May is Foster Care Awareness Month, and the value of good foster parents and a strong and sustainable foster care system cannot be understated when we look at combatting human trafficking.

Children who are placed out of their home – whether it be with foster parents or in a group home – are more vulnerable to traffickers. The reasons for that vary.

Children placed out of their homes are typically victims of some type of abuse or neglect, which is a driving factor in vulnerability to victimization across the board.

Some children, once placed out of the home, runaway. Runaway youth become incredibly vulnerable to traffickers or are running to a possible exploiter.

Some children, once placed out of the home, runaway and then become homeless. Homelessness amplifies vulnerability astronomically. If a child’s basic necessities are not met – like food, shelter and clothing – then they will become prey to traffickers and abusers in many cases.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the ripple effects of foster care …

Typically, youth who are removed from the home have undergone some type of abuse and neglect.

According to a study by Bagley C. and Young “Juvenile Prostitution and Child Sexual Abuse: A Controlled Study,” 70 to 90 percent of commercially exploited youth have a history of sexual abuse.

When abuse is normalized, exploitation can easily follow. When a child is abused – sexually, physically and/or emotionally – their personal boundaries are often destroyed, making it easier for a trafficker to groom them and exploit them.

Youth in the foster care system oftentimes are in search of a family and love they have been denied.

Traffickers know how to manipulate. If a child has been mired in the foster care system and undergone several placements, their stability and sense of belonging and being loved is crippled.

A trafficker can see that easily and will exploit the child’s desire for family and love. You need only look at common pimp-controlled trafficking slang to see the manipulation. Victims are oftentimes required to call their trafficker ‘daddy,’ and other victims under the trafficker’s control ‘wifey.’

The very language used to articulate ‘the life’ creates a psychological connection to a family – and whether it is an abusive and exploitative situation, it is masked by the child’s driving desire for connection.

There is a lack of a strong safety net.

As youth go from one foster home placement to another to another to another, all the possible connections they have developed are torn asunder.

When a young person has no adult to trust or confide in, they are not guided in the direction that is away from exploitation or abuse.

Foster care youth often runaway and become homeless.

This is one of the major drivers in what makes foster care youth vulnerable to exploitation. How prevalent is running away in foster care?

It is a huge problem, and what comes after the running away is where trafficking may take hold ….

What does victimization look like while kids are on the run from foster care specifically?

Let’s take a look at the findings of a study that looked at victimization of runaway youth while they were in foster care.

The research highlights that 19 percent of youth 10 years or older ran away while in foster care and among youth with at least ONE runaway episode, 7 percent reported human trafficking allegations.

The study also shows that 33 percent of youth went on to have a subsequent human trafficking allegation within the year following the first report of victimization.

For 70 percent of youth who reported human trafficking allegations, their initial victimization occurred during their flight from foster care.

The study also shows that youth with human trafficking allegations while on runaway status were more likely to have experienced other forms of abuse and a HIGHER NUMBER OF OUT-OF-HOME PLACEMENTS.

What does all this mean?

Simply put, information from this study indicates that the higher number of out-of-home placements and subsequent abuse implies a higher likelihood of exploitation.

After the first victimization, a little over a third of the respondents were exploited again within a year, which indicates further vulnerability.

“Running away from foster care represented the most commonly reported ‘path of endangerment,’ into trafficking …”

READ THE FULL STUDY, “HUMAN TRAFFICKING VICTIMIZATION AMONG YOUTH WHO RUN AWAY FROM FOSTER CARE.”

Latzman, N. E., Gibbs, D. A., Feinberg, R., Kluckman, M. N., & Aboul-Hosn, S. (2019). Human trafficking victimization among youth who run away from foster care.