ith this in mind, the state’s Human Trafficking Prevention Act took effect in January 2018 under Assembly Bill 1127 (Bonta, D-Alameda). The legislation requires school districts to include labor and sexual human trafficking prevention education in grades seven through 12 as part of comprehensive sexual health education. It also requires human trafficking awareness training for school district staff.

The two components of AB 1227 — prevention education for students and trafficking awareness training for school staff — are essential to identifying and providing help to current victims and preventing future victims. “By providing prevention education, AB 1227 aims to attack the problem of human trafficking at the root,” said Assemblymember Bonta in a statement upon the bill’s signing. “The goal is not only to identify students who are actively being trafficked but also to reduce the number of students who could become victims, buyers or traffickers. Successful education has the potential to prevent the trauma endured by those who are exploited.”

In this article, CSBA takes a look at the scope of the commercial sexual exploitation of children in California, potential warning signs and vulnerable student indicators, and examines the ways some districts are addressing this issue, including through two programs that are being adopted in school districts throughout the state.

Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery that uses force, fraud, manipulation or coercion to obtain either labor or commercial sexual exploitation. It is a common misconception that human trafficking only happens in countries outside the United States. The National Human Trafficking Hotline identified 10,615 victims of human trafficking in the U.S. in 2017, the majority of which were sex trafficking cases. The Hotline’s 2017 report noted that this data represents only a fraction of the full scope of human trafficking.

One form of human trafficking is the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), and it poses a serious problem in the U.S. Child sex trafficking victims can be anyone and are recruited at schools, online and in any number of public places where children hang out. It is important to note that federal law states that any person under 18 years of age cannot consent to participating in sex trafficking and the sex trafficking of minors is a form of child abuse. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children responded to over 10,000 reports regarding possible child sex trafficking in 2017. The organization cautions that actual numbers are impossible to pinpoint due to a variety of factors including the tendency of victims to not self-identify or disclose their situations due to fear, shame or loyalty to their abuser. However, the organization estimates that of the nearly 25,000 missing children reported in 2017, one in seven were likely victims of child sex trafficking.

“Statistics are really difficult to nail down because there is no way to judge the numbers,” explained Genice Jacobs, an anti-trafficking activist and founder of Abolitionistmom.org. “There is no statewide system that is tracking the numbers, and only victims that come through law enforcement are being counted. More often than not, these cases go undetected.”

While any young person can be a victim of child sex trafficking, there are certain groups that are more often targeted by traffickers, who are adept at identifying and grooming victims. According to a 2014 report from the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, risk factors include previous sexual or physical abuse; being a runaway, in foster care or homeless; being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender; and having a history of substance abuse. The Urban Institute reported that victims are lured into the commercial sex industry as a result of economic need, family and peer encouragement, need for social acceptance and previous childhood trauma. While these factors may signal an easier target to a trafficker, it is important to remember that anyone can be targeted, and the increased use of the internet and social media by children and teens has made access to potential victims easier to attain.

According to a 2018 report by THORN, an international anti-trafficking organization, traffickers are increasingly relying on technology and social media to target victims as young as middle school and advertise them for sex. Their survey of sex trafficking survivors shows 55 percent of those recruited after 2015 were first contacted via texting, websites or apps; whereas 84 percent of victims recruited before 2015 met their trafficker for the first time in person.

“The biggest challenge today is probably the internet, in that now predators have immediate access to our children even when they are in their own homes,” said Jacobs. “It’s not that easy for parents to monitor what is going on anymore. Youth are unwittingly falling into exploitation. Prevention education is the best tool we have to combat this problem.”

Whether districts choose to create their own curriculum or adopt one that already exists, human trafficking prevention education for students and training for teachers is mandated in Education Code and must be implemented.

Oakland USD is located in one of the most active areas in the state for child sex trafficking. The district partners closely with the community to ensure that it has an open line of communication with advocacy and victim-support organizations. Oakland USD is a member of the City of Oakland Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and the Alameda County District Attorney’s AC United Against Human Trafficking Task Forces, which hosts representatives of all of the Oakland CSEC providers including the DA’s office, Oakland Police Department, government officials’ offices, Alameda County Juvenile Justice, MISSSEY, BAWAR, DreamCatcher Youth Shelter, West Coast Children’s Center and many more. The district also partners with independent consultants such as Genice Jacobs and Sarai Smith-Mazariegos of MISSSEY (Motivating, Inspiring, Supporting & Serving Sexually Exploited Youth) to connect to services and to consult when developing curriculum.

“In response to AB 1227, we have incorporated CSEC Prevention into our ‘Healthy Oakland Teens’ comprehensive sex education curriculum,” said Oakland USD board member Nina Senn. “All teachers undergo a full day of professional development before implementing the Healthy Oakland Teens curriculum in their classrooms. The curriculum includes a free Healthy Oakland Teens mobile app, designed to help students access free, youth-friendly health services. Students are given a pocket pamphlet with a map and hotlines.”

For districts that might not have the resources to develop their own curriculum to address human trafficking, there are programs available for adoption. One of these programs is PROTECT, an acronym for Prevention Organized to Educate Children on Trafficking. Developed by three anti-human trafficking organizations — 3Strands Global Foundation, Love Never Fails and Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives — the PROTECT program has partnered with the Office of the California Attorney General and the California Department of Education to provide a scalable and systematic prevention education program. PROTECT uses a three-pronged approach to fight human trafficking by providing educational curriculum for students, training for educators and professionals, and providing reporting protocols and procedures to ensure victimized children receive the services they need to be protected.

The PROTECT program was first launched in rural counties, which might come as a surprise to people who think this is a problem that only affects urban areas. Thirty-five rural California counties participated in the pilot program through a grant provided by the Rural County Representatives of California. “We began to conduct some initial research and learned that child sex trafficking wasn’t only an epidemic in third-world countries, but taking place right in our own backyard,” said Greg Norton, RCRC president and CEO. “The boards of directors of RCRC and its affiliate, National Homebuyers Fund Inc., identified the impact of human trafficking in their communities and recognized the value that education and prevention has in combating the issue. We met with Ashlie Bryant with 3Strands Global and knew we had to find a way to bring this program to all of the kids in our member counties.”

One beneficiary of the RCRC grant is the Amador County Unified School District. District Superintendent Amy Slavensky reached out to PROTECT in response to the enactment of AB 1227. Amanda Taggart, a regional director with PROTECT, gave a presentation to the Amador USD Board of Trustees in February 2018, after which the board voted to adopt the program. “We know this is one of the most serious issues in the state for children right now and it is extremely important we do all we can to keep our students safe,” said Board President Susan Ross.

“Student safety is our number one priority — students can’t learn and they can’t develop their social-emotional wellness unless they are safe,” said Slavensky. “PROTECT made it easy to implement in our district.”

3Strands Global Foundation co-founder, President and CEO Ashlie Bryant said the organization worked with the California Department of Education to create state-standardized curriculum for grades five, seven, nine and 11, as well as training for teachers. “We are now expanding, and every school has local control dollars that can be used to implement the PROTECT program, said Bryant. Our staff does a great job of helping districts find those funds.”

3Strands Global sponsored AB 1227 and helped to write the legislation, making the PROTECT program uniquely qualified to fulfill its mandates. “We saw this bill as a way of acknowledging that California has the highest incidence of human trafficking in the nation, and showing that we want California to lead in the space of prevention,” said Bryant.

PROTECT provides teacher training modules that include grade-appropriate curriculum for students, training in identifying the signs of human trafficking and implementing protocols to be followed if a student is suspected or identified as a victim. PROTECT emphasizes that the program will not be implemented at a school and teachers will not be trained until a protocol is in place. “It is crucial and imperative to have a protocol in place prior to moving forward with any type of training or teaching of students,” explained Heather Hoffman, PROTECT’s director of Urban & Community Education.

Protocols involve working with different community organizations and are often funded through county CSEC committees that bring together different agencies to provide services.

“Thirty-nine of California’s 58 counties have some sort of official CSEC protocol in place and receive CSEC state funding,” said Hoffman. “The most important thing about having a protocol in place is that we don’t want the students that are participating in trafficking prevention education to not have a safety net underneath them and a place to go for intervention resources if they choose to come forward — and many students do self-disclose. Protocols provide teachers with the tools to help students.”

In Southern California, another trafficking prevention education program is in the process of being rolled out to most of the schools in San Diego County. The kNOw MORE program is a drama-based curriculum designed to help students recognize the red flags and vulnerabilities around trafficking and to equip them to take action for themselves and for their peers. The program was initiated by the San Diego Unified School District, Point Loma Nazarene University’s Center for Justice and Reconciliation and the San Diego County Advisory Council on Human Trafficking and the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children.

A three-year study by the University of San Diego and Point Loma Nazarene University released in 2015 found that 8,830 to 11,773 victims — mostly underage girls — are trafficked in San Diego County each year. “We did focus groups in 20 area high schools, and all 20 had evidence of sex trafficking recruitment happening at the high school or with other high school students,” said Jamie Gates, co-author of the report and director of the Center for Justice and Reconciliation at Point Loma Nazarene University. “The schools were distributed throughout the county and the team was surprised to see how widespread this was and how much it was connected to schools.”

The curriculum involves an interactive, 20-minute drama of a high school girl being recruited into sex trafficking while no one around her is aware of the signs. As the drama is re-enacted several times, a survivor facilitator helps the students to interject in the drama at different points where they see they could have made a difference.

“The reason this program was so critical, besides it being important to know the signs of trafficking, was helping kids build community around each other — that protective factor is really what sold me,” said Tami Hester Johnson, the district school counselor with Cajon Valley Union School District. “In spring 2017, I presented our pilot implementation to the school board. This program helps stop trafficking through helping kids understand and gain knowledge by building empathy and community. The board funded kNOw MORE last year and were very active in making sure students had this knowledge and this experience.”

And like the PROTECT program, kNOw MORE emphasizes the importance of having a protocol supported by community organizations in place before the curriculum is taught. “We don’t go into schools without a critical mass of teachers and administrators who have been trained so that there is a protocol in place that connects vulnerable students to resources and services,” said Gates.

School boards can play an essential role in building awareness of human trafficking as it effects schools, and provide guidance for the implementation of curricula that meet the requirements of AB 1227. Nina Senn of the Oakland USD Board of Trustees recommends that school boards make sure their district is aware of the issue and the implementation of the bill. This can be achieved through communication at board meetings and through the passage of a board resolution or policy that identifies support for prevention education and funding sources. Like the other programs mentioned, Oakland USD has implemented a response protocol, and is dedicating resources to support a dedicated CSEC case manager beginning this school year. She also advocates that boards request periodic reports at a board meeting or through memos from the superintendent that provide updates on trafficking prevention training and education in the district.

Boards can also be instrumental in facilitating the community connections that need to be in place to implement an effective protocol when victimized and/or vulnerable students are identified. “Board members should connect to the professionals who are deeply engaged,” explained Gates. “In San Diego, we are deeply fortunate there is a San Diego County Regional Human Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Advisory Council. School board members from other districts are welcome to come and visit the advisory council and we can consult with them. kNow MORE is being looked at by a number of different counties right now, PROTECT is already in a number of different counties. We’re happy to share what we are learning because we are hoping to help every district get something going.”

Board members should review the data available in their areas and make sure that appropriate educational programs and resources are in place. Addressing human trafficking prevention education and the identification of proper supports at the district level are important steps in preventing student victimization.