECERRA, California
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
PETER J. ROSKAM, Illinois MIKE THOMPSON, California
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
TOM PRICE, Georgia EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
VERN BUCHANAN, Florida RON KIND, Wisconsin
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey
AARON SCHOCK, Illinois JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
LYNN JENKINS, Kansas ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas LINDA SANCHEZ, California
DIANE BLACK, Tennessee
TOM REED, New York
TODD YOUNG, Indiana
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas
JIM RENACCI, Ohio
Jennifer M. Safavian, Staff Director and General Counsel
Janice Mays, Minority Chief Counsel
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington, Chairman
TODD YOUNG, Indiana LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
JIM RENACCI, Ohio DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
TOM REED, New York
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana
C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Advisory of October 23, 2013 announcing the hearing.............. 2
WITNESSES
PANEL 1:
The Honorable Erik Paulsen, U.S. Representative from the State of
Minnesota, Testimony........................................... 6
The Honorable Louise Slaughter, U.S. Representative from the
State of New York, Testimony................................... 9
The Honorable Ted Poe, U.S. Representative from the State of
Texas, Testimony............................................... 16
The Honorable Karen Bass, U.S. Representative from the State of
California, Testimony.......................................... 19
The Honorable Orrin G. Hatch, U.S. Senator from the State of
Utah, Testimony................................................ 26
PANEL 2:
Withelma ``T'' Ortiz Walker Pettigrew, Board Member, Human Rights
Project for Girls, Testimony................................... 30
John Ryan, CEO, National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children, Testimony............................................ 38
The Honorable Bobbe J. Bridge, President, CEO and Founder, Center
for Children and Youth Justice, Testimony...................... 50
Melinda Giovengo, Ph.D., Executive Director, YouthCare, Testimony 61
Ashley Harris, Child Welfare Policy Associate, Texans Care For
Children, Testimony............................................ 69
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Foster Family Based Treatment Association........................ 91
PREVENTING AND ADDRESSING SEX TRAFFICKING OF YOUTH IN FOSTER CARE
----------
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2013
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Subcommittee on Human Resources,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:35 p.m., in
room 1100, Longworth House Office Building, the Honorable Dave
Reichert [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
[The advisory of the hearing follows:]
HEARING ADVISORY
Chairman Reichert Announces Hearing on Preventing and Addressing Sex
Trafficking of Youth in Foster Care
1100 Longworth House Office Building at 2:00 PM
Washington, October 16, 2013
Congressman Dave Reichert (R-WA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Human Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced
that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing on ways to improve the child
welfare system to prevent sex trafficking of youth in America's foster
care system. The hearing will take place at 2:00 pm on Wednesday,
October 23, 2013, in Room 1100 of the Longworth House Office Building.
In view of the limited time available to hear from witnesses, oral
testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only.
Witnesses will include experts working to reduce the vulnerabilities of
youth in foster care as well as representatives of organizations who
serve victims of sex trafficking. However, any individual or
organization not scheduled for an oral appearance may submit a written
statement for consideration by the Committee and for inclusion in the
printed record of the hearing.
BACKGROUND:
Since the early 1960s, the Federal Government has reimbursed States
for part of the cost of providing foster care to children from needy
families. In FY 2012, the Federal Government provided States $4.2
billion to support monthly payments to foster parents, case management,
staff training, and data collection. The goal of this funding is to
ensure foster parents can support children from needy families when the
child cannot safely remain at home.
While foster care often protects children from further abuse and
neglect, children who stay in foster care for extended periods--
especially those who leave foster care at age 18 without being placed
in a permanent home--have troubling outcomes. For example, research
shows that children who spend an extended duration in foster care are
less likely to graduate from high school, attend college, be employed,
or have enough income to support a family than other youth. They are
also more likely to become teen parents, collect welfare, become
homeless, be arrested, or use drugs.
In some cases, certain child welfare policies may unintentionally
undermine the well-being of children placed in foster care. As the
Subcommittee reviewed in a hearing in May 2013, some foster care rules
have made it difficult for foster youth to participate in sports, sleep
over at a friend's house, obtain a driver's license, get a part-time
job, or engage in other age-appropriate activities. Although these
policies are often well intentioned, they may inadvertently increase a
young person's isolation and separation from family, friends, and the
surrounding community, making them more vulnerable to victimization.
One of the most devastating examples of this vulnerability is when
children in foster care become victims of sex trafficking. Reports
suggest a majority of children involved in sex trafficking are either
currently in foster care or have been involved with the child welfare
system in the past. In 2010, officials in Los Angeles reported that 59
percent of juveniles arrested for prostitution were in the foster care
system. Of children reported missing to the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children who are also likely sex trafficking victims, 60
percent were in foster care or group homes when they ran away. Research
cited by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows the
majority of sex trafficked youth experienced sexual abuse growing up,
and victims of sexual abuse are 28 times more likely to be involved in
prostitution than children who have not suffered such abuse. Even
though a history of prior sexual abuse places many children in foster
care at far greater risk of sex trafficking, the child welfare system
today does not make systematic efforts to identify and help those at
high risk of being trafficked.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Reichert stated, ``Even though
foster care is meant to protect children who have been abused, research
shows that most victims of child sex trafficking come straight from the
foster care system. This is totally unacceptable. During my law
enforcement career, I saw first-hand the terrible tragedies of young
women involved in the sex trade. We can't continue to allow kids in
foster care to become victims of this terrible crime. We owe it to them
to ensure our nation's foster care system does all it can to protect
them from predators so they can live safe, happy, and successful lives.
For too many kids in foster care, we are not living up to that
promise.''
FOCUS OF THE HEARING:
This hearing will review how the child welfare system currently
works to prevent the sex trafficking of youth in foster care, how the
needs of sex trafficking victims are addressed, and how Federal laws
and policies might be improved to better ensure the safety and well-
being of youth at risk of abuse and neglect.
DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS:
Please Note: Any person(s) and/or organization(s) wishing to submit
for the hearing record must follow the appropriate link on the hearing
page of the Committee website and complete the informational forms.
From the Committee homepage, http://waysandmeans.house.gov, select
``Hearings.'' Select the hearing for which you would like to submit,
and click on the link entitled, ``Please click here to submit a
statement or letter for the record.'' Once you have followed the online
instructions, submit all requested information. Attach your submission
as a Word document, in compliance with the formatting requirements
listed below, by November 6, 2013. Finally, please note that due to the
change in House mail policy, the U.S. Capitol Police will refuse
sealed-package deliveries to all House Office Buildings. For questions,
or if you encounter technical problems, please call (202) 225-1721 or
(202) 225-3625.
FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS:
The Committee relies on electronic submissions for printing the
official hearing record. As always, submissions will be included in the
record according to the discretion of the Committee. The Committee will
not alter the content of your submission, but we reserve the right to
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written comments must conform to the guidelines listed below. Any
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guidelines will not be printed, but will be maintained in the Committee
files for review and use by the Committee.
1. All submissions and supplementary materials must be provided in
Word format and MUST NOT exceed a total of 10 pages, including
attachments. Witnesses and submitters are advised that the Committee
relies on electronic submissions for printing the official hearing
record.
2. Copies of whole documents submitted as exhibit material will not
be accepted for printing. Instead, exhibit material should be
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3. All submissions must include a list of all clients, persons,
and/or organizations on whose behalf the witness appears. A
supplemental sheet must accompany each submission listing the name,
company, address, telephone, and fax numbers of each witness.
The Committee seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons
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call 202-225-1721 or 202-226-3411 TTD/TTY in advance of the event (four
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Note: All Committee advisories and news releases are available
online at http://www.waysandmeans.house.gov/.
Chairman REICHERT. Welcome to today's hearing.
We will start with my opening statement. And the staff has
prepared, sort of, some of what I have experienced in my life.
They have about two pages of my experience as a sheriff and a
detective working with people on the street. I think they were
trying to put me in a box to shorten up my statement, so I am
going to read from that, because if I don't read from it, I
will probably get off into all kinds of different examples and
stories and it could take us a while.
I think most people know that before being elected to
Congress I spent 32 years working in law enforcement in King
County. And I became a sheriff in 1997 and left in January of
2005 to come to Congress. I saw firsthand the tragedies that
children face when they are not cared for by loving parents.
It was in the sheriff's office where I first witnessed the
horrors of child sex trafficking, and it convinced me that we
needed to do more to protect our youth at risk of abuse. And in
late summer in 1982, I began a 20-year journey that would focus
my attention on this issue like nothing else ever could.
On August 12th of 1982, I was called to investigate the
death of a young woman whose body was found in the Green River
just south of Seattle in suburban Kent, Washington. Of course,
I didn't know then that that was the beginning of 20 years. I
thought that I was investigating one murder. Three days later,
I received a call about two more bodies being found in the
river. And as I was investigating that crime scene, I found a
third body on the banks of the river.
Finding these victims began our 2-decade hunt for a man who
became known as the Green River Killer, who, once caught,
confessed to killing more than 70 young women who had been
involved in the sex trade. Of the 48 known victims of the Green
River Killer, at least 17 were minors--children who had been
abused or neglected, who had run away from home, who had been
victimized and ultimately killed.
Ridgway pled guilty to 49 murders and, like he said,
probably killed 70 to 80. The sad part about this story is the
families who will never see their daughters again, lives lost,
of course. People recognize that. But the community didn't see
these children, driving from home to work, from work to home.
They were invisible. So this issue is not just an abstract
problem from a faraway place for me; it is personal.
As chairman, I focused on how we can improve the child
welfare system and help children in foster care lead successful
lives. One of the most devastating examples of the
vulnerability of kids in foster care is when they become
victims of sex trafficking. In 2010, officials in Los Angeles
reported that 59 percent of juveniles arrested for prostitution
were in foster care. Of children reported missing to the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who were
also likely sex trafficking victims, 60 percent were in foster
care or group homes when they ran away.
Research cited by the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services shows the majority of sex trafficked youth experience
sexual abuse growing up. Victims of sexual abuse are 28 times
more likely to be involved in prostitution than children who
have not suffered such abuse.
I think everybody in this room recognizes, and I hope that
people across America recognize, we cannot allow this to
continue. We owe it to these children to ensure our Nation's
foster care system does all it can to protect them so that they
can live safe and happy and successful lives. For too many kids
in foster care, we are not living up to that promise.
That is why the topic of today's hearing is so critical to
me and why I know it is important to each of our witnesses
today. And I look forward to hearing from each of the witnesses
in both panels.
And now I yield to Mr. Doggett for his opening statement.
Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
We are aware that nearly 150 years ago our Nation banned
all forms of slavery through the passage of the 13th Amendment,
but the protection of that promise has eluded too many children
who are enslaved, effectively, by really cruel masters. While
there is not any one piece of legislation that will stop sex
trafficking of children, we can't allow complacency to stop us
from doing everything in our power to put a stop to this.
Our first task in this subcommittee, given our
jurisdiction, is to ensure the child welfare system doesn't
become a pipeline to prostitution. The abuse and neglect that
children suffer before coming into foster care already make
them prime targets for those who prey on children. A sense of
isolation that often comes when children are removed from their
homes makes them even more vulnerable. And when children run
away from home, the risk grows further still.
Without the protection of the foster care system, abused
and neglected children would be even more at the mercy of
predators and sex traffickers. But the system needs to become
more cognizant of the problem and more forceful in developing
strategies to stop it. I note one survey that was conducted by
the Los Angeles Probation Department revealing that a majority
of the juveniles arrested on prostitution were in the foster
care system already, and that ought to set off an alarm for us.
Some policies that generally help foster children, such as
better connecting them with relatives and helping them lead
more normal lives, are important. This subcommittee has held
hearings on these issues, and yesterday we passed bipartisan
legislation to better promote the adoption of children in
foster care.
I expect that we will hear about the need for increased
housing options for the victims of trafficking, improved
coordination and collaboration among all the various agencies
and programs that come into contact with children, and that we
need to ensure that children who are trafficked are not treated
like criminals but the victims that they truly are.
In Texas, we have a number of champions who have worked on
this. I look forward to hearing from Ashley Harris, who has
come up from Texas with Texans Care for Children and who has
worked with State Senator Leticia Van de Putte, State
Representative Senfronia Thompson, and other members of our
legislature to deal with this problem at the State level.
I particularly look forward to hearing from all of our
colleagues on their recommendations for what legislative
initiatives we can take and how we can work collaboratively on
a bipartisan basis to address this truly serious problem.
And I yield back.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Doggett.
Without objection, each Member will have the opportunity to
submit a written statement and have it included in the record.
I want to remind our witnesses, please, to limit their oral
testimony to 5 minutes. However, without objection, all the
written testimony will be made a part of the permanent record.
On our first panel this afternoon, we will be hearing from
several of our own colleagues, as Mr. Doggett said. And it is
sometimes unusual in a subcommittee hearing to have the
interest of a number of Members, so it is really an honor to
have the four of you here. And we will be hearing from Senator
Hatch via a video presentation later on.
So the first panel today is the Honorable Eric Paulsen of
Minnesota, who, by the way, was acting chairman of this
subcommittee last year; Honorable Louise Slaughter of New York;
Honorable Ted Poe of Texas; the Honorable Karen Bass of
California; and, as I mentioned, Senator Hatch of Utah will
present later.
Mr. Paulsen, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. ERIK PAULSEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA
Mr. PAULSEN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking
Member Doggett. I want to thank you for holding this hearing
today and bringing light to an issue that is all too often
ignored.
It is very easy and comfortable to think that sex
trafficking happens only outside the United States, but the
truth is that the exploitation of our children happens every
day all across the country and even in our own backyards.
I recently visited Breaking Free, which is a Minnesota
organization run by a survivor of trafficking whose mission is
to educate and provide services to women and girls who have
been the victims of abuse and commercial sexual exploitation.
And while there, I had the opportunity to meet with victims and
to hear their stories. Breaking Free has beds that are
exclusively used for child trafficking victims. And I was
shocked to learn, Mr. Chairman, that these beds are full almost
every night and they are looking for additional capacity.
The Department of Justice reports that, between 2008 and
2010, 83 percent of sex trafficking victims found within the
United States were U.S. citizens, and the average age of a
girl's entry into prostitution or sex trafficking is 12 to 14
years old. That is the seventh grade.
Sadly, the foster care system is rife with opportunities
for predators to exploit these young girls. Recently, the
Chicago Tribune reported how group facilities are a breeding
ground for the recruitment of children into sex trafficking,
saying, quote, ``Because many girls in foster care feel starved
for a sense of family, experts say it is not uncommon for pimps
to target group homes and groom girls for prostitution by
giving them attention and gifts. They often let the girls think
they are dating, and they even used one foster child to recruit
others.''
Youth who have been involved in the foster care system are
also more likely to become runaways or to become homeless at an
early age. Minneapolis Police Sergeant Grant Snyder, who works
full-time fighting youth prostitution and trafficking, reports
that there is a very strong connection between runaways and
homeless youth and sex trafficking victims. He says all of
their trafficking victims are a part of that population.
And youth who age out of the foster care system often have
little or no income support, limited housing options, and are
at a higher risk to end up out on the streets. Youth that live
in residential or institutional facilities often become
homeless upon discharge.
Sadly, the consequences for these children are dire. Girls
who become victims of sex trafficking may face a range of both
physical and mental maladies, including reproductive health
issues, pain, weight loss, depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders,
and suicidal thoughts.
When I talk to experts, over and over again they say there
is a general lack of understanding of the problems, and,
therefore, the victims aren't getting the proper services and
care they need.
Earlier this week, I actually met with the Ramsey County
Attorney in Minnesota John Choi, and he said, ``Just like
domestic violence decades ago, child sex trafficking is not
getting the attention that it needs. There is not a strong
awareness of the youth trafficking problem. People don't know
that it is going on, and, therefore, they don't know what to
look for.'' He went on to say that, ``in order to prevent
youths from becoming victims of sex trafficking, we need better
information as to what is happening, where, and to whom. We
need to identify trends, and then help fill in the gaps.''
That is why earlier this year I introduced bipartisan
legislation, along with Representative Slaughter, to help
provide reliable data, particularly as it relates to children
in the child welfare system. It takes an important first step
by requiring that each State's foster care and adoption
assistance plan contains a description of the specific measures
taken to provide services to children who are the victims of
sex trafficking.
It also requires children welfare agencies to immediately
notify the proper authorities when children go missing, either
from their homes or from childcare institutions. This
information will all go to the FBI, where we can keep a
comprehensive database.
And this bill will also classify that these victims, that
they are just that, they are victims, not criminals, which they
are sometimes labeled today. We need to make sure that the
victims are able to come forward without the fear of
prosecution and given the proper care and protection, they are
not just thrown in jail.
This is an issue that people don't always like to talk
about. And while we read stories about it going on in foreign
countries, the reality is it is happening right in our
backyards. But by pooling our resources and gathering ideas and
intelligence from as many sources as we can, we can start to
fight back and save the lives of these innocent youth. This
legislation is a product of ideas from law enforcement and
nonprofit organizations that understand the problem, and, also,
they know very real what the practical ways are to combat it.
I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to testify, and I
commend the committee for bringing attention to this very
important topic.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Paulsen.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Paulsen follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. I will just take a moment to point out
for people who might be watching C-SPAN and those in the
audience, this is one of those few moments where you see some
true bipartisanship, so we have Democrats and Republicans here
testifying today.
So it is an honor to have you, Ms. Slaughter. You are
recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. LOUISE SLAUGHTER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I am
very pleased to be here, delighted to co-sponsor this with Mr.
Paulsen--and Congressman Poe and I have worked on similar
issues before--and, certainly, to be here with my colleague,
Karen Bass. This is a most important issue to all of us, and I
thank you for holding this hearing and giving me the
opportunity to come to speak.
We have all said so many times and we believe with all our
hearts that the children in this country are our most important
resource. All of us who are parents and grandparents know the
lengths that we would go to to protect our children from harm.
And we wish that every child had the opportunity to grow up in
a family that loved and protected them, but, unfortunately,
that is not the case. As a result, as we are here today,
400,000 children are in the foster care system.
And there have been great improvements in recent years in
terms of reducing the numbers of children in foster care and
increasing the number of children who find permanent and loving
homes. We should acknowledge and be proud of the advancements
that have been made, particularly the focus on supporting youth
as they age out of the system.
But the fact of the matter is that the majority of foster
care parents are loving and supportive individuals who open
their hearts and their homes. Foster care parents can
rightfully be described as the better angels among us, and they
deserve to be recognized for the incredible difference they
make in the world every day. But far too many children in the
foster care system don't have that benefit.
But even for those incredible champions, protecting young
people in foster care from the threats of the outside world is
a very big challenge. And statistics tell us that foster
children are exceptionally vulnerable to those who seek to
exploit children, as Congressman Paulsen has told us.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
tells us 60 percent of runaways who are victims of sex
trafficking were at one time in the custody of social services
or in foster care. In my home State of New York, 85 percent of
the trafficking victims have prior child welfare involvement.
To say that I am completely appalled and embarrassed by that
number is an understatement. While State-specific numbers vary
throughout the country, they all tell us that much more needs
to be done.
And I am proud to be one of the co-sponsors of H.R. 2744,
the Child Sex Trafficking Data and Response Act, sponsored by
my colleague, Mr. Paulsen. And this bill, to go over it again--
and I know you have heard it, but we can't hear it too much,
because this is such an important bill, and it must be
addressed if we are going to reduce the incidence of sex
trafficking in the United States, which is growing at terrible
rates.
First, it identifies and documents children within the
welfare system who are victims of sex trafficking. Then it
trains the child protective service workers to identify and
provide the services needed to victims of sex trafficking;
coordinates efforts with State law enforcement, juvenile
justice, and social services; and reports the number of
children known or suspected to be the victims of trafficking
each year.
Now, all of these approaches are good and necessary, but
the part of this bill that is of primary importance to me is
that the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act will be
amended to require that child victims of sex trafficking will
now be considered victims of abuses and neglect, making them
eligible to receive services within the child welfare system.
The idea that a young person rescued from a sex trafficking
operation could be considered an offender within the juvenile
justice system is shocking to me and to you, as well, I am
sure.
These are victims in the strongest sense of the word, the
children who have been preyed upon by those who would take
advantage of the situation. That fear and the loneliness that
comes from being in the foster care system, to use them to
their own advantage and profit. Those children deserve help and
a chance at healing and wholeness, not a criminal record.
I have worked for many years on issues of domestic violence
and sexual assault in the military. In 1994, I drafted the
original Violence Against Women Act with my good friend, Former
Representative Patricia Schroeder, and in recent years fought
to pass numerous protections into law that provide our
servicemen and -women with the resources, support, and the
agency to seek justice in cases of sexual assault and to
successfully prevent cases of sexual assault before they occur.
In the process, I have watched women go from victims to
survivors after receiving services that the agencies funded by
the legislation on domestic violence have been able to offer.
We have watched the incidence of domestic violence fall by 67
percent since the bill was passed. And I believe we will see
the same kind of impact from addressing sex trafficking among
our foster youth.
The same way millions of victims of domestic violence have
been drawn out of the shadows and been given a chance to stand
because of the Violence Against Women Act, I believe that this
legislation we are talking about today and other ideas being
considered before this committee are the path forward for these
young people who deserve all the assistance that we can
provide.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Doggett, Members of
the Committee, for your time and your consideration today.
Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Ms. Slaughter, for all your
hard work and concern on this issue and the team that you have
with you at the witness table.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Slaughter follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Mr. Poe, who I call ``Judge'' and he
calls me ``Sheriff,'' he has done a lot of work in this area,
and I am so pleased to have the Judge here.
Judge, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. TED POE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Mr. POE. Thank you, Chairman Reichert, Ranking Member
Doggett, for inviting me to testify on this important issue.
As you have mentioned, in my former life, I spent 22 years
at the criminal courthouse in Houston and 8 years before that
as a prosecutor. That is where I first heard about you,
Sheriff. And the whole country appreciates your relentless work
on the Green River murders even to this day.
Child abusers, sex predators are the worst criminals in our
society. Too often, the justice system unfortunately ignores
the victim of this crime.
When I first came to Congress, Congressman Jim Costa and I
founded the Victims' Rights Caucus. The VRC is currently
focused on combatting human trafficking. This topic is
particularly of interest to me because my hometown of Houston,
Texas, is unfortunately a hub of this despicable crime of human
trafficking.
Many are not aware that modern-day slavery occurs right
here in the United States, as Ranking Member Doggett has
mentioned. The problem is very real, especially among
vulnerable youth in the child welfare system.
This is Anna's story, which was given to me by Shared Hope
International. After Anna's family passed away, she was placed
in foster care at the age of 3. She was shuffled from home to
home until the age of 12, when she was finally adopted by a
family.
Anna began hanging out at the wrong place, a corner store,
and her family, of course, did not know that she was there. She
met a person who she thought she could trust. Little did she
know the person she met at the corner store was not a friend at
all. One day, she got into a fight with her parents and she
called the one friend that she thought she had, who picked her
up. She didn't know that this call would change her life
forever.
This individual was actually a sex trafficker. He was
violent. He beat Anna. He sold her body. The emotional,
physical, and sexual abuse continued for a long time. He
threatened to kill her family if she ever called the police. He
also told her that if the police ever found her they would
arrest her. And that is exactly what happened. She was arrested
and charged with prostitution. She was treated as a criminal.
But she was a victim of crime.
Anna became convinced her family didn't want her any
longer, and she felt helpless and scared. This is a typical
situation, unfortunately, for girls like this.
After 4 years of this abuse, she escaped and was reunited
with her family. And through strength and resilient spirit and
with the help of her mother, Anna vowed to make a difference
one victim at a time. Now she runs a ministry for sex
trafficking survivors and runs an outreach program for at-risk
youth.
Unfortunately, Anna's story is not that unique in this
country. The scars from the foster care system stayed with her
and made her vulnerable to trafficking. Many foster youth have
experienced neglect, physical, emotional, and even sexual
abuse. These factors make the children more susceptible to
trafficking.
And the child welfare system has many problems, and one
major challenge is not only to put a roof over the child's head
but to instill some values like self-worth into all of these
children. We must remember that child sex predators, when they
commit these crimes against our youth, are trying to steal the
soul of the victim when they commit sexual assault.
I will soon introduce the Justice for Victims of
Trafficking Act, along with Congresswoman Maloney from New
York. The companion bill will be also offered in the Senate by
Senators Cornyn and Wyden. This bill will create a grant
program to help State and local governments develop and
implement comprehensive victim-centered programs.
It creates a Domestic Trafficking Victims' Fund at the
Treasury, financed through the fines on persons convicted of
human trafficking and child exploitation, which can be used to
fund support programs for victims. Criminals, Sheriff, will
literally pay for the crime and the system that they have
created. Included in this bill are a number of other provisions
to ensure victims receive justice and traffickers and buyers
are prosecuted.
Mr. Chairman, across this country we have 5,000 shelters
for animals. I have gotten one of my three dalmatians from an
animal shelter. I love those places. But in the whole country,
according to Shared Hope International, there are only 226 beds
for minor sex trafficking victims. We can do a lot better.
The Justice for Victims Act that I introduced--and I have
already introduced the End Sex Trafficking Act. This bill will
help combat human trafficking by targeting criminals who
purchase sexual acts and ensuring they are prosecuted just like
the trafficker. The bill goes after the so-called anonymous
buyer of sex trafficking. It targets the demand to stop the
sale of our children. The days of boys being boys in this
country are over when it comes to exploitation of our children,
and the long arm of the law needs to go after these consumers.
I commend you for holding this hearing today. And that is
just the way it is.
Chairman REICHERT. Now you know why we call him ``Judge.''
Thank you, Mr. Poe.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Poe follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Ms. Bass has been passionate on this
issue. She and I have had a number of discussions and have
attended some events together and speaking out.
And really appreciate your presence here. You are
recognized for 5 minutes, Ms. Bass.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. KAREN BASS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Ms. BASS. Well, thank you. Thank you very much for holding
this hearing, Chairman Reichert and Ranking Member Doggett, for
providing me the opportunity to testify today, but also your
leadership today as well as yesterday on the bill that we
passed on a bipartisan basis yesterday on the floor. As the co-
chair of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, I am very
appreciative of your ongoing commitment to improving outcomes
for foster youth and families.
As I have traveled throughout the country as part of the
Foster Youth Caucus National Listening Tour, it has been
devastating to hear the children involved in the child welfare
system, particularly those that experience multiple placements,
are especially susceptible to coercion and manipulation by
traffickers.
In Los Angeles, there is a specialized collaborative
courthouse. This court is designed to serve commercially
exploited youth, and they report that 80 percent of the girls
have been previously involved in the child welfare system.
Increasingly, in the Los Angeles area and other large cities,
gangs are engaging in commercial sexual exploitation, too,
selling girls in addition to drugs and guns.
It is clear we need a comprehensive approach to prevent the
victimization of our children. Child welfare and law
enforcement must work together in a coordinated fashion to meet
the needs of young survivors and prevent the exploitation of
others.
Unfortunately, the child welfare system as a whole has not
truly recognized trafficking as a crisis within the foster care
population, and they haven't incorporated protocols and systems
to address the problem.
I had an experience in Los Angeles where I was talking to a
child welfare director and I asked him about the problem of sex
trafficking in the area around the office. He told me it didn't
exist. The day before, I had been with the FBI, and they said
that the area right around that neighborhood was one of the
most--one of the most trafficked areas. And so the child
welfare agency wasn't even aware of it.
To address the gaps, I have introduced H.R. 1732, the
Strengthening Child Welfare Response to Trafficking Act, along
with my colleague and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on
Foster Youth, Representative Tom Marino.
Primarily, the bill would help establish local plans to
combat trafficking, as well as ensuring national data
collection in several important ways. The bill requires child
welfare agencies to report missing, abducted, or trafficked
youth to law enforcement within 72 hours for entry into the
National Crime Information Center database. Oftentimes, these
children are just viewed as runaways.
The bill amends the Child Abuse Protection and Treatment
Act to ensure that States develop comprehensive multi-agency
plans to identify and provide services to all victims of
trafficking. This would be inclusive of foster youth as well as
other youth who might be commercially exploited.
In addition to local planning and data collection, the bill
directs the Department of Health and Human Services to submit a
report to Congress that outlines the prevalence and trends of
trafficking amongst child welfare youth, both State by State
and nationwide; develops a proposal to collect annual data from
State agencies; and proposes an ongoing method of supporting
and monitoring efforts of local child welfare agencies to
prevent trafficking and serve victims.
Finally, the Strengthening Child Welfare Response to
Trafficking Act directs the Department of Health and Human
Services to develop and publish guidelines to assist child
welfare agencies in serving youth who are victims of
trafficking and preventing the exploitation of youth at risk
from becoming victims. Although HHS recently released guidance
to child welfare agencies on this topic, there is room for
additional resources and specific tools. As outlined in the
bill, the guidelines would provide example training materials
and screening tools, service delivery strategies, protocols for
effective cross-system collaboration, best practices related to
residential placement, recommendations for documentation and
data collection.
Something else that needs to be addressed on a State level
are girls who have been involved in the system, who have
criminal records, and have turned their life around, and now
they need to have those records expunged, because we
understand, moving forward, these girls should have never been
arrested for soliciting to begin with.
In conclusion, we cannot continue to fail our Nation's
children. As Federal legislators, we have a tremendous
opportunity to ensure that local plans to prevent exploitation
are in place as well as collect the necessary national data to
inform future Federal strategies. While many of the social
services needed to properly serve trafficked youth may require
a monetary investment, these first steps do not require
additional Federal funding.
It has been encouraging to see momentum on this issue
throughout the 3 years I have served in Congress, and I look
forward to continuing working with my colleagues.
Thank you very much.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Ms. Bass, for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bass follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. And I know that, as I said earlier,
Senator Hatch wanted to be here today to testify. He is the
author of legislation that also seeks to prevent trafficking of
youth in foster care. So we asked him to testify. He couldn't
be here, but he provided a video for us. So, next, we will
watch Senator Hatch's testimony.
But before we begin the video, if our member panel wants to
leave--I know everyone has a busy schedule. You are free to
leave, or you can stay and listen to the Senator's testimony.
And any of the members on the panel here who have
questions, we will just--we will meet you on the floor or we
will send them to your office. Is that all right?
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Indeed.
Mr. POE. Yes.
Chairman REICHERT. Okay.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you for being here today.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Pleasure.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. ORRIN G. HATCH, A SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF UTAH
[Video begins.]
Senator HATCH. Chairman Reichert, Ranking Member Doggett,
and Members of the Subcommittee on Human Resources, thank you
for holding this important hearing on preventing and addressing
sex trafficking of youth in foster care. I am pleased to have
the opportunity to tell your committee about legislation that I
have introduced in the Senate.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, as you know, there is an
epidemic of abuse taking place in America today. Recent reports
estimate that hundreds of thousands of children and youth are
at risk for domestic sex trafficking.
The risk of sex trafficking is compounded every year for up
to 30,000 young people who are, quote, ``emancipated,''
unquote, from foster care. Too many of these emancipated youth
turn 18, pack their few belongings in a trash bag, and are
driven to homeless shelters, leaving them vulnerable and
exposed to traffickers and other predators.
While in foster care, children and youth are also at
increased risk for trafficking. In order to combat domestic sex
trafficking and improve outcomes for children and youth in
foster care, systemic changes need to be made in the current
child welfare system.
The legislation I have introduced in the Senate, the
Improving Outcomes for Youth At Risk for Sex Trafficking,
otherwise known as IO Youth, addresses some of the endemic and
widespread conditions in the child welfare and foster care
systems that make children and youth particularly vulnerable to
being sexually trafficked. I would like to describe the
highlights of the legislation for the subcommittee.
Mr. Chairman, I am sure many Americans would be surprised
to learn that most child welfare agencies will not serve
trafficked children and youth who are not in the custody of the
biological or foster family or living in a group home. Often,
these children, who are not legally able to give consent for
sex, are arrested for prostitution and referred to the juvenile
justice system. And in many States, the courts and the juvenile
justice system are ill-equipped to deal with the trauma these
children and youth have endured.
My bill requires States to provide services to youth who
may have been trafficked or are at the risk of being
trafficked. It also redirects Social Services Block Grant funds
to improve the current court system to better identify and
address the needs of trafficked youth.
My bill includes a number of provisions to encourage,
enhance, and support youth in foster care to allow them to
participate in age-appropriate activities and social events. I
hope these provisions will promote healthy development,
increase opportunities for foster children to form meaningful
connections, and reduce the risk of vulnerability to domestic
sex trafficking and other negative outcomes.
Another major risk factor for vulnerability to domestic sex
trafficking for older youth in the child welfare system is a
continued reliance on congregate care facilities, sometimes
referred to as group homes. These facilities are routinely
targeted by traffickers and are often warehouses for youth who
are rarely, if ever, allowed to engage in healthy social
activities.
My legislation refocuses Federal priorities on connecting
vulnerable youth with caring, permanent families and limits
Federal reimbursement for very young children and, after a
certain duration, for older youth. For those remaining in
congregate care, those kind of facilities, the bill requires
that youth have improved access to normal, age-appropriate
activities.
Many youth in foster care report that they might not have
gone into foster care in the first place had preventative
services been available to their biological family, which could
have kept them safely at home. IO Youth responds to the need
for preventive services, such as mental health and substance
abuse treatment for fragile families, by redirecting funds from
the Social Services Block Grant to address this need as well as
to enhance and improve child welfare systems.
Youth in foster care routinely report that they feel
uninvolved, unaware, and disconnected to any planning around
their care or future. They are not informed of their rights
while in foster care. This can lead to a sense of
disenfranchisement and a lack of connection to siblings,
relatives, or other caring adults. In many cases, this lack of
connection contributes to the void so often preyed on by
traffickers.
My bill requires that State child welfare agencies provide
ongoing family funding for older youth in foster care as well
as greater participation of youth in planning for their future.
We want to find those families for them. It also encourages
States to find individuals willing to be involved on an ongoing
basis with the youth in foster care.
Individuals who work with victims of domestic sex
trafficking tell us that the single biggest challenge to
successful intervention with these victims is a lack of
accessible and affordable housing. For older youth who have
been emancipated from foster care, not having a place to sleep
is often a reason why they enter the sex trade. In order to
improve housing options for these at-risk youth, my bill
redirects funds from the Social Services Block Grant in order
to provide housing to trafficked and other vulnerable youth.
Chairman Reichert and Ranking Member Doggett, thanks a lot.
And thanks again for the opportunity to share highlights of my
legislation. I look forward to working with you and other
Members of the Subcommittee as we move forward to prevent and
address domestic sex trafficking.
[Video ends.]
[The prepared statement of Senator Hatch follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Well, again, if any Members have
questions for Senator Hatch or any of the other colleagues that
have testified today, you are free to submit them in writing.
And now we will move on to our second panel, if they would
please take their seats.
Well, welcome. Happy to see you all here today.
On our second panel this afternoon, we will be hearing
from--and I am going to call her ``T.'' because she said I
could do that, and as well as all the other Members. We can
call her ``T.'' She goes by T. Ortiz Walker Pettigrew, and she
is a board member, Human Rights Project for Girls.
Welcome.
Mr. John Ryan, CEO, National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children.
Thank you for being here.
The Honorable Bobbe J. Bridge, President, CEO, and Founder,
Center for Children and Youth Justice.
Thank you, Judge.
Ms. Melinda Giovengo, Ph.D., Executive Director, YouthCare.
Thank you.
And Ms. Ashley Harris, Child Welfare Policy Associate,
Texans Care for Children.
Thank you all for being here.
T., you have 5 minutes or a little more if you want to.
STATEMENT OF WITHELMA ``T.'' ORTIZ WALKER PETTIGREW, BOARD
MEMBER, HUMAN RIGHTS PROJECT FOR GIRLS
Ms. PETTIGREW. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
say thank you to you, the Members of the Committee, and the
Human Rights Project for Girls for the invitation to be here
today.
A little bit about myself: My name is Withelma TiOra Ortiz
Walker Pettigrew, but, yes, you can call me ``T.'' I am now 24
years of age, and I am currently a student here in Washington,
D.C., at Trinity Washington University.
Previous to being a student, I was a youth who grew up in
foster care for pretty much the first 18 years of my life.
Throughout that time, from the ages of 10 to 17, I was a victim
of sexual exploitation and trafficking here, domestically, in
the United States throughout the States of California, Nevada,
Oregon, and, of course, your State, Washington.
I am here to tell you why I and other youth in foster care
are rendered more vulnerable to be sexually trafficked. So,
first of all, we accept and normalize being used as an object
for financial gain. We also experience various people who
control and come in and out of our lives. We lack opportunities
to gain meaningful relationships and positive attachments. And
the traffickers, exploiters, and pimps--I use this term
interchangeably in my testimony, as they all mean the same
thing--have no fear of punishment due to the lack of attention
when young people from this population go missing. In addition,
the life instability makes it easier for exploiters to hide
their involvement, which continues to perpetuate the foster
youth population's vulnerability.
So how do we accept and normalize being used as an object
for financial gain? As we all know, there is money provided to
caregivers by the agencies to provide and serve the youth.
Often, this money is used by caregivers for their personal use
or the use of their families or biological children. And,
currently, from my knowledge, there is no system set up to
guarantee that the money is actually being utilized for the
child that is within the placement.
So, oftentimes, what happens is the foster parent will say
something the sorts of, you know, ``I don't really care what
you do. It is not my worry. As long as, you know, you don't
die, you know, I am going to continue to get my paycheck.'' So
this nothing-but-a-paycheck ideology really puts the youth in a
compromising situation in regards to how they are supposed to
feel.
And so what we began to do as the youth in care is
normalize and accept that our purpose is of being a financial
benefit of others. And so, because of this, it makes it harder
for a youth and even for myself in my story to have seen the
difference in bringing in finances into the foster home or of
bringing money to an exploiter and their stable.
So foster care normalizes that other people are supposed to
control our lives and circumstances. Multiple roles, such as
public defenders and social workers, come in and fluctuate in
and out of youths' lives, most of whom are strangers to them.
These are the people who dictate what happens in their lives--
where they live, what school they go to, and what decisions
will be made for them socially. Foster care creates an ever-
changing environment of youth having to adapt to strangers
making life decisions, and this is conducive to the parallel
process of exploiters who seek to keep control of a youth's
life.
We also lack opportunities to gain meaningful relationships
and positive attachments. How this plays out for others and for
myself, opportunities to build these skills, such as problem-
solving or for what it means to reconcile after an argument,
are denied, and instead we are just moved to another placement.
For myself, as unfortunate as it is to say, due to the over 14-
plus placements I have endured, the most consistent
relationship that I ever had while in care was that of my pimp
and his family.
Like me and many other youth in care, we become accustomed
to being isolated, much like the victims of domestic violence.
By adapting to multiple moves from home to home, this allows us
to easily adapt to when traffickers move us multiple times from
hotel to hotel, city to city, and/or State to State.
And these exploiters go without fear of punishment due to
the lack of attention when young people from this population go
missing. No one looks for us. I really want to make this clear:
No one looks for us. No one keeps us on their radar. The system
just makes no effort. There are no AMBER alerts, no posters
when youths from the foster care system go missing. And,
oftentimes, group homes will avoid reporting youth missing due
to interrupting payment.
And, oftentimes, from the system, it is always assumed that
we have willingly run away. Many times, that is not the case.
Many times, we are kidnapped or other circumstances. This the
exploiters use to their advantage. The life instability of
foster care makes it easier for exploiters to hide their
involvement, which continues to perpetuate our population's
vulnerability.
I believe child welfare agencies should be working with
local programs which support and provide resources to youth who
have been sexually exploited to enhance their responses with
working with these youth to transition into a healthier
lifestyle. They also can learn ways to identify these youth.
For myself in care, there was many times that I had many
absences and people knew I was absent, but those were red flags
that should have been paid attention to.
Child welfare agencies also need to figure out ways to make
these children visible when they go missing. I am pretty sure
that there are many people in society that would be willing to
help, but they are not aware that these children are missing
and that somebody cares about what has happened to them.
You should also be provided trauma-informed counsel and
care at all times. This means that the agencies should be
actively working to gain and maintain these resources to do so.
And, in addition, I believe cell-phone hotlines or other ways
to respond and interact with these youth when they reach out
should be developed.
These youth also need to be actively involved in the
decision-making process of their life and their circumstances.
I feel that in California they have meetings called TDMs, which
is team decision-making meetings. And New York also has
something along the same processes called family team
conferences. These are great examples of youth involvement, as
they have the youth and their families come together--and this
is families both biological and created--come together to make
decisions about placement choices and things of that sort.
You should have a constant ally throughout their time in
care, as it is a great resource that some agencies do work with
mentorship programs. Oftentimes, the mentoring goes uncontinued
if the youth is not in placement. So I believe that these
youths should be provided a constant ally throughout their time
in care, and this person should be available whether or not the
youth is currently in placement. This also helps in regards to
when the youth are on the streets or in the process of being
exploited.
And, lastly, we need to ensure that these conversations are
actually followed with Federal actions from the input received
here today.
In addition to all that I have stated here, I also serve on
the National Foster Care Youth and Alumni Policy Council, and
we have also been actively working to provide recommendations
to address this issue amongst this population.
So I want to say thank you again, Chairman, Members of the
Committee, and the Human Rights Projects for Girls, and the
audience, for taking the time to receive my contributions.
Thank you to all who work on behalf of these children. You are
all appreciated with all you do to end the vulnerability of all
children.
Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. Good job. Thank you for your testimony,
T.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Pettigrew follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. And I let her go a little bit long
because I think we all agree that is special testimony that we
all need to hear. It doesn't mean that the other four witnesses
don't have something important to say, but--so you will be held
to the 5-minute rule, Mr. Ryan.
STATEMENT OF JOHN D. RYAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL
CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN
Mr. RYAN. Duly noted, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, T., for sharing your powerful story with us. It
is very compelling.
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
inviting me to speak about this problem of sex trafficking of
our youth in foster care in the United States.
As you know, the National Center is a private nonprofit in
operation since 1984. We were designated by Congress to serve
as the Nation's clearinghouse on missing and exploited
children's issues.
We have several programs to address child sex trafficking,
including our CyberTipline, an online reporting mechanism for
suspected child sexual exploitation, including child sex
trafficking and child pornography; additionally, our Child Sex
Trafficking Team, made up of dedicated analysts who support law
enforcement's effort to arrest and prosecute those who sell our
children for sex; and our Critical and Runaway Unit. These are
specialized case management teams that handle cases of missing
children who are also possible sex trafficking victims.
NCMEC partners with the FBI and the Justice Department in
the Innocence Lost national initiative. Since 2003, NCMEC has
served as a clearinghouse for information and provides
analytical support to the 66 Innocence Lost task forces
throughout the country. These task forces operate cross-
country. This is a targeted, coordinated, 3-day sweep of child
sex trafficking venues. These operations have rescued more than
2,700 children who have been trafficked and arrested more than
1,300 pimps. Several of these prosecutions have resulted in
life sentences. This year, the youngest child recovered was 13
years of age.
When they hear the term ``child sex trafficking,'' most
Americans think that it only happens in other countries or that
foreign children are brought here to be sold in large cities.
In fact, we have learned that most of the victims of child sex
trafficking are American kids who are trafficked in small towns
and large urban areas. If people are not aware of it, they are
not looking for it.
How prevalent is child sex trafficking? In 2012 alone, one
out of eight endangered runaways reported to the National
Center were likely child sex trafficking victims--one out of
eight. This number has tripled since we started comparing
missing children to trafficked children.
An often overlooked aspect of child sex trafficking is that
it is also a problem of missing children. Many child sex
trafficking victims are missing from their parents, legal
guardians, or foster care placements. These are the most
vulnerable of children. Traffickers know this. They actively
target runaways and then lure them into the sex trade using
psychological manipulation, illegal drugs, and violence.
Foster children are easy targets for pimps. These children
are the most susceptible to the manipulation and false promises
that traffickers use to secure their trust and dependency. Of
the children reported missing to NCMEC in 2012 who were likely
child sex trafficking victims, 67 percent were in the care of
social services or foster care when they ran--67 percent.
Let me give you one example. The National Center received
reports of a young girl who was 15. She had been reported
missing 13 times before she was placed in foster care. Law
enforcement got involved, and the pattern continued of her
running away.
We found through our reports that this child had several
tattoos, many of them pronounced. Tattoos are a sign of
branding by these pimps. They market these products, these
young girls, these victims.
We were able to develop leads through public records
databases that this girl was being trafficked on an online
classified service. We sent that information to law
enforcement. They set up a sting operation, they made a call to
arrange a date with this young girl, and they were able to
rescue her.
This girl reported that for the last 2 years she had been
victimized, on average, five times per night for that 2-year
period.
The most important thing we can do is to change the
conversation from a juvenile delinquency issue to child
protection issue. These children cannot just walk away. They
must be rescued and treated as victims.
All child welfare agencies must report missing foster
children to law enforcement. The National Center, working with
law enforcement, when we have this information we can
interdict, we can help find this child before they are
victimized. We have systems that are in place in some States,
but it must be universal, consistent, and mandated.
Thank you for your interest, and we look forward to working
with this committee and all the proposed legislation that has
been proffered here today. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Ryan.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ryan follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. I would like to take just a moment to
introduce our next witness, who happens to be from Washington
State and is an old friend of mine back in our criminal justice
days together.
Justice Bridge is from my home State, as I said, and has
more than 19 years of experience with child welfare and has
been recognized as a leading advocate for foster care and
juvenile justice reform.
Justice Bridge founded the Center for Children and Youth
Justice in 2006 to reform Washington State's juvenile justice
and child welfare systems. And, recently, I think January 2010,
you were given the Advocacy Spirit Award, national spirit
award, by the--and you were a Defender of Rights and the
Dignity for Our Youth Award in January of 2010.
So it is good to see you, and I am happy that you were able
to be here. And I understand it coincides with a conference
that will be held tomorrow.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. BOBBE J. BRIDGE, PRESIDENT, CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, AND FOUNDER, CENTER FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH
JUSTICE
Ms. BRIDGE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman Reichert, who
I resist calling ``Sheriff'' as well, and Members of the
Subcommittee.
Thank you for inviting my testimony today. It is an honor
to participate in this discussion of the ways in which we can
prevent, effectively intervene, and ultimately eradicate the
commercial sexual exploitation of vulnerable children in our
communities, especially those in the foster care system.
I am Bobbe Bridge, founding president and CEO of the Center
for Children and Youth Justice. The center, informally known as
CCYJ, is a private nonprofit established in 2006 to advance
justice for and to enhance the lives of children and youth in
the juvenile justice and child welfare systems through juvenile
justice, child welfare, and related systems improvement.
As Chairman Reichert noted, prior to founding CCYJ, I was a
trial judge in King County Superior Court for 10 years, during
which time I presided over hundreds of child abuse and neglect
and juvenile delinquency cases. Would that I had known the
right questions to ask.
During my 8 years of service as an associate justice of the
Washington State Supreme Court, I reviewed these same cases and
also became involved in system change efforts in child welfare.
I learned valuable lessons. No one part of the system--no
one system--can alone address the multiple and complex needs of
abused and neglected children and youth. Fortunately,
Washington State has a robust history of collaboration, both
cross-discipline and cross-system, in child welfare.
Ms. BRIDGE. This history has led to a number of changes in
practice in our child welfare system that have resulted in
better outcomes for our children and youth in foster care.
But information that is coming to us now regarding the
extent to which these children, who have been in foster care or
are currently in foster care, are becoming victims of sex
trafficking, or CSEC, as we call it, commercially sexually
exploited children, presents a new reality which requires new
approaches.
I would like to focus my brief time on describing a
systematic approach that might prove valuable in your response
to this reality.
A lot remains unknown about CSEC, but what we do know is
that by bringing professionals from the various systems that
interact with those who either are or who are at risk of
becoming CSEC together with survivor and community voices in
authentic, collaborative, and coordinated responses, we are
more likely to create successful outcomes for these children.
The State of Washington is in the process of implementing
such a collaborative model. Project Respect is the working
title for the CCYJ-led project, which has resulted in the
development of the Washington State CSEC Model Protocol.
The purpose of the project and of the protocol is to
implement that State-wide coordinated response that is best-
practice- and data-driven that will identify, engage, and
better serve commercially sexually exploited children and youth
in Washington State--children and youth who are victims, not
criminals--and to hold their perpetrators accountable.
With a combination of public and private funding, last year
we brought together over 200 people--survivors, system
professionals, advocates, and community members across the
State--to discuss the context of CSEC in their communities, the
responses that were currently being used, the gaps in data and
services, and to explore what the components of a model
response protocol should include.
With the result of this effort, a draft protocol was
prepared, vetted to a number of State-wide leaders, and
finalized. This year, working together with our partner,
YouthCare, five sites, some multicounty, have been trained on
the protocol and on best practices in working with CSEC.
Also during this year, the Washington State Center for
Court Research of the Administrative Office of the Courts is
leading an effort to work with stakeholders and those pilot
sites to develop a data collection plan involving law
enforcement, courts, child welfare, and service providers.
The progress of the protocols and the policy implications
of the work at the local sites will be being reviewed by the
newly created Washington State CSEC Coordinating Committee
established by the legislature in the 2013 legislative session
and convened by the Washington Attorney General.
Lessons learned have led us to some promising systemic
actions that could be undertaken by this subcommittee.
First, providing guidelines, direction, and resources for
the cooperative and consistent collection of data on the
prevalence of CSEC, their pathways to becoming trafficking
victims, and to effective practices for prevention and
intervention.
Providing guidance and incentives for collaboration and
cooperation at both the State and local levels to develop model
protocols for improving our response to CSEC. And critical here
to success is the necessary participation of the State and
regional child welfare agency at its highest level.
Providing direction and incentives to State child welfare
agencies to focus on children missing from care and to recruit
and train specialized foster homes to receive those who are
found to be CSEC. Safe and stable housing should be made
available to those for whom independent living is the best
option.
Providing specific resources through the Court Improvement
Act for judicial training and identification of CSEC and for
advocates as a resource to the courts when a foster child is
identified as CSEC.
Providing training to child welfare workers on the
identification of CSEC, including the use of special assessment
tools and casework practices that reduce running from care.
Mandating changes in State child welfare laws so as to
include a trafficked child in the definition of an abused
child.
I thank you for this opportunity to be a part of finding
solutions to the sex trafficking of youth in foster care. On
behalf of CCYJ, I would submit that whatever efforts we
undertake to address the proliferation of sex trafficking of
our former and current foster youth should be research-based,
collaborative, coordinated, data-driven, and sustainable.
These efforts should focus on identification and support of
the victims and must recognize that this is a crime of mobility
which requires a unified and consistent response, a response
that does not merely move the incidents from one neighborhood,
one county, one State, to another. And, hence, the beauty of
this Federal leadership on these issues.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bridge follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. I would also like to introduce another
friend from Washington State, Ms. Giovengo, who has over 27
years of experience developing and implementing reengagement
programs for out-of-school and homeless youth. She is the
executive director of YouthCare, which helps homeless youth and
operates the only program in Washington State providing
residential services for sexually exploited youth.
You are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MELINDA GIOVENGO, PH.D., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
YOUTHCARE
Ms. GIOVENGO. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Reichert
and Members of the Subcommittee. I am grateful for the
opportunity to address the subcommittee on this important
topic. As said, my name is Melinda Giovengo, and I am the
director of YouthCare, located in Seattle, Washington.
Since 1974, YouthCare has been a leader in providing
effective services to help Seattle's runaway and homeless youth
get off the streets and prepared for life. We were founded to
help eliminate the sexual exploitation of children in our
community. Our agency's dynamic programming and collaboration
serve as a model for working with runaway, homeless, and
sexually exploited youth, both locally and nationwide.
Runaway homeless youth are at high risk for sexual
exploitation. Recent studies, as have been cited here today,
estimate that there is an exorbitant prevalence between these
two populations prior to these young people entering our
services.
To better serve the clients of YouthCare, we operate the
Bridge Continuum of Services for Sexually Exploited Youth,
consisting of: identification and outreach strategies;
community-based advocates, which I like to call lifelines;
emergency shelter programs; long-term housing; and, most
important, education and employment training, which helps offer
these young people an opportunity to find a way out of
exploitation. These services are trauma-informed and are often
victim--and victim-informed.
The city of Seattle estimates there are between 700 and
1,000 homeless youth on our streets every night. The Seattle
area also has a significant problem with sexual exploitation
and the trafficking of children. In 2008, a study in King
County conducted by Dr. Debra Boyer identified 238 unduplicated
minors involved in prostitution and determined the prevalence
of sexually exploited youth in King County to be between 300
and 500 per year.
The long-term risks for youth in foster care are well-
documented, but it is only in recent years that the prevalence
of sex trafficking among youth in foster care has been widely
recognized. Many of the runaway and homeless youth served at
YouthCare are part of the foster care system or have aged out,
and even more have histories of involvement with child welfare
through CPS reports and investigations.
We see youth every day who are being trafficked and
exploited and who are system-involved for whom the system has
failed. It is the system's involvement, combined with their
runaway and homeless status, which makes them uniquely
vulnerable to pimps and traffickers.
Today, I will highlight five key issues and offer
recommendations to address each of these.
Youth in foster care are disproportionately at risk for
victimization through sex trafficking due to their prior abuse
and lack of social and familial support and frequency of
running away. YouthCare recommends that the child welfare
agencies create a strategic plan for how to prevent trafficking
among youth in care and identify and respond to youth who do
become victims of sex trafficking.
Second, the youth in foster care are often victims of sex
trafficking before social workers and foster parents or other
providers are aware. YouthCare recommends that screening,
intake, and ongoing service planning should include measures to
screen for indicators of trafficking, such as childhood sexual
abuse.
We further recommend that all child welfare staff and
foster parents receive mandatory training on identifying and
responding to sex trafficking and that specific resources be
dedicated to meet the needs of victims and foster parents and
social work staff.
And, finally, we recommend that social work and child
welfare agencies participate in regional task forces or
protocol development in efforts to respond to sex trafficking,
while partnering with our runaway and homeless youth programs
across this Nation to help lay the framework for a cross-
country and very deep intervention strategy for these young
people.
State-dependent youth who are missing from care cannot
legally be housed in homeless youth programs receiving Runaway
and Homeless Youth Act money or HUD funds. We recommend that
RHY language and HUD language be amended to allow for the
provision of services to State-dependent youth if other
placements are deemed inappropriate.
The fourth is the scope and prevalence of sex trafficking
in youth in foster care is not systematically tracked or
quantified, and the lack of data is a significant barrier to
the effective response. It is recommended that data strategies
should be implemented to accurately quantify how many youth in
the foster care system and in the runaway and homeless youth
systems are being sex-trafficked.
And, finally, responses to sex trafficking at the State and
local levels are varied and inconsistent. YouthCare recommends
that policies be enacted whereby allegations of sex trafficking
are automatically screened for investigation by child
protective services and that the definition of abuse and
neglect is expanded to reflect the abuse and harm caused by
pimps, traffickers, buyers of commercial sex, and other
custodial perpetrators accessing children through the
commercial sex trade.
Youth in foster care are at significant risk for many
damaging and impactful outcomes, not the least of which is the
victimization through sex trafficking. Significant resources
and strategies should be vetted and implemented in order to
identify victims and increase the capacity of child welfare
agencies to protect youth from these harmful and devastating
experiences.
Thirty years ago, YouthCare ran a program helping 36 young
women off the streets and out of the victimization of
prostitution. I sit here 30 years later with the same
recommendations I would have had then. I see and hear from many
of these 36 young women that I knew. They call, they say,
``Thank you.'' They have jobs, they have college degrees, they
have families, they have lives. The young people I see now were
not even born when they were in my care.
How many thousands of young lives have been lost in those
30 years? How many more before we recognize that these are not
incorrigible, immoral delinquents that need to be dealt with
but children who are victims of the most heinous forms of abuse
in our communities and they need our help, support, care, and,
dare I say, love to regain their lives? How many more and how
long before those children become our children?
I would sincerely like to thank the subcommittee for its
interest in hearing YouthCare's recommendations for improving
the child welfare system's response to sex trafficking of youth
in foster care.
In closing, we deeply appreciate the dedication of this
subcommittee, and particularly of you, Chairman Reichert, to
provide leadership and bipartisan commitment to combatting sex
trafficking. We look forward to your continued efforts and
collaboration and are honored to be a resource in any way
necessary as you move forward on this important issue.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Giovengo follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Ms. Harris, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF ASHLEY R. HARRIS, CHILD WELFARE POLICY ASSOCIATE,
TEXANS CARE FOR CHILDREN
Ms. HARRIS. Good afternoon. My name is Ashley Harris, with
Texans Care for Children. We are a State-wide, nonpartisan,
nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated exclusively to
improving the lives of Texas children through policy change.
As a former caseworker for Child Protective Services in
Texas for over 4 years, I truly appreciate the opportunity to
provide a firsthand account of how this horrible crime impacts
foster kids and those guided to protect them.
I have to first acknowledge T.'s testimony because I think
we can all agree who the real experts are, and those are our
former foster youth and those currently in care.
So thank you for your testimony.
With my testimony, I hope to offer recommendations for the
committee's consideration and opportunities for improvements. I
have included additional items for the committee's
consideration in written testimony; however, because of time, I
will specifically highlight the role that training, lower
caseloads, and case monitoring has on the identification and
protection of our most vulnerable children: those removed from
their home due to abuse and neglect and placed in foster care.
Since hearing the recent reports that a majority of likely
child trafficking victims who are reported missing ran away
from either foster care or a group home, I have been reflecting
on my days as a former CPS caseworker and one of my former kids
from my caseload. Stephanie was a bright, beautiful, and funny
young adult. I worked with her for over 3 years and knew her as
my ``runner'' due to her monthly habit of running away from
every single placement.
Since birth, Stephanie's life and sense of self was defined
by how others used and abused her body. As a teen, she acted as
though running away from care, sometimes selling herself to
others, was a way to exert control over her body and her life--
a tragic and flawed way of thinking that was a direct
consequence of all she had endured.
Each time Stephanie returned, I would pick her up. She
seemed fine, and on we went to the next place. I never stopped
to ask the questions that would have allowed me to truly
understand her experience and the impact of being away from
foster care, all alone, exploited, and broken, without a person
or system to protect and support her.
With a caseload of over 30 teenagers or more at a time,
well above the recommended caseload of 12 to 15 per caseworker,
getting her shelter was more of a priority than ensuring her
social and emotional wellbeing. Caseworkers are the people
charged with protecting some of our most vulnerable children
and should be provided a manageable caseload that ensures
appropriate supervision, that does not leave children at risk
for further abuse and neglect, and promotes a child's ability
to thrive both in and out of the child welfare system.
I also regret that the training I received as a caseworker
had not provided me the skills and support needed to understand
the impact of trauma on healthy child development and identify
behaviors and characteristics that increase the likelihood that
children in foster care will be victims of exploitation and
trafficking.
For many State child welfare agencies, training on these
topics is not part of the initial basic skills development
provided to newly hired caseworkers. Additionally, basic
training on human trafficking, reporting laws, and information
on appropriate resources should be provided to all
professionals who are likely to come into contact with possible
minor victims who may be on runaway.
Stephanie's story represents the experience of many
homeless teens and those involved in foster care, living on the
streets by themselves with no one to protect them and, frankly,
no one really looking. When these children run away from State
custody, the system must respond in an expedited manner and
make best efforts to locate the child and address their safety
and wellbeing. As their parents, the child welfare system has a
responsibility to address the needs of foster children and
ensure their supervision and security.
The susceptibility of children in foster care to human
trafficking must take precedence in the strategic plans of
State and local child welfare organizations. These children are
all of our children. And as the Nation continues to look at
ways to combat human trafficking, we must do a better job at
identifying, protecting, and supporting vulnerable youth like
Stephanie to prevent them from becoming another statistic,
helping them thrive and become healthy, productive, and happy
adults.
Thank you so much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Harris follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you all for your testimony.
I couldn't help but sort of think back to the days when I
was on the street as a police officer, as a homicide detective,
and as a detective working the Green River serial murder case.
That was really central around young girls and young ladies who
were victims on the street being taken advantage of. And,
sadly, some lives were taken by a monster who was prowling the
streets.
And what my memory brought me back to were some of the
things that you all said, especially, Melinda, your comment
about 30 years ago you had made the same recommendations. I see
that so clearly. Thinking back, not much has changed--a little
bit, some has changed, but not nearly enough. We have so much
work to do.
And what I also appreciate about our first panel, too, was
that they did bring some solutions. They are working on some
legislation, I think, that can be helpful. But what I
appreciate about this panel is, not only have you described the
problem for the Members here today from your perspective, but
you have also provided input as to what you see as solutions,
which is really tremendous help for us.
But I am really curious--and, first, my first question will
go to T. We had a chance, as I said earlier, to meet a little
bit before the hearing.
But, first of all, I know that every Member up here really
recognizes the courage it takes to come and speak in front of
Congress, first of all, but to tell your story. I know it is
hard because I have trouble telling my own story, as you and I
witnessed earlier. So thank you for being here, and thank you
for having the courage to come and testify today.
So you have heard some of the ideas about what we could do
to prevent kids in foster care from entering into a life of
human trafficking. From your point of view, it would be very
helpful to us to know, what do you think? What can we do as
Members of Congress, what can the Federal Government do to help
ensure that young kids get a good, permanent, loving home and
stay off the streets and stay out of this world that we know is
so destructive?
Ms. PETTIGREW. Thank you again, Chairman. I think something
that is very important to me--first of all, I would like to say
everything that was spoken at this panel I fully support as a
survivor and as someone who has the perspective of living the
reality.
One thing that I think that was really helpful, I know for
my own story and for many other stories, is that we all escape
in different ways, but I think it really comes down to
comprehensive, trauma-informed, and gender-specific care and
services. And that means, you know, for both girls, boys,
transgender, LGBTQ. I think that what is so important is that
we really have it where it is comprehensive. And what I mean by
that is that it is not just professionals but as, you know,
stated here, it is also victim-informed. I think that that is
the best way that we can really start to find the gaps, the
holes, in which youth are actually falling through.
For myself, you know, it started with, you know, the
connection to a youth advocate who was very much trauma-
informed and really actually knew about my story for years
previous. And so it really takes a conglomerate of different
people and officials who come together to really say, we are
going to start standing up for these youth.
Does that answer your question, Chairman?
Chairman REICHERT. Yes, it does, very well.
Ms. PETTIGREW. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. And I think that we--of course, go
ahead. You have something else----
Ms. PETTIGREW. Oh, I just had another thing that I wanted
to say, is that, in addition, I think that we need to really
look outside and think outside the box. Something that I find
to be very helpful in addition to all of that are, you know, us
thinking outside the box in the effect of--you know, I know,
for myself, I had a juvenile defender who, you know, although I
wouldn't be in placement, still maintained contact. I had, you
know, cell phone, email, and no matter what, she would maintain
contact with me.
Also, I think that we need to go back to the real
terminology of things. As professionals and as people who want
to make a difference, we need to understand that labeling is
real in all terms. So even as, you know, well-intentioned our
work is, using the terminology of ``children prostitution'' or
``child prostitutes'' becomes very offensive, and it really
is--it makes it a hard time for young people to be able to
overcome their victimization. These young people should never
be referred to as ``prostitutes'' or ``prostituted children''
because they oftentimes aren't even of legal age to consent to
sex, so how can they be selling something that they don't have
the legal right to have?
And so, I think, us just taking that into account--you
know, even as a survivor, I wouldn't say that I am just a
survivor, but I am a thriver and an overcomer. And just
understanding that those labels are all integrated in the way
that we see ourselves and we see our futures.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you.
Ms. PETTIGREW. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. We are going to keep your phone number
handy so we can give you a call and ask some questions later
too. Is that all right?
Ms. PETTIGREW. No problem.
Chairman REICHERT. Okay.
Justice Bridge, what do you see as the courts' role in
helping to reduce the vulnerability of youth in foster care?
How can courts work with child welfare agencies to ensure that
these kids are kept safe from harm?
Ms. BRIDGE. Well, first, I am going to put T. on speed
dial, as well.
But the courts definitely have a role. And we have been--on
the child welfare side of things, unfortunately we get siloed,
so I have to say on the one hand child welfare, on the other
hand juvenile justice. But we know that these frequently are
the same populations of kids and they certainly represent the
same needs, the same trauma as their pathway to either juvenile
justice or child welfare.
With that said, the courts have done a much better job of
working with the agencies in order to ensure that our work is
consistent, that we are governed by best practices, by actual
data that exists, rather than by anecdote or by, worst of all,
the comfort of the adults in the systems as opposed to the
voices of the young people who are a part of those systems. So
all of that, I think, is really important.
And one of the things that I think on this particular issue
that is so critical for us to work together on is that
identification is a key. We need to have the best science
possible, including specific assessments, in order to be able
to identify who these children are.
Many children in the State of Washington are not--on the
juvenile justice side, don't end up in the juvenile justice
system by being labeled as prostitutes. They come, however,
through a variety of mostly misdemeanor offenses and the like,
drug possession perhaps being the most frequent felony arrest.
But there are all kind of red flags. There is all kinds of good
learning that we can and should know, and learning together to
identify those kids.
Because the courts' role, in that regard, becomes not
criminalizing this person who is a victim, this child who is a
victim, but can intervene to more positively impact that
child's life and make sure that they are referred to resources
which can intervene, which can interrupt the process towards
being even more deeply trafficked.
And one of the things that T. mentioned that just struck a
chord with me was what we have learned in developing this
State-wide CSEC protocol in the State of Washington is that in
many, many instances--and this is true for foster kids as well
as for children who are not in the foster care system--in the
early days of their being trafficked, they are still connected.
They are still connected primarily to their school. They may
not even be connected to their families or their home, because
they are on the run, but they go to school, they kind of--they
show up. Maybe they go to one or two classes, but they do.
It is an incredible opportunity for educators or for the
court, if they end up being directed to the court because of
truancy. People have to start asking the right questions, and
we need to know what those right questions are. And in order to
ask the right questions, we need to be aware of what the
warning signs are, like the missing school, like tattoos, like
having income that is unexplained, cell phones that are maybe
two or three of them at the same time--all of these kinds of
issues.
We need to be smarter, and we need to get smarter together.
That is how the courts can work with the social service
agencies.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you very much.
Mr. Doggett, you are recognized for your questioning.
Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you very much.
Ms. Harris, you talked about the caseload. And I saw
several heads nodding back and forth amongst all of you as you
discussed various issues. But just in terms of caseload, are
there some national standards on what is appropriate for
working here? And how does that compare to what we have in
Texas?
Ms. HARRIS. The Child Welfare League of America recommends
that caseworkers who are working with children in foster care
have a caseload of 12 to 15 children at a time. And in Texas,
you know, we are at nearly double that recommendation.
Mr. DOGGETT. And how do you find that in Washington State?
With a comparable situation?
Ms. BRIDGE. The caseloads, I believe, have been reduced
over the course of the past decade, let's say, but we are
still, I believe, on average, 19 or 20.
And particularly when you are working with vulnerable
populations--again, you have to ask before you know, when you
have particularly vulnerable people on your caseload, and by
that I mean children who have been on the run from foster care.
If you have 19 or if you have 10 on your caseload, that is far
too many.
Mr. DOGGETT. I know one aspect of our committee is the flow
of Federal dollars to help out with child welfare. But I would
just ask you, since you heard the testimony of our colleagues
and we have heard yours, if there are specific things within
the jurisdiction of this committee that you recommend we do,
whether it is now or in follow-up written testimony, that you
provide us your counsel.
And I think you have done some of that, Ms. Harris, in
yours, and some of the other witnesses have, as well. But
really looking to see, isn't there a way now, immediately, that
we can agree on some bipartisan legislation that might help a
bit supplement what you all are doing at the State level. I
know so much of this needs to be occurring at the State level.
Yes? Do you have a thought on that, Ms. Giovengo?
Ms. GIOVENGO. I do. I just would like to talk a little bit
about what is already being done in another arena.
If we look at how we are treating young people who are
foreign victims of trafficking through our Office of Refugee
Resettlement, my organization alone just received a $1.5
million grant--amen--to be able to serve 20 beds of young
people a year. Now, these young people then have trauma-
informed care, they have an education specialist, they have
people working on their legal issues, they have really
appropriate supervision and care. It is a wonderful system to
take care of these minors who are here without papers or
undocumented, have been trafficked across the border.
On the other side, the RHY program receives $109 million
for programs across the country. Runaway and homeless youth
programs were designed and set up and appropriated originally
to serve the needs of sexually exploited children in our
communities.
Couldn't we be helping the 475 programs nationally to
become the infrastructure to respond a lot easier than to set
up yet another system, to be honest with you. Couldn't we work
in parallel with child welfare to use the resources we have and
expand them to at least have some equity in how we treat our
foreign victims and our local victims.
Mr. DOGGETT. That is very helpful.
Judge, did you want to add something there?
Ms. BRIDGE. Yes. I think the exclamation point that I would
like to make--and I was rushing through my remarks in order to
make the appropriate timeframe. But what Dr. Giovengo was
saying, what it really amounts to is mandating changes in State
child welfare laws so as to include a trafficked child in the
definition of an abused child.
And right now--and I believe that Representative Bass noted
this, as well--the fact is that if it is a third party who is
the perpetrator of abuse, then it doesn't fall within most
State statutes. Federal Government can and should be the leader
in this, because our State statutes--99 percent of our State
statutes mimic what the Federal statute provides.
And these are our kids. How could this not be abuse? And
the fact is, as someone mentioned--oh, I believe as you
mentioned, that these are our children in the most fundamental
way, because we have taken them from their homes, we have made
a determination that those homes are not safe and not providing
for their wellbeing and are not the best permanent place for
them, and yet we then--when they run, we just don't look. It is
shameful.
Mr. DOGGETT. Doctor, were you going to add a comment there?
Ms. GIOVENGO. Yeah. And I just think that, again, while we
know resources are tight--you know, it is just always going to
be that way--there are administrative things that we could do
to make the systems work better for these young people.
As it stands now, a trafficked young person who is in child
welfare cannot have access to a transitional living program
funded by HUD or by the runaway and homeless youth networks
because they are under the jurisdiction, even though those
jurisdictions haven't worked. So those kinds of things prevent
young people from actually getting access to the care they
need.
If you are a foster care young person who is aging out of
foster care, instead of being able to go directly into a
transitional living program perhaps funded by HUD, which we
operate, with trauma-informed care, you are not eligible
because you can't be in the same bed that is funded by HUD.
These things make no sense on the ground, for those of us
that are doing the work. And it seems like we could make some
small changes that would make huge differences in the lives of
our young people.
Mr. DOGGETT. Well, these are very constructive
recommendations. To the extent they are not already part of
your written testimony, please do feel free to supplement so we
can look for a way to respond quickly to your recommendations.
Thank you very much to all of you.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you.
Mr. Young, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. YOUNG. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member.
What an excellent panel we have here. T., your testimony
was inspiring. Your life story is riveting. We really
appreciate you personalizing and humanizing this affront right
now that all of you are doing good work to address. And I
appreciate that.
Judge, I was particularly struck with your systematic
approach to trying to address sexual trafficking in the State
of Washington. And I think we need to do more hard analysis of
data, and I know that you and your team of stakeholders in the
State have been doing that. You have developed a protocol here.
And I would like to dive a little bit deeper into that with you
with several brief questions, if you will indulge me.
You were able to learn, as I understand it, about best
practices or generally accepted practices in other States. How,
if at all, did that inform development of Washington State's
protocol? And how did you divine these best practices from
other States?
Ms. BRIDGE. Well, would that it were divined. That might be
easier.
The process for developing the protocol involved, as I
said, over 200 people. What that meant was focused interviews,
individual interviews, with survivors as well as folks in the
communities on the ground, but also what we called mini-summits
or small summits, which brought together law enforcement, folks
from the courts, including judges, detention workers, juvenile
probation counselors, school people, community activists,
community advocates, social service providers, and our
Department of Social and Health Services, our child welfare
administrators, all trying to come together to, as I said
briefly, share their experience on the ground but also sharing
best practices from the perspectives of their various
disciplines.
In addition, before we went out into the field, as it were,
we also did independent research and were assisted in that by
Dr. Debra Boyer, who is a nationally known expert on practices
relating to CSEC, or commercially sexually exploited children.
So we developed a set of recommendations that are included in
that protocol----
Mr. YOUNG. Right.
Ms. BRIDGE.--about best practices.
Mr. YOUNG. Well, it sounds likes you did a lot of field
work, a lot of focus groups, so to speak. And that is
oftentimes how this sort of information is gathered.
Perhaps I should follow up with Dr. Boyer or somebody else
with respect to some of the homework that occurred, in terms of
data analysis and so forth, going into those meetings. But I do
wonder, as with so many other areas of public policy, whether
there is something lacking, in terms of robust information
related to this population.
Ms. BRIDGE. Without a doubt.
Mr. YOUNG. Okay.
And do you see opportunities for us to improve that
nationally, or do you think, instead, these should be State-by-
State databases, so to speak, of information collected from
case files, as I know you are in the process of doing in
Washington State, or other things?
Maybe you or Ms. Giovengo could speak to that.
Ms. BRIDGE. I will let Dr. Giovengo do a--but, certainly,
the answer is yes. And when I mentioned at the very end about
not just moving this issue or this population from one
neighborhood to the next or one county to the next or one State
to the next, it is where Federal leadership comes in.
We are trying to figure out what data is being collected.
We know it is very little. There should be consistent
definitions of what ``sex trafficking'' means, what ``child sex
trafficking'' means. And that leadership needs to come from the
Federal Government. And when the law enforcement, for example,
or the courts are collecting data, you know, how are they
collecting it so it all means the same thing? And that should
be in a Federal database.
Mr. YOUNG. Justice--thank you.
One final point here. In consulting with Dr. Letourneau,
who is the director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of
Child Sexual Abuse at Johns Hopkins University, she indicated
that she thinks much of the emphasis needs to be placed not
just on treatment or punishment but also interventions to
prevent the occurrence of sexual trafficking. And I think that
sounds spot-on.
To the extent you have thoughts about investments, public
investments, we need to be making that will not only save money
but help protect persons in the longer run, I would be open to
that testimony, either written after the fact or if you have an
idea right now that you can quickly put forward, that would be
great.
Ms. GIOVENGO. Well, just some quick thoughts.
What we have tried to do in Washington State, or at least
in the Seattle area, is we have instituted National Safe Place,
which is on our all of our metro buses around King County. And
through a coalition of runaway and homeless youth providers, we
respond to any young person in a King County library or in our
community centers that looks in and looks like they need help.
So metro buses--we have over 3,000 sites right now. The bus
driver says, ``How you doing?'' They say, ``Not so good.'' She
says, ``Do you need help?'' He calls us. In 45 minutes, we meet
that bus in one of the largest counties in the Nation within 45
minutes and help recover that young person, who may have set
foot out of their house just mad because of, you know, broccoli
or a curfew and end up on a bus with someone looking to put
them in the most horrific situation they could ever experience.
So the National Safe Place model is an interesting, easy,
low-cost way to get your community involved. I think there are
lots of early interventions with families who end up with
shelter programs, to do some family reconciliation, not just
let the kid go home, but to actually try to duct-tape that
family together for a long time with some small interventions,
versus letting them become systematized and part of our long-
term services.
We deal mostly with young people that come in during
adolescence, but there is a lot, I think, we could do with
foster families in identifying and training them on the
expertise of what it looks likes when a child living with you
is beginning to get into this or beginning to perform, quote/
unquote, ``survival sex'' in our community.
So I think that there is a lot of training and, actually,
not very expensive interventions that we could to really create
a much thicker safety net for our young people.
Mr. YOUNG. Thank you, Doctor.
I yield back.
Chairman REICHERT. Mr. Renacci.
Mr. RENACCI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
for holding this hearing on preventing and addressing sex
trafficking of youth in foster care.
I am very interested, really, in working with the members
of the previous panel in regards to--and any other Members from
both sides of the aisle on how Federal laws and policies might
be improved to better ensure the safety and wellbeing of youth
at risk of abuse and neglect.
You know, in Ohio, on average, 12,000 children are living
in foster care each month. Last year, more than 1,500 foster
children aged out of care when they turned 18. When I hear
these statistics, I am not only worried whether or not these
individuals are prepared for life after foster care, but if the
system was able to provide for them the sense of family and
protection they deserve. Our jobs as Representatives is to
ensure the foster system protects them and prepares them,
really, for successes in life.
T., you are an inspiration, and I thank you for your
dedication to really helping others in foster youth.
You mentioned in your testimony at least once, and I read
it, about red flags that go unnoticed by child welfare
agencies. Can you tell us some of the--what these red flags
are?
Ms. PETTIGREW. I think some of them are very much mentioned
within this panel.
Particularly, I want to say that specifically from the ages
of 10 to 13 I was still in and out of the education system. So
I think that definitely I want to go back to, you know, the
absences. I think that if we take the time to integrate the
education system in regards to identifying and in regards to
educating them about this population, I think that that is very
much important.
Because I know if you would have asked me at 13, you know,
what was going on, I would have told you that, you know, this
is my life because I didn't know anything separate. But through
the education of others, just much like the education system, I
seek to find a new me and a different me. And so I think that
definitely the education system.
I definitely think that, yes, the cell phone thing is very
important, very crucial. If a young child has, you know, two or
three cell phones, you have to, like, really take at that in
and say, what is that? You know, what does that look like?
Not even that, just the context of the language.
Oftentimes, you see young people using different language for
different things. And so there is, you know, certain
terminology, like ``green girl,'' or, you know, referring to
one another as the ``B'' word and things like that. There are
certain identifiers. Or saying, you know, ``Oh, that is my
wife-in-law.'' That actually means that is another girl that
has been victimized by the same exploiter.
So really identifying not only the terminology being used,
really the education and incorporating the education system in
our hopes to make progress in identifying and helping these
victims, but also, you know, just paying attention to changes
of, you know, personality, withdrawing from people, being more
isolated, things of that sort. So I think it is important.
Because one thing that I feel is really important for
people to understand is that, if you were to ask me at 13, I
wouldn't see nothing wrong because I was trained to perceive my
life in this way. I didn't see it as anything wrong because no
one educated me to say something is wrong.
Also, we need to understand that young people in the foster
care system primarily aren't taught about healthy
relationships. So we need to understand that that is a red
flag. And if they are, you know, having relationships that
aren't so healthy or, you know, are not clearly visible as far
as what the relationship is, those are red flags.
And so, you know, I think the biggest thing that I have to
say here is that it has taken a long time for me to get to the
place that I am, to be able to speak the way I do and to use
the semantics that I do. And if I was 13, you know, I didn't
have the ability to speak in this way and I didn't have the
opportunities. But all the talents and abilities that I hold, I
mean, my story is just a conduit of many others. And so my hope
is that we can make these changes so that other young people
can come to the same table and show their talents and their
abilities.
Mr. RENACCI. One other follow-up. You mention that the
foster system hinders youths' decision-making.
Ms. PETTIGREW. Yes.
Mr. RENACCI. You know, what type of decisions should foster
youth be more in control of?
Ms. PETTIGREW. I mean, even in regards to a young person
going to sleep over at a friend's house, that is not the
youth's decision nor is it the decision of the caregiver.
Oftentimes, you have to get, you know, approval from the social
worker or the judge in the case, things like that.
I also want to say that, in addition to that, foster youth
should be more aware of their rights. Because oftentimes there
are disruptions in the home due to a foster parent saying you
don't have the right to call this person or you can't call that
person, but, actually, it goes against maybe their State
rights, that only a judge can make that decision.
So, in that regard, I feel that, you know--does that answer
your question?
Mr. RENACCI. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Mr. Ryan, quickly, I know I am running out of time, but you
mention in your testimony that only Illinois and Florida report
missing children to your organization. Why aren't the other
States doing this?
Mr. RYAN. Well, we are actually, Congressman, in discussion
with a number of States, including Ohio, and we are getting
great feedback. I think there is momentum now that we have
proof of concept. We know that the reports we get from two
States have led to the early location and finding of these
children before they have been exploited.
So I think that is encouraging. The fear that may, you
know, have been prevalent with some of the social welfare
agencies--this is a partnership. We all have a role to play
here.
And T. said it earlier in her comments; many times, nobody
is even looking for these children. And you mentioned, at the
age of 18 when they age out, that means nobody will ever have
looked for them, and they are probably forever lost and will
continue in whatever, you know, environment they have been in.
So unless we can get the reports and law enforcement get the
reports, the hope of stopping the cycle that they are bound in
is almost hopeless.
But States are, you know, listening, but I think at the
Federal level, if we want a uniform, consistent approach, that
is the best model. And I know there is some proposed
legislation to address that. That is what we support. Every
child in every State should be afforded the same level of
protection.
Mr. RENACCI. Thank you.
And I want to thank all the witnesses.
I yield back.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you.
Before going to Mr. Reed, I ask unanimous consent to insert
in the record an excellent article about today's hearing topic,
titled, ``Protect Foster Children from Sex Trafficking.'' It
was written by Conna Craig, the president of the Policy
Institute for Children, and includes a number of specific
policy recommendations for us to consider.
If you haven't read that article today, you all might want
to take a look at that USA Today article.
[The information follows: Article ]
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Chairman REICHERT. Mr. Reed, you are recognized.
Mr. REED. Well, thank you, Chairman.
And thank you to the panel for the testimony. And it is
getting kind of lonely up here, but--so we are almost done.
But I appreciate this topic. Obviously, we are talking
about something that crosses across party lines, unites us as a
nation and as people to say that this type of abuse, this type
of problem needs to be addressed and needs to be something that
we stand united against. So I appreciate everything you guys
are doing.
T., what I found very fascinating about your testimony--and
I read your testimony. And I will read you a statement here
that you provided in your written testimony. It says, ``Lastly,
while I was in care, my social workers were aware that I was
being exploited and did nothing about it.''
I would like to know how that happens. What do you mean by
that?
Ms. PETTIGREW. So, what I mean by that is, even as an
emancipated youth, I would--when trying to get some of the
documents of my upbringing, of course, when I went back to get
some of my, what they call, files, it clearly was stated in the
documents that, you know, she has trauma due to years of
exploitation on the streets. And it is the fact that they were
made aware, but at the time in my county there were not
resources, there were not ways to help these youth.
I think that even though I am only 24 and we have made--we
have made so many strides within, you know, these past couple
of years since I have aged out. And so, I mean, you know,
literally, we have to--I am sorry.
Mr. REED. That is okay. You are doing fine.
Ms. PETTIGREW. Literally, we just have to really pay
attention and listen and stay focused to, really, the
vulnerability of these youth.
Mr. REED. See, because that really concerns me, with the
people that are in the system, that their sole mission--and I
have met so many of them, and they are just outstanding people.
They are people that have dedicated their lives to--not for the
paycheck but for the mission. And when I hear something like
that, that tells me that something in the system is failing.
And what I would like to do is hear maybe from the other
panelists, too, T., is how that happens and how that is not
discovered in the system. And how does a worker, whose mission
and duty is to take care of a child in this situation, fails to
do anything about it even though the record shows that they are
aware of it? Can anyone explain to me where that--yeah, Ms.
Harris.
Ms. HARRIS. Well, as a former CPS caseworker, I can speak
to that.
I will admit that it may not--and I would say more often it
is not as explicit as T.'s story, in the fact that it was in
the case record. For me, reflecting on some of the young women
that I worked with, I am thinking they were victims, and I just
did not have the skills and the training to be able to identify
that.
But when it is explicitly documented in case record, I
think a lot of those records, given the high turnover rate that
you have with CPS caseworkers, that information may not be
shared with the new caseworker. They may not have that long
history of understanding a child's behaviors and being able to
determine this is something that a child does often, and how
can we ensure that they are not revictimized. And so I think
that has a lot to do with it.
And I think, to get at that point, it is additional
training and a skill set that many caseworkers are not
receiving when they are new at the job. I have to admit that
many new caseworkers, especially in Texas, are young. They are
right out of college. They have never had experience working
with vulnerable children and families, and so they just don't
automatically have the knowledge to be able to understand what
this problem looks like and then how to respond to it
appropriately.
And I think access to resources is another issue. I know in
Texas there are limited resources specifically for victims of
trafficking, and those resources are not available in all areas
of Texas. And so that is a huge part.
But when it comes to those times when you know a child is
being victimized, the system has to provide that caseworker the
ability to respond appropriately and the skill set to actually
be able to identify that.
Mr. REED. Yeah.
Ms. Giovengo, please.
Ms. GIOVENGO. I just would like to say I think that this
happens way more than is acknowledged. And I think it is
because no one really has jurisdiction over this issue inside
of child welfare. So in very few States is it the purview of
child welfare to be intervene in these particular cases.
I have been shocked day after day in the young people that
come into our care at YouthCare with, when we call to report
from our drop-in center that a young person is being
trafficked, child welfare says, ``Well, call the police.'' To
me--and this is a 12-, 13-year-old.
So this is an issue of no one takes ownership over these
young people; no one adopts them as, you know, their concern or
their ongoing concern. And so these multidisciplinary teams
that Justice Bridge is talking about may resolve some of that,
in terms of we will all be accountable. But, also, we need to
have--I mean, I think we need to have policy that says where
does the jurisdiction lie.
And I would say that there is a lot of teeth to the notion
that T. brings up--and I am always humbled to be with her--
about teaching young people agency. You know, it is not rocket
science, you know. Adolescents are not, you know, green
monsters from the blue lagoon. You know, we know what makes
young people feel self-confident and can stand up for
themselves and maybe even do some reporting of their own
things.
And these young people in foster care are not afforded the
opportunities to learn to drive, you know. So you take a ride
from somebody. You know, there is a vulnerability. Or you are
not with your friends--you can't go on an overnight with your
girlfriend. So you figure out a way to have an overnight.
You are just not afforded the normal developmental
milestones and opportunities that you would be in a regular
home. And I think that that is one of the biggest disservices
we do to these young people out of fear of liability. And I
think that that goes, again, with who is responsible for
creating this person as a young adult and fostering that kind
of growth and development in them. And it all makes them
vulnerable to the kind of care.
Mr. REED. Well, I appreciate that.
Chairman, I know I am out of time, but the judge would like
to respond, if that is okay.
Chairman REICHERT. Well, we will let the judge talk.
Mr. REED. All right. We will let the judge talk, as the
sheriff says.
Ms. BRIDGE. Well, for Ms. Harris, I want to say that there
is somebody who is responsible at law ultimately for these
cases, and it is the judge.
Mr. REED. The court.
Ms. BRIDGE. And that is a failure on the judicial system's
part in huge magnitude, because--and that stems back, in part,
to lack of training and the lack of ability, again, to ask the
right questions, to be alert to the cases that are presented,
and to, in fact, approach the caseworker, to summon the
caseworker even into court and say, ``We have this child on our
caseload; where is she?''
Mr. REED. Well, I appreciate that input, Judge.
When I was a law guardian, when I started my practice of
law, I dealt with caseworkers and child protective services,
and there was a huge burnout factor. I mean, it is a tough job.
And not to have that central person, that somehow it is not
handed to caseworker, caseworker, caseworker, but a referral to
a judge, I mean, these should be the cases that rise to the
top, to say, hey, we have something very significant going on
here and to take care of.
And T.--please, T.
Ms. PETTIGREW. I just have one more thing to say, is that--
--
Mr. REED. Yes.
Ms. PETTIGREW [continuing]. As it aligns and it does fall
in the courts and with the judge, I think that one thing that
we--just out of, like, lack of knowledge and out of just fear
of protection, I think what happens all too often is that we
have, you know, judges who are misinformed or not clearly
educated, and their way of safety is to lock the young people
up in detention. And I think that we need to be really clear
when we say these young people get no rehabilitation, no
trauma-informed services. They are basically locked like a dog
in a kennel waiting for somebody to pick them up on the next
try.
So I just really want to make that clear, that as we defer
this issue towards the judges, that they need to be educated
and informed of other resources, abilities, and ways and
protocols to deal with these young people.
Mr. REED. Great input, T. Thank you very much.
And I thank the panel.
And I yield back, Chairman.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Reed.
Well, thank all of you for being here, a little over 2
hours of your hearing. And I just want to say again how much I
appreciate what you all are doing to help our young people
across this country. And thank you for being here today to
testify.
There were a number of things that really struck, I think,
a lot of the Members here today. I know, for me, again, it
always brings me back to those days when I was working with
those young people on the street.
And one of the things that T. said about healthy
relationships and not really knowing what that healthy
relationship was, you know, when you think about it, most
people in this country don't understand what she just said,
because they have a healthy relationship.
And when you say, T., I really didn't know what that was, I
didn't know what love was, I didn't know what a family was, I
didn't know what that was, people don't get it. I get it. I get
it.
So, also, I wanted to mention that we have had a series of
hearings. One of those hearings, a few months ago, was about
children being children and allowing foster kids to participate
in sports and get rides home with coaches and other parents and
get a driver's license. And so that is a part of this whole
effort.
As we move forward and have additional hearings and stay in
touch with you, what we would like to do is provide some of the
thoughts that we are having along the lines of what legislation
might look like, forward those to you, get your input, so that
we can make sure this is right. We want to get this right
because it is about the future of this country, it is about
saving lives, it is about saving the lives of our children.
So thank you all very much.
And I must say this last sentence for the record. If
Members have additional questions for the witnesses, they will
submit them to you in writing, and we would appreciate
receiving your responses for the record within 2 weeks.
The committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the Record follow:]
Foster Family Based Treatment Association
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