Principal Investigator

Child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation have surfaced in the last decade of the 20th century as two of the most neglected forms of child abuse. A third form of child abuse--the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC, CSE)--appears to be an even more insidious and, daily, affects the lives of tens of thousands of children in the United States, and tens of mil-lions of children worldwide.1 Some portion of these children are in the "employment " of well organized networks of traffickers in child and adult sex, at least some of which also engage in the sale of illegal drugs, fire arms, and money laundering activities. Children victimized by CSE exchange sex with adults either for money or for some other form of compensation (e.g., affection, food, clothing, shelter, and the like). Many of these exchanges occur out of necessity (i.e., poverty, survival sex) but most appear to be driven by a complex of other motivations (i.e., low self esteem, a desire to punish parents, external locus of control, mental illness, etc.). Whatever the underlying causes for engaging in commercial sexual exploitation, in the end, the CSEC becomes a major problem in its own right--a problem that is social, political, economic, and legal in construction. The tragedy for many of these children is that, owing to the unpro-tected nature of the vast majority of their sexual encounters, a large proportion will contract chronic sexual infections including HIV and, for many, full-blown AIDS