Boys: The Invisible Victims of Child Sex Trafficking

Child sex trafficking is not a new phenomenon. And thankfully, the general public and child abuse professionals have greater awareness than ever of it. But has the full story yet been told? To what extent has the experience of boys been a part of our understanding of sex trafficking of children and youth? What places boys at special risk for trafficking? What vulnerabilities do they have and how might that affect their recruitment? And how can we tailor programs to meet the unique needs and concerns of boys? Join us as we speak with Amanda Connella, graduate research assistant at the TIP Lab, and Dr. Sandra Stone, assistant dean for graduate studies at the University of South Florida, about how we can ensure that boys are no longer invisible victims.

Topics in this episode:

• Origin story (01:14)
• Kids at risk of trafficking (05:17)
• Not enough service providers for boys (14:25)
• Not enough research (18:50)
• Misperceptions about boys (20:46)
• Prevention disconnected from data (26:02)
• Advice for parents (31:15)
• Advice for child abuse professionals (38:07)
• Public policy (47:40)
• For more information (50:27)

Links:

Amanda L. Connella, M.A., is a graduate research assistant at the TIP (Trafficking in Persons Risk to Resilience) Lab at the University of South Florida

“The Invisible Victims of Commercial Sexual Exploitation: Boys and Their Barriers to Access to Services,” graduate thesis, Amanda L. Connella

Sandra Stone, Ph.D., professor and assistant dean for graduate studies, University of South Florida

Joan A. Reid, Ph.D., LMHC

Selah Freedom

Colby Valentine, Ph.D.

“Why Do People Believe Conspiracy Theories About Human Trafficking?”, with Maureen Kenny, Ph.D.

NIJ, National Institute of Justice

Bob’s House of Hope

“The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in New York City, Volume One: The CSEC Population in New York City: Size, Characteristics, and Needs,” by R. Curtis, K. Terry, M. Dank, K. Dombrowski, and B. Khan (September 2008); Center for Court Innovation and John Jay College of Criminal Justice

For more information about National Children’s Alliance and the work of Children’s Advocacy Centers, visit our website at NationalChildrensAlliance.org. Or visit our podcast site at OneInTenPodcast.org. And join us on Facebook at One in Ten podcast.

Transcript

Season 6, Episode 4

 “Boys: The Invisible Victims of Child Sex Trafficking,” with Amanda Connella and Sandra Stone, Ph.D.

[Intro music starts]

[Intro]

[00:09] Teresa Huizar:
Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, “Boys: The Invisible Victims of Child Sex Trafficking,” I speak with two guests: Amanda Connella, graduate research assistant at the TIP [Trafficking in Persons Risk to Resilience] Lab, and Dr. Sandra Stone, assistant dean for graduate studies at the University of South Florida [USF].

Child sex trafficking is not a new phenomenon. And thankfully, the general public and child abuse professionals have greater awareness than ever of this scourge. But has the full story yet been told? And to what extent has the experience of boys been a part of our understanding of sex trafficking of children and youth? What places boys at special risk for sex trafficking? And what vulnerabilities do they have and how might that affect their recruitment? And how can we tailor programs to meet the unique needs and concerns of boys? 

To ensure that boys are invisible no more, please take a listen.

 [01:14] Teresa Huizar:
Hi, Sandra and Amanda, welcome to One in Ten.

Sandra Stone: 
Hi!

Amanda Connella: 
Hi! Thank you.

Teresa Huizar: 
So. I’m just wondering about the genesis of your project. And I’d like to ask you both: How did you come to this work really looking at the intersection between commercial sexual exploitation of boys and really work that had been done even previously with ECPAT, if I’m remembering that correctly.

Sandra Stone: 
Right. You want to go first, Amanda? 

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah, yeah, I’ll go first. When I was first starting my master’s, one of the other authors on this project, Dr. Joan Reid, she came to me with the project because there was this scholarship opportunity called the Trail Blazers Scholarship with USF Sarasota-Manatee. So they were wanting to provide me a scholarship to be able to do research to recreate the ECPAT. To do kind of like a 10-year follow-up on the original research. So that’s what initially got me into it. 

And then after doing like, the literature review for it and just diving more into just like the background, I really started to get really invested in the research. And then that’s when I ended up deciding to base my thesis as well off of it, to further expand on the study that we were doing.

So yeah, so that’s kind of how I got into it personally. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Great, thank you. And Sandra, what brought you to this project? 

Sandra Stone: 
Dr. Reid, again, our other coauthor, one of our other coauthors, had gotten funding through an internal grant at the University of South Florida to establish a trafficking in persons research lab.

And so, there are three campuses in the university, and she made an invitation for other faculty that were on the other campuses to join her lab. I work on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, and a couple of other faculty and I had already been doing some work with Selah Freedom, which is an anti-trafficking organization headquartered in Sarasota. And so Dr. Reid invited us to become affiliate faculty members with the lab. 

So, as she and I were talking, she had this idea to replicate this study that was done by ECPAT about 10 years prior, looking at boys, and she had a couple of connections for people that were doing some services specifically targeting boys. And she had thought it would be a contribution to the field if we could replicate the study and see if there had been any changes or progress made in delivering services to boy victims of human trafficking over the last decade. 

So I started working on the study. We had this Trail Blazer scholarship available from our campus, but one of the caveats is that you work with a faculty member on our campus. So it brought Amanda together with me and with Dr. Reid, and then we had another faculty member from the Tampa campus, Dr. Colby Valentine, who also joined us, and for a little while we had another student. It was an undergraduate psychology major that joined us for a bit. 

We started looking at this survey that was done back in 2010, and we started making connections with people in the country that had either worked on that project earlier or that we were getting names from people that were saying, “Maybe you want to talk to this person.” “Maybe you want to talk to that person.”

And I think the more we talked about, as Amanda was saying, the more we got into it, the more interested I became. Because this is seriously a neglected population of victims out there that are not getting served. And I guess I have some, you know, some interest in it prior to becoming a faculty member and joining the academy. I was a social worker and one of the areas that I worked in was child protective services. And so I really have a lot of compassion for these children who are victims.

And what we found—and we can talk more about this—but there’s a real, a real intersection there with children who are victims of child sexual abuse and then later become victims of trafficking. So it kind of touched my heart in a way. So we’ve gotten very much interested in the topic—all of us—as we’ve gotten more involved with learning more about it.

[05:17] Teresa Huizar: 
You know, our listeners—you know, sort of taking you back to your roots, too, as a social worker—are child abuse professionals. That said, not everybody may be as conversant with this topic as you guys are as experts and coming out of your study as well. And so I’m wondering if we can do a little level-setting for a moment for people who may not know quite as much about child sex trafficking and child commercial sexual exploitation as they might other forms of child sexual abuse. 

So, what do we know from the literature about what makes children and adolescents vulnerable to being trafficked or otherwise commercially sexually exploited? And because you did the lit review, Amanda, maybe that’s a question for you.

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah, so, some specific vulnerabilities that we know about, two of the largest ones are homelessness and then children that are in foster care. Then also, just more specifically, one of the most likely people to traffic children are their own parents. So, specifically with child sexual abuse, it kind of goes hand in hand where sometimes, you know, you have a parent that is sexually abusing their own child and then they’re doing it for, like, monetary value.

[06:58] Teresa Huizar: 
And Sandra, is there anything you would add to that? When you’re sort of looking at, I think people—you know, just to comment on something Amanda just said—I think people are often surprised, especially in the general public, less so maybe our audience, but in the general public especially, that so much of this is not driven by random strangers or nefarious-looking people lurking at bus stops. That a lot of this does originate, really, with family members and other individuals known to the child or adolescent and people that they already trust. 

Sandra Stone: 
Right. And, you know, some of the other risk factors are those dysfunctional families where there is, like, domestic violence going on or other kind of violence in the home, drug use or abuse by some of the adults in the home, child abuse of one form or another or several different forms all at once. And, you know, those unstable, dysfunctional family situations tend to either drive children out of the home, because they’re trying to run away from something, or they stay and the home life is just very unstable. 

And so I think it is a surprise for most people. The stranger danger does happen, but it’s not the primary way that children get involved in victimization from either abuse of one form or another or trafficking. So I think that that is hard for people to hear. And it may be a little bit of the reason why we pretend like we don’t see it, because we don’t want to acknowledge that children are being sold, basically, by their own family members. So. 

[08:34] Teresa Huizar:
I think that’s true. I think—we’ve talked on this program with another guest about the fact that right after Sound of Freedom came out, there was a lot of discussion about, you know, how much trafficking of children occurs right here at home—you don’t have to look for a faraway island to find it—and, you know, how it really originates. And I think that even though I personally wasn’t that excited about that movie, because I felt it perpetuated some myths, I think it opened a discussion and gave those of us in this work an opportunity maybe to do some further education with people about the sad context by which so many children right here at home are experiencing this.

I want to talk a little bit because—first of all, let me just say I was excited to see this study because it is so rare to see work done on boys specifically. And so we search for research articles because every Monday we put out a research-to-practice brief, and I’m trying to think the last time I saw one on boys. It might have even been a year ago, just in general about CSA [child sexual abuse], much less around trafficking and other forms of exploitation. It’s just rare enough that the minute I saw the study, we were like, “Oh, we need to have them on the podcast. This is something we want people to be thinking more about.” 

[09:52]
 So one of the things that you talked about in the paper as well is that boys themselves have some unique vulnerabilities or perhaps risk factors. And I’m wondering if you both can talk a little bit about that? What is it that makes this whole situation for boys, in some cases, maybe there’s some, you know, additional risk or vulnerabilities that attach for them? 

Amanda Connella: 
That’s actually specifically what I did my master’s thesis on. It was on the gender-specific barriers that boys experience when trying to either, like, identify themselves as victims or also during while providers are trying to find boys and, like, what makes that so difficult.

So, in my thesis I specifically pointed out male victimization myths and rape myths, homophobia, and hegemonic masculinity. But beyond that, one of the largest issues that I found when just doing the literature review was that boys have a very hard time identifying themselves as victims.

And the reasoning for that is kind of what I went into, like, with the barriers and all that, but, yeah, just generally boys just aren’t viewed as victims when it comes to—I mean, generally, but also when it comes to sexual violence and sex trafficking. And I think that’s just in part because of the way that gender roles are, and how people view men. Which makes it that much more difficult when they are victimized.

Despite there being a large percentage of boys and young men that are victimized, it’s just—you would think that if it was based solely on, like, the amount of boys that are victimized, that there would be all these programs for them, but because of the way that society views its boys and young men, there’s just no programs available, despite the need.

So this is a multifaceted issue where it’s like, I don’t know, boys don’t view themselves as victims, providers don’t view boys as victims, despite all this evidence that they are.

Sandra Stone: 
Some of some of the more specific risk factors are because you do have a lot of these kids who run away from home and they’re on the street. And a lot of it becomes survival, survival sex for them. Because they’re getting offered food, or they’re getting offered a place to stay, or they’re getting—they often get involved in drug use themselves. And so then it’s a way to buy drugs or. 

I think one of the things that we found that was different, a little bit different in this study from the earlier study, was the providers were reporting more boys having more disabilities, particularly, like, cognitive and, you know, learning disabilities, on the autism spectrum. And that was not something that was really brought out in the earlier study. 

And I think one thing, too: They’re just out and about more. The places where they’re picked up are different from girls—a lot of times it’s more public. They’re, they’re at risk because they’re in more public places like truck stops and parks and, you know, out in the open more so that they’re more vulnerable and they’re kind of easy prey. 

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah, and just to piggyback off that, just real quick. Some studies have found that boys who have been abused are particularly, like, more at risk. And specifically, like, when it does come to disability is that even compared to girl victims—

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Amanda Connella: 
—that puts them at a higher risk than girls. 

[13:22] Teresa Huizar: 
You know, as you were talking, as you both were talking, one of the things that I was thinking about is some data we see when we’re looking at child sexual abuse stats more generally, but internationally.

And there are some countries in which you see much higher rates of boy victims than girls because girls are really secluded from contact with adult males, even within their own family. And so, in those countries, you tend to see more boy victims. And I think it sort of relates to the point you’re making, that the very fact that boys are given more sort of geographic freedom— 

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
—and are out and about more, you may see the impact of that with this particular population, too. Because someone might not think it’s so unusual to see— 

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
—an adolescent male or boy hanging around a park or, you know, hanging around an arcade or out in some area by themselves. Where if you saw a young girl like that, that might give one pause about what’s going on or what’s happening in that same situation.

[14:25] 
 One of the things that I’m wondering about in terms of the way that the study was set up, it was really primarily—if I, if I have this right, so correct me if I don’t—it was about asking providers themselves, you know, whether they serve this population and if so about their experience. Were you surprised that more folks who served just the general sort of human trafficking and child trafficking population didn’t sort of raise their hand and say, “We have programming for boys,” or was that something you were expecting?

Sandra Stone: 
One thing that was a little bit different about our study, in the former study, they just surveyed a lot of different service providers for human trafficking victims. And then they were asking, “Do you serve boys or young men?” Our study, we tried to focus in a little bit more and really just look at those providers that service boys and young men, because we wanted to get more in-depth information about the population.

So, we tried to do a snowball sampling, just starting with people that we knew for sure served male victims and then saying, “Do you know other people that serve male victims?” But I think it’s, it was surprising—even though we kind of knew that they were underserved—I think for me, anyway, it was surprising the few people that we—or organizations—that we could identify that specifically served or included in their service population, boys and young men. There are maybe more for minor children a little bit than adult men. But for adult males, it’s really, it’s really hard to find people that provide service. 

Amanda Connella: 
And something that was reported was that people or providers that provided for both boys and girls were a lot of times they were, like, overfilled with girls. 

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Amanda Connella: 
One of the things that they would say is that they wanted to help boys, but that they just didn’t have the resources to—or, like similar with the tracks that Dr. Stone brought up before about that, like, since boys are typically trafficked in different areas than girls, they didn’t have the resources to go in those areas. So it was typically, they stuck to the areas where typically they found the girls at. So that was something that they said was that they wish that there were more resources or that they had the abilities and the programming to help more boys.

Sandra Stone: 
I think they also talk about—and this is in the literature as well, that providers themselves talk about a lack of training.

Amanda Connella: 
Yes.

Sandra Stone: 
That they don’t feel qualified. They don’t feel like they really have the skill set to work with boys because they have some different needs, that it’s a little more difficult to develop trust and get them to really be more self-disclosing. So I think they may not have the health providers or other providers that feel comfortable dealing with boys. So, I think a lot of it, you know, they talked a lot about just not feeling prepared themselves. 

[17:19] Teresa Huizar: 
You know, as you were talking, I was thinking that it’s kind of a self-perpetuating cycle, unfortunately.

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
That there’s not much in the literature. And because of that, providers don’t have a lot of knowledge about how to specifically serve boys. So they feel very uncomfortable about serving boys. So then they don’t develop special programs to serve boys, right?

[Cross-talk] [Laughter]

Amanda Connella: 
Exactly. Exactly. 

[18:50] Teresa Huizar: 
We’re going to have to break that cycle and say, well, we may not have perfect literature, but we’re going to have to use what we have to try to serve a population. 

I am curious. Like, I can understand from a provider’s perspective, you know, if there’s not much literature and you’re not sure how. But I’m curious about, because there is such a paucity of research as well, why do you think there is so little literature on serving boys in this population?

Amanda Connella: 
Personally, I think that for a long time, people just kind of assumed that it wasn’t a problem. Additionally, boys are often left out entirely of counts of children that have been sex trafficked or commercially sexually exploited. And just in general, like, men and young boys for a while were left out of certain counts. It’s also harder to get a rough estimate of boys rather than girls, since they are more elusive generally. So I think because of that, then just researchers may have assumed and—just, you know, with all the other barriers and the way that we view men being victimized—I think that all that kind of combined together just to make it more difficult—and just, again, assumptions of that this isn’t an issue. 

Sandra Stone: 
It’s back to what you said earlier about being a cycle. 

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah.

Sandra Stone: 
Because it’s like, yeah, there are so many deeply ingrained gender stereotypes about boys and girls or men and women or being male or being female. And some of them include things like: Boys can’t be victims of sexual assault or sexual abuse. I mean, you know, for the longest time males weren’t included in the rape laws and—

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah.

Sandra Stone: 
—you know, it’s like that they just can’t be—or that if boys are involved in some kind of sexual activity, whether it’s licit or illicit, that boys like sex and so it must be something voluntary on their part. Because, you know, they like sex and they can’t be victims. And some of this just comes from this sense of, you know, our traditional gender stereotypes a lot. 

So, nobody looks for them to be victims. They don’t ask the right questions when they pick them up.

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah.

Sandra Stone: 
If they’re picked up by the police, they’re often charged with something themselves and they become offenders, not victims. And they aren’t asked those same kind of questions. 

They’re not going to self-disclose, typically. Because they don’t see themselves as victims or they don’t perceive that anybody would believe them if they said they were. So they don’t come to anybody’s attention. They don’t show up in the accounts because nobody’s asking them and they’re not telling. And then it’s like, “Well, we don’t have any numbers. So that must not be a problem. So there’s no point in funneling resources there because it doesn’t seem to be a problem.”

So it’s—again, it’s one of these circular kind of things that, if nobody’s asking and nobody’s telling, they just—

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah.

Sandra Stone: 
—they just stay invisible. 

[20:46] Teresa Huizar: 
Well, let me just say here that I personally would like to see NIJ fund a study that’s really very specific to boys in this area. Because there definitely are studies that have been done that have been very targeted toward girls, and I’m grateful for them. I think that’s wonderful. But, you know, this has been identified as a problem and a paucity of research exists. And it would be lovely to see, whether it’s them or someone else fund additional work in this area.

I’m wondering to what extent you also think that some of the differences in just the way this occurs with boys is potentially contributing to the way in which they’re perceived? For example, one of the things I noted in the study was, you point out that in most cases these boys don’t have a pimp, or at least in many, many cases. And so, you know, are people who are coming in contact with them somehow believing that this is all entirely voluntary on their part because there’s not this person standing over here directing that to be arrested for pimping them? Do you know what I mean? And I’m just wondering whether there’s just some things that culturally, we’re making the wrong assumptions or connections between something that exists in these cases and the conclusion we’re drawing from that?

Amanda Connella: 
Yes, so that’s definitely a large issue. I think just kind of going back to what Dr. Stone was saying about, like, some of the first people who see these boys are police. And a lot of times I think the fact that since many boy victims, like you said, they don’t have a pimp, then police just assume that they’re delinquents. And then they don’t get the help that they need. So I think that does definitely feed into it.

Where I think just again, with all the stereotypes that people have about boys, it’s easier for them to assume that they’re just not victims and that they’re doing it to themselves. Despite them being under the age of 18. so, no matter what, it’s illegal and wrong, you know. But I think—I think it’s similar to, anecdotally, like, when you hear on the news that, like, a teacher had a relationship with a young boy, people don’t view it like they would if it was a man and a young girl, you know. I think it just kind of goes back into that where people are just so quick to victim-blame boys. 

Sandra Stone: 
I think there’s also still the stigma of, you know, homophobia. And—

Amanda Connella: 
Yes.

Sandra Stone: 
—the boys don’t want to be considered gay because they’re not really gay, or they don’t see themselves as gay. And they don’t want to, they don’t want anybody to think that they might be or that they are, but they’re engaging in same sex relations. But often too, it’s not for money but, as we said before, for a lot of, particularly the, you know, younger boys, minors, it’s more survival. Kind of meeting survival needs. They need food. They need a place to stay. They need—and then it’s kind of like, “Well, you thought this was free. Well, you know, not really.” But it’s not an exchange of money all the time, which people tend to think that that’s the thing to look for. So, yeah, it’s, it gets very complicated.

[23:56] Teresa Huizar: 
One other thing I was thinking of, you know, reviewing the research ahead of our conversation was, you know, when you look at the risk factors that you all laid out—so beautifully, I might add—in a chart, one of the things I was really struck by are all the points of vulnerability that offenders are taking advantage of. 

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
You know, when you see the high levels of mental illness, the high levels of substance abuse, the poverty and lack of housing and food insecurity that’s a part of it, it’s just a reminder that there’s a selection process in all of this, and it’s really the most vulnerable boys who are winding up unfortunately caught up in this.

Let’s pivot a little bit to recruitment. Because I thought that what you laid out around that was also really interesting.

So can you talk to me a little bit about how these boys are recruited to this? And I mean, when I use the word “recruitment,” that still sounds like there’s a little bit of agency on the part of the boys, and I don’t mean it that way. It’s just the best term we have to describe how someone becomes involved in this.

Amanda Connella: 
LIke we were saying before, the most common way is self-initiated or survival. So again, if there’s like, runaway youth and they’re on the street and, you know, they have to do what they have to do to survive.

The second most likely is internet or cyber contact. Going on, like, dating sites and things like that. And then after that, it’s a tie between drug dealers. So, like, doing it for drugs, being peer facilitated, it being on, like, dates, as well as family, which again is going to be a large predictor, since that is very common, especially with younger victims. 

Sandra Stone: 
I was going to say, one of the things that we saw that was a little bit different from the first study and our study was the increased use of internet as—

Amanda Connella:
Yeah.

Sandra Stone: 
—as a recruiting tool, that they’re getting much more connected through internet sites. And that was a big shift.

[26:02] Teresa Huizar: 
When you think about all the ways that these boys are recruited, I can’t say that I have seen any trafficking prevention materials that basically address any of these. I mean, in all seriousness, your drug dealer—

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
—could, you know, because you owe them money for drugs, exploit you in this way. Or your partner, or someone you date, or some, maybe the one online, or your family.

It’s, it’s so interesting to me how our prevention efforts are often so disconnected from what the data tells us really is the source of where a problem originates. And I wonder, do you have—and I’m just asking you to speculate, because your study doesn’t address it, or at least this study doesn’t. I’m wondering what you attribute that to, that, you know, there’s this movement, and I think it’s great, to raise awareness about the sex trafficking of children and adolescents, and prevention efforts around them. Why do you think that those efforts often don’t necessarily directly align with the research? 

Amanda Connella: 
So. I have a lot of opinions on this. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Feel free!

Amanda Connella:
But I think it all kind of boils down to there are some people who have, like, the best intentions, and, like, they hear about it, or maybe they watch a movie like the Sound of Freedom, or, you know, I think that just—and also, due to, like, the media and movies and the way that sex trafficking is presented that way, people just assume that it’s very different.

Right? So people go into this with good intentions. But then, you know, maybe a program is opened that isn’t evidence-based, and then it ends up doing more harm than good and it closes in like a year. So I think that that’s a large issue. There is this large disconnect between—I mean, obviously, there’s amazing, like, evidence-based programs that are great, but there is this problem of, just this disconnect between people who are trying to do a good thing but then they just don’t look into the research. And there’s just all these assumptions just based off of what people hear from media.

Sandra Stone: 
I think there’s a disconnect, too, because people tune out what they don’t want to hear. 

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah.

Sandra Stone: 
And I think sometimes they, they don’t want to hear that it’s not stranger danger.

Teresa Huizar:
Sure.

Sandra Stone: 
Because that’s a little bit easier because I don’t have to get involved personally. It may not affect me. I don’t-- You know, it’s like as long as I can keep it out there and I can make it be, you know, somebody out there is a threat to children, I don’t have to look a little closer to home. 

You know, particularly … they should look at their children’s dating partners and they should look at their children’s friends. I mean, you know, who’s pulling people in and what kind of social media are they on? What kind of things are they doing on this phone? It’s easier to just push it away from us because then if it’s something we might actually be able to do something about, we have to take some responsibility for it. 

And I want to go back to something Amanda was saying earlier on. You know, there is a lot of talk about the increased risk of foster care, but then we need to take some responsibility to do something about improving the foster care system. I mean, ideally kids wouldn’t be in foster care, but that’s way down the road and if we’re going to remove them from their homes and we’re going to put them in someplace that’s supposed to be a safe space, then we need to take some more responsibility for ensuring that that is a safe space. And that whole system, you know, could use some attention.

[29:48] Teresa Huizar: 
Oh, yes, the understatement of the year. It certainly could. I mean, the tragedy of it is that so many of these kids are abused in some way, and then go to foster care, and then they’re abused in some way—

Sandra Stone: 
Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
—and then they’re trafficked. And that pipeline is so ripe for disruption because, you know, what you have at the end of that with these kids who’ve just been so repeatedly traumatized.

Sandra Stone: 
Well, also, you know, I think again, one of the risk factors is unstable housing. 

Teresa Huizar: 
That’s right.

Sandra Stone: 
They don’t have a stable place to be. And when we’re removing them from home, and we’re putting them someplace, and then they get moved again, and they get moved again, and they get moved again.

Teresa Huizar: 
That’s right.

Sandra Stone: 
And then they run away because they’re not getting what they need. And then they’re out on the street. And then—I mean, you know, again, it just perpetuates itself. 

So, you know, I think some of these problems are systemic. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm.

Sandra Stone: 
I think that we tend to want to look at individual causes and individual people that we can blame. And some of these problems are more systemic and they need a more macro level approach. You know, what’s wrong with the system? 

And and on this whole thing, whether it’s boy victims or girl victims, we don’t talk much about who’s buying either. 

[Cross-talk]

Amanda Connella:
 Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
That’s right. 

Sandra Stone: 
If you don’t have a market, you can’t sell your product. So, you know, that’s a whole ‘nother piece that doesn’t get very much attention.

Teresa Huizar: 
And certainly not enough attention about how do you disrupt that market. Right?

Sandra Stone: 
Right. Right. 

[31:15] Teresa Huizar: 
One of the things that I was thinking about, too, is that, you know, for a parent and thinking about how to talk with a teen or a tween, you know, about these types of issues, how would you ask them to approach that conversation?

I mean, when I think about books that have been developed, either for parents to read to their children or for them to talk to their children after reading, even a lot of those are very geared toward girls and talking to girls about their vulnerability. 

So I’m just wondering, how do you think about—what are the key messages that you think are important? Because so many of the people listening to this podcast also do prevention work. 

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
That’s a key part, and they talk to lots of parents. So what are some key messages based on your research that you just say, “You know what, parents of boys and caregivers of boys need to hear X.”

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah, I think something important is that I feel like, maybe that some parents may feel that their, their girl children are at a higher risk than their boy children. But I think it’s important to try and, like, really drive home that anybody can become a victim and that it’s important to have the same types of talks that you would have with your daughters as you would with your sons as far as, like, you know, like, consent and like, be able to be emotional with your sons, and just, like, really driving home about, like, what okay sexual behavior is, explaining again what consent is, and what red flags are in relationships.

Generally just not assuming that there’s no way that your son will not be a victim. And also just being able to treat your sons in the same way emotionally. Like, you can have a emotional relationship, the same type that you can have with your daughter. 

Because I feel like, just gender-wise, gender roles for a long time, boys were just treated like, you know, “Boys will be boys.” They don’t talk about their emotions, you know, like, it was very stigmatized that way. So, I think just from a young age, just making it okay to speak about what’s going on. Because that is an issue that a lot of boy victims face is that they feel like they can’t, they weren’t given the tools to speak about what happened to them and about their emotions or even to really process what happened because they’re not given those tools. So I think that just establishing that from a young age is very important. 

Sandra Stone: 
Yeah, I think parents need to address their own issues around holding traditional gender stereotypes because we as parents do the same thing. Amanda was saying, you know, you want to protect your girls and you want to keep them closer to home and you want to talk to them about being, you know, hypervigilant and watching out for these things. But we let our boys kind of go out and, you know, hang out with their friends and they’re not as closely monitored. 

And that, I mean, I think that still happens to some extent. At least that’s what I hear from my students, and I think it’s probably better than when I was younger, but I think still it happens. 

And, yeah, letting them know that it’s okay to talk about being uncomfortable, or it’s okay to talk about feeling sad or hurt or upset. And I think, too, you know, like, being open about same-sex relationships. Because I think for a lot of boys, maybe girls too, you know, if you feel like that you’re attracted to someone of the same sex and you’re not comfortable talking to your parents about it, you’re going to spend more time away from home and, you know, you’re probably going to be more deceptive about other things as well because you don’t, you know, feel comfortable being who you are in your family. And then I think that just starts a whole spiral of, you know, other kinds of behaviors that put people at risk.

So, it’s hard for parents, but I think we, as parents, need to get over our own discomfort about, you know, talking to our kids. 

Amanda Connella: 
One thing that I would kind of put a bow on that with is, just generally, like, creating a home environment where your sons feel like they can come to you and tell you anything. It’s like Dr. Stone was saying, you know, if your son is gay or bi, or, you know, some other sexual orientation besides straight, you know, and they create an environment where they feel like they can’t tell you that. Then they are going to seek acceptance somewhere else, you know, and just … just get to be able to be there. So if something scary does happen, they can come to help and be like, “Oh, there’s someone’s trying to get me to do this. And I feel uncomfortable.” So just creating that environment where they can feel comfortable. 

[36:11] Teresa Huizar: 
Well, and I think, you know—just to add to that also—because unfortunately, boys are sort of taught that they’re somewhat less vulnerable and they also may—

Sandra Stone:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
—as your paper pointed out, feel somewhat invincible, this places them at some additional risk. And so both for parents and for professionals, I think it’s important to talk to boys from the perspective of: It is possible that this could happen to you. As opposed to sort of acting as though that’s a super rare thing and highly unlikely, it’s a real possibility, unfortunately.

And so because of that, you know, it’s important to understand and know certain things as you’re pointing them out: Understanding rules of consent. Understanding if a third party, no matter who they are, asks you to have sex with another person for money or as a favor. That’s totally inappropriate, you know, and that’s something you should talk to a parent about right away.

So, and if it is a parent, you better go talk to someone else who’s another adult—

[Cross-talk]

Sandra Stone:
Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
—or something else, right? Because it could be a parent. 

Amanda Connella:
Exactly.

Sandra Stone: 
Right. Exactly. Yeah. That’s another thing. And, you know, I think that’s just a big thing, the whole trust issue is a big thing. And that’s one of the things I think the service providers talked about in some of their open-ended questions a lot is building trust and that it’s really, you know, you have to build trust and you can’t just do it in one interview. You know, you’re not going to just get automatic trust and self-disclosure and that—

Teresa Huizar: 
So true.

Sandra Stone: 
—yeah, and that for boys it may take a little bit longer because they have a history of not being able to trust people. 

Amanda Connella: 
One of the suggestions that some of the providers gave in an open-ended response was that something that could help is having somebody that the boys feel like they can relate to because that makes it easier for them to open up. So like potentially, you know, hiring on former victims could be an option, or just people from similar backgrounds who can just understand more.

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

[38:07] Teresa Huizar: 
It’s interesting that you mention that because for many of the Children’s Advocacy Centers that have trafficking programs, they have adult survivors as a part of the staff, or as peer mentors or other kinds of things, because there is this element of, I think, potentially trusting somebody who has had that experience and what they’re telling you about that maybe more than someone who they view as really not necessarily knowing what they’re talking about. And well-meaning but not necessarily understanding. So I think that that’s a really valid point. 

Sandra Stone: 
You know, maybe I push to hire more male staff in—

[Cross-talk]
 That’s right.

Sandra Stone: 
—in some of these agencies because it’s all women, and again, very well-meaning, very well-meaning women, but they [boys] just may not feel comfortable talking to, you know, a woman and about their sexual behavior, which, you know, I can get that. 

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah, that was one of the things that providers did say, is that they needed more male staff. 

[39:06] Teresa Huizar: 
You know, one of the other things I was struck by in your study, or in the—I can’t remember if it was the study or the lit review now, but anyway—in your paper, let’s just say it that way, was the high percentage of forcible rape that was disclosed by these boys.

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
And I think if you’re wondering why boys may be reluctant to talk about their experience, when you think about what their experience is, I think it points to additional reasons why they may be reluctant to disclose. And because, you know, I think even—I mean, disclosing any kind of sexual abuse or sexual assault is very difficult, but I think the more intrusive it is— 

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
—sometimes the more difficult it is to talk about it because that’s very triggering, you know, as you can imagine. So.

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah. One of—

Sandra Stone: 
Right. 

Amanda Connella: 
One of the things that boys often reported was that they were very scared that if they did disclose what happened to them that people would either, like, perceive them as being gay, and then they were worried about the things that would happen with that. Like, they were scared of people hurting them if people perceive them as being gay or losing their friends or families.

So that definitely, it’s like, not only do they then internalize it as being their fault, but then they feel like they have to hide it. So that is a large barrier and fear that a lot of boy victims say they have.

Sandra Stone: 
One of the other things that we saw was a little bit of a change from the first study too, I think. Along with more forcible rape was just more physical injury. It seems like the sex is getting more violent for boys, maybe. And I think that’s a real concern because they’re, they’re getting hurt in, like, a real physical kind of way. Not only sexually and emotionally, but physically as well.

Amanda Connella:
Yeah, going off of that. Just in the lit review, when I was looking into more of. like, online of what happens to boys. Boy victims who are in like the child pornography, unfortunately, they tend to be younger than girls, and more physically violent things tend to happen to them than girls. That is a large issue as well.

[41:22] Teresa Huizar: 
But I think one of the points it raises for child abuse professionals is we know that already not enough kids who need medical exams get them. But it’s so critical with this population because you could have a child who has a significant injury that really needs to be treated. So, aside from sexually transmitted infections and all the reasons we should be doing medical evaluations anyway, there are some additional reasons here to really make sure that the kids are getting good head-to-toe exams when they do present themselves.

I’m just wondering, you know, are there any other implications that you want to make sure that we talk about today for child abuse professionals? And then I want to turn to kind of policy makers, but let’s start with sort of child abuse professionals. Is there anything that we haven’t talked about yet where you say to yourself, “I really want to make sure that before I leave, here are the couple of things that any child abuse professional working knows about boys and child sex trafficking and sexual exploitation in boys”?

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah, I think one of the large ones is that often boys report that the materials that are used for girls and tend to work for girls don’t work for them. Mainly because a lot of times in them, they talk about as men being the perpetrators, so they then feel like, “Oh, everybody’s viewing me as the offender and not the victim.” And then just generally, it’s just not targeted towards them. 

So I think just really just making sure, you know—I know it’s hard because there’s not a lot out there, on research about what boys need, but just making sure that, whatever programming you do give boys, that is very targeted towards them and it reaffirms that they are victims and that it’s okay. Like, it’s not their fault and that they aren’t the offender, basically. 

Sandra Stone: 
Yeah, I would say a couple of things. One is that I think all children should be screened for possible victimization. I mean, they may not be, but just as sort of a practice, you know, to just have a good screening tool and routinely screen people, children that come to the attention of child protective services or other child welfare organizations, because you never know. And sometimes, you know, kids aren’t going to just volunteer that off the bat. So a good screening tool, I would recommend. 

And then I think the other thing, just in general, when you’re treating or, you know, have kids that you funnel into some services, I think one of the things that we’re hearing is that they need different, a different approach and a different kind of service.

And for example, I don’t know that this was actually in our study, but from some of the conversations that I’ve had with some of the providers that work with boys, it’s like the models out there are mostly based on women and girls because that’s where most of the work has been. And so it’s like, they need support groups and they need, you know, like all this kind of space to express their feelings. And that that’s not really necessarily an appropriate modality for boys. That maybe they need to do things more, to be more involved in some activity to do, to be more physical, some kind of physical act—that they’re not as comfortable sitting around emoting. You know, that that’s a turn off. And so they don’t really engage that much because that’s not their preferred way to express themselves. And so I think just trying to be more gender-sensitive in some of the services that we do provide. 

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah, I think just real quick going off of that, there was one program that we interviewed that I thought was really great. And I hope that they have a program evaluation or some research going on with them. Because I just want to see, like, what the results were. But it was, it was like a horse ranch. Do you know the one I’m talking about? And—

Sandra Stone: 
Yeah. 

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah, they, when we talked to them, it seemed like it was a really good opportunity for boys. It’s like, they’re a working—it was like equine therapy and they’re working one-on-one with, like, horses and, it’s from what I gathered from the survey, like, it really seemed like it was helping them. 

Sandra Stone: 
It’s Bob’s House of Hope, Ranch Hands Rescue—

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah.

Sandra Stone: 
—Ranch Hands Rescue in Texas. And actually that you brought that up, Amanda, I’m actually submitting a great proposal to do a program evaluation for them.

Amanda Connella: 
Oh, that’d be amazing! Oh.

Sandra Stone: 
After we spoke to them, they called me back and they were like, you know, “Would you be willing to kind of look at our program and see—?” Because it did start out as an animal rescue—

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah.

Sandra Stone: 
—operation. It’s a working ranch. And then about three years ago, they opened up and started taking in, they serve males, 18 and over. So, there are adult males who have been victims of trafficking and, you know, they’re very excited about their program, so I hope this gets funded and we actually do take a look at that. 

I think one other thing before we leave this, I just want to throw this in here. The focus is always on sex trafficking, but we don’t pay attention to labor trafficking, and I think boys may even be at higher risk for labor trafficking than girls. I don’t know, because we don’t have good data, but, you know, I think that we often just ignore that whole side, but that’s a whole nother set of problems and a whole nother set of dynamics there. 

And I’m really concerned about that in Florida, because there is a bill going through our legislature right now that would loosen up the restrictions on teenagers working and make it much more acceptable and a lot easier for them to work. And they will work in agriculture and construction and some of those industries that we know are kind of high risk for trafficking vulnerability.

And so I think we ought to not forget about the labor side because I think there’s a lot more of that than we see.

[47:28] Teresa Huizar: 
And that has a connection to sex trafficking in some cases. 

Sandra Stone: 
Mm-hmm. And sometimes it’s both. Yeah.

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah. The overlap. Yeah. 

[52:50] Teresa Huizar: 
It’s very interesting. That’s an excellent segue to my last question, which is: Imagine yourself having the ear of policy makers right now. What would you say, based on this study, other studies you’ve done, what’s your best advice to them as it relates to boys in this issue?

Amanda Connella: 
I believe wholeheartedly there just needs to be so much more funding for programs. Because again, it’s not like the need isn’t there. A lot of the programs that did fully help boys, they reported that they just did not have enough room.

Sandra Stone: 
Yeah. 

Amanda Connella: 
And one paper I read, it said that out of two—I forget when it was from, but it was saying that out of the 222 programs that were federally funded to help people who are sexually exploited, only two of them were specifically for boys. There’s one study by John Jay that estimates that boys and girls— and it was a sample of New York residents—it’s about, like, even about the boy and girl commercial sexual exploited victims. So again, like, the need is there, there just really needs to be funding.

And then again, with programs that help boys and girls, Well, that was one of the largest things that programs were saying was that they just don’t have the funding for boys. They don’t have the rooms for boys. They’re so over—if they’re overcapacity, with girls that they don’t even have the room or like anything to help them. So, there just needs to be funding. It’s just the major thing in mind. 

Sandra Stone: 
So if we could wave a magic wand and change the culture? That would be— 

[Laughter]

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah!

Sandra Stone: 
That would be great. I don’t have a lot of hope that that’s going to happen anytime soon.

But, yeah, I think just, you know, from a policy standpoint, I think just changing, looking at legislation and being sure that legislation is inclusive and that, you know, looking at practices—law enforcement practices, juvenile justice practices, child welfare practices—are we being inclusive? Are we asking the same questions? Are we giving the same considerations? 

I think maybe, you know, some training for service providers on looking at their own biases and their own gender stereotypes that they still hold on to and trying to help people understand that boys are victims and they need to be more aware of and sensitive to that particular population.

But yeah, I think the funding is real critical and there just isn’t enough funding anyway, for service providers. 

Amanda Connella:
Yeah. Sure thing.

[Outro music begins]

[50:16] Teresa Huizar:
Well, thank you both so much. It’s been such a helpful conversation, and I know our listeners will really appreciate it. So thank you again for joining One in Ten. 

Sandra Stone: 
Sure. Thank you. 

Amanda Connella: 
Yeah, thanks for having us.

[Outro]

[50:27] Teresa Huizar:
Thank you for listening to One in Ten. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. And if you’re a fan of the show, please rate us in the Apple Podcasts store or wherever you listen. For more information about this episode or any of our others, please visit our podcast website at OneInTenPodcast.org.