Sex Trafficking & LGBTQ Children & Youth

LGBTQ+ youth and young adults are at high risk of being trapped into modern day slavery.

Traffickers target vulnerable individuals who lack support,

financial resources, or those who have experienced abuse in the past.

Short Powerful Twin Cities Child Sex Trafficking Video

(Thank You Stories Foundation)

Quinn was 16 years old when they first became a victim of human trafficking. As a non-binary youth, they had spent most of their life being discriminated against and feeling stifled by their family and conservative community.

Their parents didn’t support them and Quinn’s homelife was a toxic environment. To escape, Quinn took a high paying job at a strip club while a junior in high school.

The job paid real money and made getting away from home possible. Quinn planned to strip for a short amount of time to raise money to leave home and find a more accepting community.

One night, one of Quinn’s high school teachers showed up at the club. Knowing that Quinn was a minor, he threatened to report the club if Quinn didn’t give him private sessions weekly.

Quinn became one more troubled youth entrapped in this club’s sex trafficking ring and was only able to escape after a suicide attempt resulting in admission to a psychiatric hospital.

“To work and not be paid for your work, to not be free to leave, to be in love with someone and have them selling you in these ways, it’s just the ultimate human injustice.” -Kara Napolitano, researcher at LCHT (Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking)

LGBTQ+ youth and young adults are at high risk of being trapped into modern day slavery. Traffickers target vulnerable individuals who lack support, financial resources, or those who have experienced extreme abuse in the past.

LGBTQ youth face challenges in their childhoods that their heterosexual peers do not.

In addition to discrimination from their own families and communities;

over 26% of queer youth are rejected from their families), LGBTQ youth are much more likely to end up homeless.
40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+ and
they are4x more likely to experience sexual violence than their heterosexual peers.
LGBTQ youth are also 3-7x more likely to engage in survival sex to have basic needs such as food, shelter, toiletries, and drugs met.

Transgender youth are extremely vulnerable.

A study at Loyal University found that roughly 56% of transgender youth become involved in sex trade at one point or another. 1/3 of queer youth who leave home are likely to be recruited by a trafficker within 48 hours.

Queer children and youth are much more susceptible to violence and stigmatization from the population at large, including law enforcement.

Institutionalized homophobia and transphobia run rampant in the criminal justice system, which discourages LGBTQ youth from reaching out for help.

When they reach out, they are likely to face more mistreatment from the police and forced to return to their traffickers due to implicit (and explicit) transphobia and homophobia.

This article submitted by KARA writer Sam Foerderer

KARA reports on the issues of child well-being

All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children (thank you Don Shelby)