Rethink Resources

I’ve talked with hundreds of adult youth workers in fields like foster care, juvenile justice, homeless and runaway youth, schools of all kinds, mental health inpatient and outpatient places, health clinics, substance abuse treatment programs who’ve met youth who are currently or have been involved in the sex trade. However most said they had no real idea of what to do or say about it.*

In the best scenarios, youth workers assisted the youth with whatever brought them to the program in the first place – completing school, feeling better emotionally, dealing with a court case – and leave it at that all while consciously not talking about the sex trade.

Sometimes deliberately ignoring issues having to do with the sex trade is better than trying to talk about something you don’t know anything about. Unfortunately it can give the youth the impression that the sex trade is always something to hide and increasing isolation – which can affect how effective all those other support services will work.

Sadly it’s more common for adults to react in negative and harmful ways to youth who they believe or know to be involved in the sex trade. I’ve heard this both from youth and adults copping to it themselves.

Judgment comes in all kinds of ways. For teen girls it’s often about labels from youth workers like “sexually acting out”, promiscuous or involved in “illegal sexual activity.” Just one of the reasons I’m completely skeptical about efforts that talk about how the federal government cares about minors involved in the sex trade. Minors are still arrested and still blamed as the primary cause of the problem by labeling their actions as “acting out.”

In Chicago it’s common for minors to be locked up in psychiatric hospitals when it’s discovered that they’ve been involved in the sex trade. That’s not helpful by any stretch of the imagination.

In many transitional living programs and shelters, youth believed to be involved in the sex trade are kicked out or “lose level” meaning they can’t progress to get their own apartment or other opportunities.

Or adult youth workers talk about the youth to other staff and youth in the program. It’s more than breaking confidentiality, although that’s bad enough because of how people will talk about you, but also calling girls names. I’ve witnessed adult youth workers use terms like chickenheads, bustdowns, and of course, whores.

Recently I was talking with a friend about how adult youth workers don’t take responsibility for maintaining youth involvement in the sex trade. Think about it – if you’re in foster care you have to beg for clothing vouchers and your allowance barely covers the essentials you need. And if a youth shows up with a few new outfits after a weekend pass with a new boyfriend, it takes off responsibility from the agency and the state that funds that agency to actually support youth.

Those youth workers are often relieved when it happens (“finally, she’ll quit asking me for a voucher”) but that doesn’t stop them from saying “I can’t believe she did that. How do we control her?”

Part of the problem is a lack of education of staff. Of course, you could ask me about my workshops and consulting services. Just saying.

But really the first and most important thing you can do to support youth in the sex trade is be open and loving with everything they choose to tell you. Everything.

Just start there.

*The number of youth workers in the country who are skilled at working with minors currently involved in trading sex for money is remarkably low. I’m talking about the vast majority of youth workers who don’t consciously work with projects about youth in the sex trade.