Putting the pieces back together: a group intervention for sexually exploited adolescent girls

Domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) is an emerging problem affecting adolescents, families, and communities throughout the United States. Despite a growing awareness of the problem, information regarding treatment is limited. This paper describes a pilot group intervention created for use with DMST victims, focusing specifically on areas that were critical to the development and life of the group: 1) providing education about DMST, 2) reducing shame and addressing stigma, 3) mutual aid, and 4) managing strong emotions through the development of new coping skills. Process examples are given to illustrate this pilot intervention, and recommendations for research and practice are discussed

Resiliency and women exiting sex trade industry work

Summary: A qualitative approach was used to explore the experience of exiting sex trade industry work from the perspective of 19 adults formerly involved in the sex trade industry. A narrative approach to data collection was used explore the participants’ experiences of successful exiting and phenomenological analysis was employed to identify themes that reflected the ways in which participants developed resiliency throughout the exiting process. Findings: Themes include: connection (including subthemes: survivor presence, children, and spirituality), resources (including subthemes: networks, structure and safety) and personal growth. Significance: These themes represent women with diverse experiences in the sex trade industry, including a majority who were victimized by (internal) sex trafficking. The findings demonstrate opportunities for social work practice to address the diverse needs of individuals exiting the sex trade industry, specifically for those who experienced sex trafficking and sexual exploitation

Invisible offenders: estimating online sex customers

Research on prostitution demand has well documented why men buy sex from girls and women, but there is very little understanding of the scope and scale of the issue. The lack of stable and valid measures of how many people buy sex from prostituted persons severely hinders the development of prevention and intervention efforts. This study developed a probability estimate of the population of active customers of online sex in the United States in a sample of 15 cities. In each city, the research team placed decoy online ads, advertising the sale of sexual services/prostitution, and collected text and voicemail data from potential sex purchasers. The resulting 677 phone numbers were analyzed using capture-recapture techniques to create an estimate of the number of online sex purchasers within each city. On average, within the 15 markets explored, 1 out of every 20 males over the age of 18 in a metropolitan city area was soliciting online sex ads. These results demonstrate (a) the viability of new techniques to estimate buyer populations and (b) preliminary figures on the number of purchasers buying sex online