UPDATE, NOVEMBER 29, 2022: The South
Florida Sun-Sentinel has just published a searing series of stories about
sex-trafficking, including
one about how foster care in general, and group homes in particular,
increase the risk that children will be trafficked. The story reveals
that, sure enough, the Florida Department of Children and Families took the
"presents for pimps" loophole, and drove a truck through it.
See the excerpt from the story at the end of this post
Florida: According to this news account, “child welfare
officials are on the defensive this week after revelations that children in
taxpayer-financed group homes are falling prey to sex traffickers.”
California: A federal report notes that “victims
were often recruited by sex traffickers and pimps from group homes.”
Rhode Island:
Participants at a conference conclude that “children in group homes are especially vulnerable
[to sex trafficking].”
New York: A lawyer writes that “traffickers will
often send one of their girls into group homes to find girls and urge them to
leave by saying things like they will be well taken care of financially and
have a ‘family’ so to speak who will care for them.”
Illinois: the Chicago Tribune devotes 4,000 words to a scathing exposé of one group home and institution after another that
had become hunting grounds for sexual predators. The institutions themselves
were so horrible, the Tribune reported,
that for those forced to live there, even the streets seemed like a better
alternative. That made it easy for the greedy to take advantage of the
desperate.
No one
should be surprised. Predators go where the prey are.
But that doesn’t mean
Congress should make it easier for the predators. And they will do just
that, offering up a Christmas present for pimps, if it passes the latest
version of the so-called Family First Act. (As this is written, such passage is unlikely, but the bill’s fortunes
seem to change by the day.)
Abject Surrender to the Group Home Industry
In one
of several acts of abject surrender to the group home industry, the new version
of the bill adds a new exception to limits on federal funding for “congregate
care.” In addition to all the other loopholes, federal foster care dollars
would continue to flow freely to states for “care” provided to children in the
following:
A setting providing
high-quality residential care and supportive services to children and
youth who have been found to be, or are at risk of becoming, sex trafficking
victims
Why
would the group home industry be so keen on this particular exception? Probably
because lobbyists for “providers” of institutional “care” know something that
the bill sponsors and their staff may not. As John Kelly pointed out, an issue brief from the
Department of Health and Human Services says that all foster children are “at high risk of being
trafficked.”
I didn’t know about that
issue brief. That’s why, until now, I couldn’t understand why people such as
Trent Rhorer and John Burton would torture logic dredging up an example involving
trafficking to make their case against the Family First Act.
In fact, even if one
simply takes on faith that, contrary
to research on residential treatment in general, there are some
sexually trafficked youth who somehow would benefit from such treatment, the
broad, vague loopholes in the original Family First Act already allowed
reimbursement in such cases.
But there is no reason to
have confidence in the child welfare system when it comes to these children.
About four percent of all children enter foster care because of sexual
abuse. By the time they’re in the system awhile, the federal government says,
all of them are at risk. That’s not exactly a track record that inspires
confidence.
Children as Collateral Damage
But now
I understand why the group home industry puts sex trafficking cases front and
center. It plays on one of the most emotionally charged issues in child
welfare, and opens the ultimate loophole. And if, in the process, it actually
exposes trafficking victims to more danger, I guess that’s just collateral
damage.
The Tribune story gives a sense of what that damage
looks like:
sexual
exploitation … seems to be accepted as a fact of life at some of the large
residential treatment centers that get millions of taxpayer dollars each year
to care for Illinois’ most destitute and troubled young wards, a Tribune
investigation found.
The prostitution emerges
against a backdrop of violence at the facilities where the threat of sexual
coercion is common, residents frequently square off in fights, destroy
property, abuse medications and attack peers or staff, government records show.
Teenagers who were
prostituted told the Tribune they would run away to escape the turbulence and
brutality — then do what survival required on streets where they had no money
or life skills. At the facilities, experienced residents introduced others to
pimps, escort websites and street corners. Some disappeared into this world and
never returned.
Even if
HHS – which is probably about to be run by leaders profoundly hostile to any
form of regulation – were to try to impose new regulations that tighten the
definition of children at risk of sex trafficking, that wouldn’t solve the
problem. It would just be the equivalent of putting great big signs on group
homes and institutions that say: “Hey, pimps – over here!”
Why do
well-meaning members of Congress and their staffs accept this loophole and,
apparently, everything else the group home industry demanded? Probably because,
after putting well over a year into the extremely difficult, painstaking
process of crafting the legislation, they couldn’t bear to see it all go down
the drain at the last minute.
It’s
not just on the streets where the greedy take advantage of the desperate.
UPDATE, NOVEMBER 29, 2022: Now, six years after the above
was written, the South
Florida Sun-Sentinel reveals how Florida exploited the “presents for pimps”
loophole. From their story:
In an effort to reduce the use of group homes, Congress
in 2018 passed the Family First Prevention Services Act. It told states that
the federal government will only fund two weeks of group home care for foster
children, with a few exceptions.
Florida changed its policy in 2020 to exploit an
exception for trafficking victims.
The state created group homes for children who are at
risk of being trafficked — and defined that broadly. Under the state’s new
definition, a child is considered at risk if he or she “has experienced trauma”
and has run away, been sexually abused, was exposed to human trafficking, moved
repeatedly within foster care, or interacted inappropriately with other people
or on social media.
Florida’s Children First, a Coral Springs foster child
advocacy group, opposed the state’s change, arguing that the definition is so
broad it could apply to more than half of the state’s foster kids.
As of July, 150 group homes in Florida’s foster care
system are for these at-risk children, Walthall said.
DCF’s McManus said many were regular group homes that
“implemented enhanced training of staff to better provide trauma informed care
and protect those who are more vulnerable or at risk of trafficking.”
Robin Rosenberg, deputy director of Florida’s Children
First, said the number of kids in group homes would be much lower if at-risk
group homes hadn’t been created.
“The bottom line is Florida relied heavily on federal
funds to pay for kids in group homes,” she said. “And when they saw that that
source was going to dry up they had to come up with a way that they could keep
putting kids in group homes.”
The state doesn’t have an accurate tool for determining
which children have been trafficked or are at risk. The screening tool used by
the state since 2016 has flunked repeated efforts to validate its accuracy, the
DCF’s own reports say.
But it continues to be used today.
