Sex trafficking is the crime of using force, fraud, and/or coercion for the purpose of sexual exploitation or to induce another individual to sell sex. Labor trafficking is the crime of using force, fraud, and/or coercion to induce another individual to work or provide service. Across the U.S, Canada, Mexico, and Central America, where Covenant House provides residential programs and vital services to children and youth facing homelessness, the most common form of human trafficking is commercial sexual exploitation.
Every year, traffickers generate more than $150 billion in profits by victimizing millions of people worldwide. Vulnerable and susceptible to manipulation, children and youth experiencing homelessness are a prime target of this lucrative and criminal industry.
Two main factors drive the spread of human trafficking: high profits and low risk. Like drug and arms trafficking, human trafficking is a market-driven criminal industry based on the principles of supply and demand. No country is exempt from this illicit enterprise.
Across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America, where Covenant House provides residential programs and vital services to children and youth facing homelessness, the most common form of human trafficking is commercial sexual exploitation. Young women and girls are the most at-risk of trafficking, although boys are also trafficked and are less likely to ask for help. LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness are also at high risk for human trafficking. In the U.S. and Canada, 31% of our shelter residents who identify as LGBTQ+ have experienced trafficking.
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted economic and social inequalities around the world. New and increased vulnerabilities put more people at risk for trafficking and those facing serious financial insecurity became more desperate to make ends meet.
In our half a century of service to more than 1.5 million children and youth, Covenant House has identified a direct correlation between youth homelessness and human trafficking. Of the thousands of young people who find safety at Covenant House in the U.S. and Canada, nearly 20% are survivors of human trafficking.
Why do human traffickers specifically target youth facing homelessness? Because these young people present a low-risk business proposition and are relatively easy to lure from the streets with promises of love, protection, food, and financial security. Because of their vulnerability, children and teens with no place to call home and no one to care for them make easy prey for traffickers.
Our research shows that 68% of youth who had either been trafficked or engaged in survival sex had done so while homeless. What’s more, 22% of youth were approached for paid sex on their first night of homelessness.
"I didn’t have a home, so selling myself was a survival mechanism. I felt alone in the world, like I had no choices. I was 19, on the streets, so tired and hungry. All I had in the world was a small bag of dirty clothes and a cracked cell phone. A lady came up to me and asked me if I needed help. And for some reason, I finally said yes."
-Audrey
At Covenant House — in the safe houses and safe spaces across our movement — we witness firsthand the physical, emotional, and psychological toll human trafficking takes on young people.
"This stranger looked up shelters on her phone for me and found Covenant House. She even paid for my subway ride. She saved my life. And when I walked into Covenant House, things began to change. I look back now and wish that 21 year-old-Audrey could talk to 15-year-old Audrey and tell her there is hope … but back then I felt no hope."
-Audrey
Because so many young people are already homeless when they’re trafficked, they often have no place to go after escaping the bonds of their trafficker and abuser. Covenant House is a refuge for youth escaping trafficking – offering a complete approach that includes direct care, advocacy, and research, to ensure we can best serve survivors. Covenant House is committed to providing more crisis, short-term, and affordable long-term housing so that young people are not forced to live on the street and be pushed into choices no one should have to make.
All of our houses provide refuge to survivors, and several have established specialized programs and safe houses dedicated to supporting survivors. Our direct care is holistic and trauma-informed. It includes intake screening tools, personal care kits, mental health support, and case management. Survivors at Covenant House have access to and participate in all of the programs offered at our sites, including education advancement and workforce development, offering survivors a viable alternative to commercial sex.
Providing direct care fuels our groundbreaking research, which allows us to refine our programmatic methods and tools. When more and more young people began arriving at Covenant House having experienced a form of trafficking through force, fraud, and/or coercion, we advanced our research goals and investments in direct care to meet the needs of these young people.
Covenant House New York helped pioneer methods for screening youth for trafficking experiences, and new screening tools developed by Covenant House New Jersey and Covenant House Texas, in collaboration with respected researchers, have helped us to more quickly identify trafficking survivors and provide them the special care they need. Our direct care also makes us better advocates for service, funding, and laws that protect children and youth from the horrors of human trafficking.
Covenant House partners with organizations at the state and federal levels to advocate for policy change and to amplify the need for justice, funding, and services for survivors. We are part of the strongest anti-trafficking coalition in the U.S., and have successfully fought for safe harbor laws and to close the legal loophole that had allowed online marketplaces to advertise young people for sex. In Canada and Latin America, we offer legal support to survivors, including when they choose to testify against their traffickers in court. In Toronto, we supported the girls whose testimonies led to Toronto’s first-ever human trafficking conviction.
With 50 years of providing trusted and transformative care and shelter to young people facing homelessness across the Americas, Covenant House is uniquely positioned to advance research into human trafficking and its impact. Several Covenant House sites have collaborated with exceptional research partners to unite our experience to their analytical expertise and produce groundbreaking studies with impact. Below are details from our most recent research projects, with links to the full reports.
1. Prevalence and Nature of Human Trafficking among Youth Experiencing Homelessness in the United States and Canada
From February 2014 to March 2017, Covenant House invited researchers from Loyola University (New Orleans) Modern Slavery Research Project (MSRP), and The Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice & Research at the University of Pennsylvania to 13 cities across the United States and Canada to serve as external experts to study the prevalence and nature of human trafficking among young people experiencing homelessness. The result led to one of the largest-ever data sets on human trafficking and exploitation experiences of young people facing homelessness.
From MSRP's study, of 641 young people interviewed:
From The Field Center’s study, out of 270 young people interviewed:
Read the full text of the Loyola study here.
Read the full text of the Penn study here.
2. Risk Factors for Human Trafficking Among Youth Facing Homelessness in New Jersey
From 2015 to 2017, Covenant House New Jersey, in partnership with Mount Sinai, conducted a separate longitudinal study of 344 youth experiencing homelessness who sought services at our houses in Atlantic City, Elizabeth, and Newark. The study explored the factors that differentiate trafficked youth experiencing homelessness from not-trafficked youth who are unhoused in order to determine risk and protection factors for human trafficking among New Jersey youth facing homelessness.
The New Jersey study found the following:
These and other findings from the research can be found in the peer-reviewed journal article by Chisolm-Straker, Makini, et al., “A Supportive Adult May Be the Difference in Homeless Youth Not Being Trafficked,” Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 91, 2018, pp. 115-120, doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.06.003.
Read the full text of the Covenant House New Jersey and Mount Sinai study here.
3. Attitudes and Behaviors that Put Teenage Girls at Greater Risk of Sex Trafficking in Canada
In April 2018, Covenant House Toronto partnered with IPSOS Public Affairs to survey and interview teenage girls across Canada to better understand the attitudes and behaviors that put the teens at risk for sex trafficking. The qualitative part of the research consisted of one-on-one interviews with sex trafficking survivors, their parents, and advocates, as well as online mini-groups with teenage girls, ages 12 to 16, and parents. The quantitative survey, which was informed by the qualitative study results, polled 501 girls between the ages of 12 and 16 in rural communities and urban centers across the country.
The Canada study found the following.
Read the full text of the Covenant House Toronto and IPSOS Public Affairs study here.
"Victims and survivors of trafficking and sexual abuse don’t always have a voice and if you can speak up for them, they will later be able to speak up for someone else."
- JJ
Additional Resources:
"Global Report on Trafficking in Persons", United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 2018; "Global Estimates of Modern Slavery", International Organization of Labor, 2017; "I am Jane Doe", a documentary by Mary Mazzio.
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