Hundreds of children and youth suffer sexual exploitation in Washington every day. Sexual and physical abuse at home, mental health issues, or homelessness contribute to a youth’s vulnerability to exploitation. All too often, these kids continue to slip through the cracks because service providers fail to recognize it is happening. Children go without critical services and are sent back to the streets, and to their abusers—or are traumatized by a justice system that treats them like criminals, instead of victims.

What We’re Doing:

• Collecting statewide data to learn more about commercially sexually exploited children. We’re conducting a comprehensive data project on commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC), ages 11 to 18 in Washington, to track their identities, life situations, and experiences. From the data reported by participating agencies in 2016, we’re learning that suspected CSEC youth were disproportionately youth of color and 24 percent male. Thirty-five percent attended school in the last term and 32 percent still lived with a parent or relative. Many are exploited while in the care of the state as foster youth.
• Implementing a statewide protocol to reduce child exploitation. CCYJ’s Project Respect coordinates implementation of the WA State Model Protocol for CSEC which was developed with over 200 partners across the state. The majority of Washington residents live in an area helped by this victim-centered protocol.
• Building a victim/survivor-centered response network to support children. We’re creating a statewide, victim-centered response network for commercially sexually exploited children to identify and help them recover from the exploitation and coercion they have endured.

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CSEC Task Force Report and Toolkit

CCYJ partnered with the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs Student Consulting Lab to better understand how Washington State task forces responding to commercially sexually exploited children and youth (CSEC/Y) function, how they view success, and what tools and policies enable their success.

These findings led to the development of a detailed report and a toolkit of best practices that current and future task forces can use to better support CSEC/Y systemically in their local communities and regions. Designed for ease of use, the toolkit provides practical guidance on nine components of a task force.

• Report: Review of Washington State Task Forces Engaged in Ending the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth
• What is a Task Force?
• Starting a Task Force Phase 1
• Sustaining a Task Force Phase 2
• Structure of a Task Force
• Task Force Coordinator
• Task Force Chair
• Training
• Data Collection
• Statewide Coordinating Committee

If you have questions about the toolkit or report, or would like additional information on task forces, please contact Morgan Silverman at msilverman@ccyj.org.