Relationship Violence and Sexual Exploitation

Most of the time 14-year-old Donovan [not his real name] would only see his father if he managed to stay up late. Almost every night his father, a single parent, would drink at the casino where he worked, stumble home after midnight, and sleep until late in the afternoon. He would go back to work before Donovan came home from school and do it all over again. Some days his father wouldn...
“Family violence” can include everything from cursing and verbal and emotional abuse to hitting and slapping to more extreme forms of physical and sexual abuse. The term can also refer to physical neglect: a young person left alone in an apartment for days or denied medical care by parents or caregivers.
Every once in a while, crisis counselor and therapist Adam Kleinmeulman sees the signs of abuse literally written out on a runaway youth’s body. The message might appear in block letters drawn with permanent marker on the youth’s skin, clothes, or backpack: “I’m homeless. My dad beats me.”
When research revealed that almost one-third of homeless and runaway youth in Hollywood, California, were or had been in an abusive intimate relationship, Lisa de Gyarfas knew that something had to be done.
When Jessica Nunan, interim executive director of Caminar Latino in Atlanta, Georgia, asked the high-risk young people in her relationship violence prevention group whether Latinos experienced violence differently than other racial and ethnic groups, they considered her question thoughtfully and answered in a word. No.
Hotlines   Break the Cycle provides advice, referrals, legal information, advocacy, and counsel to young people and the people who care about them. Call 1-888-988-TEEN or visit www.breakthecycle.org.  
When Tina was 14, she was forced to work the streets by an older “boyfriend.” In testimony to a congressional subcommittee, Tina, now a street outreach coordinator for an anti-human-trafficking organization, detailed the beatings and emotional trauma she suffered at the hands of the man who initially won her over with love and attention before humiliating her and forcing her and three...
Every day, approximately 1.3 million runaway, thrownaway, and homeless youth live on the streets of America. Children, both boys and girls, are solicited for sex, on average, within 72 hours of being on the street. Approximately 55 percent of street girls engage in formal prostitution; 75 percent of those work for a pimp. About one in five of these children becomes entangled in nationally...
Not too long ago, protecting the women of the Pine Ridge Reservation from domestic violence wasn't such an easy task. With a domestic violence center, but no residential facilities, program staff were often forced to drive nearly a hundred miles to transport women seeking safe housing to the nearest shelter in Rapid City, SD. And the problems didn't stop there. Take one morning, for example, when...
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