What the Pandemic Revealed About Exploited Youth

Teresa Huizar:  Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. On today’s episode, What the Pandemic Revealed about Exploited Youth, I speak with Dr. Matt Kafafian, director of graduate Studies and Assistant Professor of Sociology at George Washington University.  Over the last few years, a series of studies has looked at the aftereffects of the pandemic, and it’s examined many different areas, medical care, the mental health crisis in youth, the economy and effects on criminal justice.

But until now, no one had examined the way that the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped the nature of the exploitation of children and youth. How did the pandemic change the ways in which youth are commercially sexually exploited? And what does this mean for the identification of victims and the referral to services, and how might the nature of those services themselves change as well?

America is still unpacking the effects of a pandemic on youth, and as you’ll hear, these most vulnerable ones are really no exception. I know you’ll find this as thought provoking a conversation as I did. Please take a listen.

Hi Matt. Welcome to One in Ten.

Matt Kafafian: Hey, it’s great to be here. Thank you for having me, Teresa.

TH: So I’d like to kind of start at the beginning and I’m curious about what made you think about looking at what has changed between the pre- and post-pandemic related to CSEC and the kinds of cases that are getting referred?

MK: Yeah, for sure. There’s a few different kind of streams of ongoing research within criminology.  But then also ongoing trends we saw with reports by the FBI and nonprofits that impacted our perceptions of these changes. Also conversations with practitioners we work with and changes at least anecdotally in the types of cases they were seeing as they were being referred.

And so, on one hand we saw a lot of research in criminology talking about how the changes in routines because of the pandemic with law enforcement and other kinds of institutions tasked with identifying victimization. Right. You know, everyone was locked up in their houses and apartments, right? And so it was more difficult for formal institutions to come in contact with victims, right? And so we presume that these changes in routines based off of other research on different types of experiences might change the type of victims that are being identified. Relatedly, we saw reports from NCMEC and the FBI reporting on  large increases and you know, hotlines and referrals for youth identified for concerns of online exploitation.

You know, when we think about commercial sex exploitation, it’s a unique victimization experience because it happens in both public and, and private settings, right? And we see the pandemic impact, you know, these public settings, right? And so we’ve made assumptions that pandemic might impact the private settings in which the victimization experience might manifest.

And relatedly, we just heard from the practitioners we talked to and work with that they were seeing a lot more referrals for youth with online concerns, right? And so that’s how this paper came to fruition.

TH: It’s  really interesting because there were so many different, I guess you would say, considerations with this.

I mean, as you’re saying, there was the external environment and yes, police were tasked with doing different things. You had CPS, you for long periods of time weren’t doing in-person visits. You had hospitals that were overwhelmed with COVID cases. So their attention in the ER wasn’t necessarily around doing screening for CSEC or other things, even within Children’s Advocacy Centers.

And you know, let me just sort of name for everyone who hasn’t yet read the paper that this was done in partnership actually with a Children’s Advocacy Center. But their own caseloads and how cases came in, how many cases they could see at a time. Like all of that changed. So it’s kind of interesting because now looking back, I feel like that time was a little bit of a blur.

So reading your paper in many ways sort of brought that back to me about just how different that period of time was, and it’s good to see what might have changed during all of that, just to level set for people who may not be as conversant as you are in the literature. Let’s talk a little bit about pre pandemic for a minute.

Yeah. And what was known pre pandemic about the sort of specific vulnerabilities that youth have at the individual and family level that might bring them to the attention of authorities or be a part of a referral or those kinds of things. ’cause we’re really talking not about kids who pop their head up and go, you know, I’m being exploited.

But rather, they came in contact with authorities in some way and that’s how they came to our attention.

MK: Yeah, for sure. And so, you know, a lot of research prior to pandemic we’re making a lot of headway and better understanding, as you said, the individual characteristics of family characteristics that contribute to risk and vulnerability for minor sex trafficking.

And a lot of research documents, the role of historical adversities, right? Experiencing abuse, whether that’s physical or sexual. Being exposed to issues within the home, right? Parental substance misuse, family separation, you know, substance use, participation by youth, right? And all of these kind of situations are seen as risk factors that propel youth into circumstances that are risky, that put ’em in situations of exploitation, right?

Some of our previous research found that we find these kind of social settings or what we call proximal risks amplify or are predictive of youth being likely to be exploited, right? And so this is traveling outta state without caregivers consent, right? Spending time with other youth who might be engaged in commercial sex, right?

And so we find these historical adversities, these family issues propel youth to be in these risky situations that put them at risk of being exploited. And so a lot of these social settings in which youth are likely to be exploited obviously change dramatically during the COVID pandemic.

TH: And things like running away or being thrown away for that matter. Homelessness in general. Things like that. And one of the things that I was thinking about as I was reading the paper is I think over time a lot of work was put into training people to identify these situations that were potentially risky for kids to be trafficked and really assessing, you know, kids, whether they can are coming into a CAC or coming in contact with the FBI or anybody else.

They were sort of based on these risk factors we’re talking about. Alright, now cue the pandemic and lots really changes, so I want you to talk to me for a minute about what were the unique stressors or changes to the environment during the pandemic that really just meant that if we kept looking at those things, kind of looking in the wrong places to some degree.

MK: For sure. Right. And so everything moved online and so youth were just continually online without kind of oversight kind of how the pandemic might have like impacted the stressors, right? We know that youth run away because they’re experiencing some sort of abuse or adverse experience, right?

But during the pandemic, there’s the potential and research kind of highlighted or flagged as kind of concern that youth might be experiencing some of these things at higher degree because they’re in home all the time, right? They’re not being identified maybe by teachers or, you know, other service providers like medical doctors that they’re coming in contact with.

And so we know that the COVID pandemic might have exacerbated some of these risk and vulnerabilities we already talked about, but also at the same time, they’re kind of stuck within those situations.

TH: And I think back to the pandemic and my own experience of it, which I think that many people found themselves online more because there are opportunities for community, aside from an online environment, were just smaller.

And so you can just imagine these kids at a time in their life when it’s peers are so critically important, right? When you’re a teenager and then you’re cut off from them in person. It’s not like you’re going to their house, hanging out at school, all the things that they do. So what are you spending your time on?

And sadly, offenders take advantage of that and look in this environment for that. So let’s then now move to your study itself. So talk to me a little bit about what your hypotheses were going into the study. Like what is it that you fundamentally were hoping to learn? And then in minute we’ll talk about what your findings actually were.

MK: For sure. So, you know, as we talked about, there was a lot of headway on research, understanding risk and vulnerability that contributes to the likelihood of exploitation. Right. And so primarily we’re interested in as the pandemic, reshaped the type of youth being referred because the changes brought on by the pandemic, but also the continued changes that we see today.

People are online, more people work remote, more. We’re on Zoom. Youth are online, right? And so we were very much interested in and does our knowledge from before the pandemic extend to the current circumstances and social environment that have inevitably changed because of the pandemic. And so our hypothesis was, probably.

Particularly because we were seeing these reports of increased concerns or referrals or hotline calls related to online exploitation of children talking to practitioners we work with. They were seeing this  anecdotally, right? And so we’re very much interested in understanding, can we statistically see these trends in our data that we’re hearing about from NCMEC, the FBI, but then also the practitioners we’ve worked with.

TH: One of the things you pointed out in your paper, and I thought it was really interesting, is that it’s not only just being online, but even the nature of some of the forms of exploitation that sort of cropped up over the last few years were somewhat different. So I think people sort of had an idea in their mind about what CSEC was pre pandemic.

And then you saw this rise of things like sextortion or these online groups that were sort of encouraging and blackmailing children to harm themselves or pets or others. And I think that it just felt qualitatively different even. Tell me a little bit about what your study found in looking at these questions about change, not change, and whether or not something surprised you in your findings.

MK: For sure. So, you know, we explored statistically where there were differences in the profiles of youth being referred were concerns of commercial sexual exploitation to a specific Children’s Advocacy Center in the Northeast. And what we found was that there were two primary profiles of interest.

One of these profiles of youth being referred were youth that have a long list of adversities and all of these risk factors that we know contribute to the likelihood of exploitation and having a high probability of being confirmed exploited. And so we found that this was one of the profiles of youth in our entire data. Right? And then we also found a profile of youth related to concerns of online exploitation and not having any of these historical adversities or other risk factors that we know are important in contributing to risks for CSEC. And so what we did was we explored either, you know.

These profiles were more likely to be identified before the pandemic and after the pandemic. And so what we found was that that profile related to use with the long list of adversities and the risk factors we know contribute to the likelihood of being exploited and having a high probability of being confirmed exploited were statistically more likely to be referred prior to the pandemic.  We found that the profile of youth who were referred for online concerns, but don’t possess any of those risk factors that we know are important in contributing to risks for CSEC, were significantly more likely to be identified during the pandemic.

And when we ran our analyses, that first group where they have, you know, high probability being exploited and having all those historical risk factors and adversities contribute to risks didn’t exist in the data after COVID statistically. And that profile related to online concerns didn’t exist in the data before.

And so what it’s telling us is that the type of youth being referred since the onset of the pandemic have just changed dramatically, statistically and qualitatively.

TH: Can I just interrupt you one second? Apologies. But you know what you’re saying is very interesting and just a question popped in my head about that.

I’m curious when you think about what you just said, we’re really talking about referrals. So I’m curious about how you think about whether or not the baseline population, the total population it’s essentially fundamentally has changed, or if it’s what’s coming into the CAC that’s changed pre and post pandemic.

MK: Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting question and we talk about it in our discussion. We don’t really quite have an answer, you know? As we’re seeing a lot before the pandemic, we saw about 25% of the sample being indicated as being confirmed exploited. Since the pandemic, only 7%. And so are the type of youth being identified, have they changed?

Right. And if so, is it because the changes in routines of different agencies that are tasked with identifying and making these referrals for concerns, right? Things are still more online. So has that just changed or has a proliferation of just like online exploitation become front of mind of practitioners, right.

And so the concerns related to that are more likely to be identified and referred compared to previous concerns related to more traditional or offline exploitation. Right. It’s hard to know whether the population of youth being referred has changed because of changes in routine or just youth are possessing different risks and vulnerabilities and experiences.

And those have just changed since COVID because of, again, the changes in routine. So it’s hard to know whether it’s like referral mechanisms and the type of youth likely to be identified or as the population of youth at risk for CSEC just changed.

TH: Well, that is all a very interesting question. I’ll tell you one thing that makes it even more interesting to me.

If you track the period that you were looking at, which was what, like 2015 to 2022? I can’t remember. Yeah, yeah. Something like that. Okay. So for Children’s Advocacy Centers, within that same band of time.  So it’s not a one, one-to-one overlap, but for the last, if you say seven to eight years, within that period of time, nearly 700 Children’s Advocacy Centers have signed onto our MOU with the FBI to serve CSEC cases, their CSEC cases.

And it does make me wonder, because so much of their attention has been focused on online exploitation naturally, and so many of the cases that they’re bringing in relate to that it does make me wonder if that has shifted attention somewhat because we’re simply getting a caseload we weren’t previously getting for most of the communities that are now getting those cases.

So. It’s interesting and also there’s more training. I mean, the FBI have been wonderful partners in training, Children’s Advocacy Center staff on many of these things and on interviewing these kids and so many other things and training MDTs. So there’s a part of me that wonders if you just looked at one CAC, but it makes me wonder if just overall naturally, as people learn new information and these kinds of things, it shifts their focus a little bit.

And so we’re not gonna know the answer from this study, but it does make me wonder if it has been shaped to some degree by some of that. And of course, there’s all the training law enforcement goes to that has nothing to do necessarily with, you know, something offered by the CAC. But also it’s gotten a lot of attention, especially around abusive images, extortion generated images, like all the different variants that have been very much in the news over the last seven or eight years too.

MK: Yeah, and I think another challenge related to our findings related to all of this is we’re unable to confirm the nature of these concerns related to online exploitation. You know, we find that most of these youth identified for online concerns aren’t actually confirmed exploited based off our indicators.

So these indicators related to being found in an online ad, participating in survival sex, third party disclosure, that the youth is being exploited or first party disclosure. And so one of the challenges with our findings is that, you know, we’re unable to confirm whether these referrals meet the threshold of being confirmed exploited, which is really challenging.

And so that’s another wrinkle in our findings, we’re seeing a large proportion of these referrals being online concerns, right? But we’re not able to verify whether or not these youth are confirmed exploited compared to the previous type of youth we were identifying before the pandemic.

TH: One of the things I was thinking about as you were talking is that for one thing, you’ve chosen a particularly challenging group of kids to study, and that we know that they are notoriously reluctant to disclose, you know, things like they’ve been the subject of abusive images. Because so many threats go along with extortion.

That’s another. So you’ve chosen a subject that I think is so critically important and very interesting, but where I think youth are less likely to go, oh yes, that happened to me. You know? And so that makes it more challenging.  So one of the things you included in your paper was a very interesting chart that was just like pre post pandemic and it had a lot of demographic information and other breakouts.

I’m curious if any of that really stood out in your mind as like, wow.  That is such a shift in terms of what we saw pre pandemic versus what we’re seeing post pandemic. In other words, even looking at all of these youth and knowing your overall findings, was there anything more granular where you’re like, wow, this is a really interesting shift in who we’re seeing referred.

MK: For sure. One thing we’re seeing descriptively in our data is that there’s been an increase in proportion of males being identified for concerns of exploitation, and when you read the reports by NCMEC and FBI, they report on a large proportion of these referrals being related to males and historically most of the youth at least identified in our data are female. And so when we ran our analyses, we controlled for gender. And one thing that was kind of surprising for me at least, was that gender was not statistically significantly associated with these new types of referrals that we’re seeing.

And so it’s more of highlighting of a no finding just based off of, again, anecdotal, descriptively, we’re seeing more youth being referred who are males, at least with the CAC we work with and the data that we have. And we’re seeing it through FBI reports and NCMEC. And so that was like one finding I expected, but we didn’t find right.

And so I think at least, future research has continued to parse out the role of gender in exploitation, particularly with these anecdotal reports we’re seeing from other data sources related to gender and risk for online exploitation.

TH: So one of the categories too that I thought was really interesting, one of your findings really related to an emerging profile post pandemic that also had these unique aspects of mental health concerns.  Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I was like, well, that is just really interesting because I do think that’s not something that we’ve seen in the literature much up until now.

MK: Yeah, no, that’s a really great question. Yeah, so in our profile related to online exploitation that was more likely to be identified since the onset of COVID, we found that those youth were, had a high probability of experiencing historical mental health concerns and mental health concerns at time of referral.

And you know, there’s been some research that has found that mental health is associated, potentially associated with risk for vulnerability, but it’s often tied to the other historical adverse disease that they experience. And so what was interesting about this profile was that they had a low probability of possessing or experiencing these adverse experiences.

And so when we talk to practitioners we work with about interpreting this result. I don’t know if we came to like a good conclusion on what was necessarily happening. My speculation is that it could be just like mental health concerning that may be exacerbated because of the online experience that they’re being referred for, right?

And so these two things are happening in tandem. We also know that emotional vulnerability can lead to risk for exploitation, right? And so as you highlighted earlier, right, youth were online more because of pandemic, but they’re also online more because of social interaction and other people.

And so it could also be the case, and again, here is speculation. You know, we just controlled for whether or not they had mental health concerns. And so speculating on the potential mechanisms, it could just be also the case that these youth were in a potential emotional, vulnerable circumstances.

And therefore they participated in maybe online behavior that put them at risk of being taken advantage of because of those emotional circumstances. And so again, pure speculation. The negative mental health could be because of experiencing the acute strain of the online exploitation.

Or it could be that that was a potential pathway to being exploited potentially online.

TH: I think that that’s a really, it’s a really interesting point because of course coming out of the pandemic, I think there’s been a lot of media coverage and the Surgeon General’s report and everything else on the mental health of youth through and post pandemic and sort of a mental health crisis on the part of youth based on that experience. And I think that it’s an interesting interaction, right? Like it certainly didn’t help their mental health to be exploited. And at the same time, the fact that they might have been anxious or depressed or isolated or whatever, also may have contributed to their vulnerability for exploitation.

And if I’m remembering right, it also in your study, this particular profile also related to exchanging sexually explicit media online. Is that right? And do you think that’s really just like, honestly, teens don’t have the brain development that adults do. So some of it is just like bad judgment because they’re teens.

But I’m just curious about what you make of that.

MK: Yeah, for sure. And so real, this was related to what I highlighted before, but you know, our proxy for being referred for online expectation concerns is sharing sexual explicit images. Right. And one of the challenges of this measure is that we don’t have enough information to know about the nature of these online image exchanges.

And so it’s hard to know whether these exchanges were consensual between peers within their, their friend network, and they’re being referred because according to the JVTA and our definitions of exploitation, child pornography falls under it. Or are these online immigrant exchanges more malicious in nature?

Right. And it’s really hard to know based off of the data that we have, right? All we know is that these online image exchanges likely triggered why they were being referred to the Children’s Advocacy Center.

TH: So when you think about your findings as a whole, and you know it, it’s always this way with research that it opens up as many new questions as it answers, right?

But I’m curious about what you think the implications are for child abuse professionals, because that’s really your audience for the podcast and why they’re listening. They’re like, so what does this mean for me in terms of what I should be paying attention to in terms of how I think about kids who are particularly vulnerable in terms of the prevention efforts that they have underway, whatever part of that that you feel like there are implications to talk about and share?

MK: For sure. The big finding is that these youth referred for online concerns don’t possess most of, if not all, of the historical adversities that make up all these screening instruments that we have to help identify youth who are at risk or confirm to be exploited. And so the, the question is, are these youth being referred to online exploitation?

Can we confirm they kind of meet the definition of trafficking? And if that’s the case, our kind of current screening instruments that we spent so much time developing and validating over the last 10-15 years, it might be the case that these risk factors and vulnerabilities that make up these screening instruments might not be useful or helpful in identifying these youth who are at risk for online exploitation.

And so that means that we need to make sure that youth aren’t falling through the cracks in the system if they don’t meet these characteristics that make up a screening instrument. And so the policy implications are, is that the screening instruments might not be effective or identifying these youth at risk for online concerns.

I think the other implication more for research is, well, we need to find out what are the factors that contribute to the risk for youth being identified for online concerns. Right. And so I think the big policy implication is like our current state of screening instruments and whether they’re effective for the type of cases that we’re seeing more and more.

So that’s kind of like, for me, the big policy implication is our screening instruments because they’re the first line of defense used by social workers, child welfare providers, medical providers, and schools. Right? And so those don’t possess the risks and vulnerabilities we know are important to predict this type of exploitation.

We need to reevaluate and come up with a tool that does.

TH: So what is next for you, research wise on this topic or another? Is this something you’re digging into further? Have you moved, well, I know you guys have papers going on, all kinds of subjects all the time, but what’s next?

MK: Yeah, for sure. You know, we recently published a paper that was led by a colleague, Ieke de Vries, where we explored the role of social networks and social exposure to that increase in risk for exploitation.

And we find that social exposure or social networks is the most salient factor that contributes to risk. And so we’ve done that more future research. I’m currently working on a paper where we dig into this paper more specifically. And so as I highlighted we’re exploring whether those traditional risk factors that we know are important that we found before COVID.

Do they help us understand the likelihood of youth being identified for these online concerns? And so to further confirm our suspicions as whether or not our existing research translates to this different phenomenon. I’m working on that. I’m also working on research related to understanding differences in risk based off of gender.

And so if you look at a lot of the existing research, it uses child welfare data related to commercial sexual exploitation, which is predominantly females who are being referred. And so I’m very much interested in understanding whether our existing knowledge on risk and vulnerability of the trafficking, all of those things we talked about that we found before the pandemic.

Do those also help us predict the likelihood of whether or not male youth are likely to be exploited? And our preliminary findings suggest that probably not. And that there are likely differences in risk, which also have important implications for kind of the screening and identification of male victims of trafficking, right?

And so those two papers in particular are what I’m exploring right now.

TH: Well, we look forward to learning more about the followup study. And how interesting in terms the effect of gender because it’s true that because most victims that were identified the past were female. Of course, the screening tools and the standardization of those and the validation of those tools was really all done using a heavily female population. So it’s an interesting question you’re asking about whether it’s an entirely different thing when you’re looking at male victims that you’re seeing crop up more with online exploitation. So interesting. Well, feel free to come back at any time and talk about those when they’ve been published as well.

But I’m wondering, is there anything else that I should have asked you and didn’t, or anything else that you wanted to make sure that we talked about today?

MK: Yeah, for sure. I wanted to first highlight my co-authors on this paper, right? Ieke de Vries and Amy Farrell. They’re both mentors of mine and we also all worked together to develop this database when I was in grad school.

And so this paper is a collaborative paper while I was first author they had heavy hands and helping shape this paper, so I wanted to thank them and highlight their participation as fright and also co-authors, Sheila Gobar and Beth Bouchard, who have been co-authors on these papers.

And then also, importantly, the practitioners I work with, right? The people who we work with to develop this data. And who we have read these papers and give us feedback before we publish these papers, right? To make sure that our interpretations of the results are, you know, situated within people who work in the field, right?

So I wanna thank all of them for years of collaboration. And so just wanna make sure I shout them out and thank them for that. But otherwise, I just wanna say I really much appreciate the opportunity to share my research on a platform that will reach practitioners. ’cause that’s always the goal for us academics, right?

We don’t want to just write papers and they get lost in the ether within the ivory tower. But actually our results be shared with practitioners to help inform policy and practice. So I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to do that.

TH: Well, Matt, thank you for coming onto One in Ten to talk about it.

We appreciate that it takes a village to get these papers done and published and feel free to come back anytime.

MK: Awesome. Sounds great. Thank you so much.

TH: Thanks for listening to One in Ten. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And for more information about this episode or any of our other ones, please visit our podcast website,  oneintenpodcast.org.