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52 Wake Forest L. Rev. 435 (2017)
Criminalizing Buyers under Child Sex-Trafficking Laws as a Critical Protection for Child Victims

handle is hein.journals/wflr52 and id is 451 raw text is: 







      CRIMINALIZING BUYERS UNDER CHILD SEX-
   TRAFFICKING LAWS AS A CRITICAL PROTECTION
                      FOR   CHILD VICTIMS


                         Christine M. Raino*



                           INTRODUCTION

     Otherwise, society will continue to label certain kids as child
     prostitutes or teen prostitutes as opposed to victims. With
     such labels that imply choice and fault, these victims are often
     ignored, arrested, or otherwise misidentified.1
     Across the nation, many  states are shifting to the hard work  of
legislating  specific protections for  child sex-trafficking victims.
Meanwhile,   a threshold  barrier to victim identification persists in
state  sex-trafficking statutes,  threatening   to undermine these
emerging  efforts on behalf of child victims. That barrier is the way
states are  defining child sex trafficking. As  a nation, we  are not
using  the same   definition of child sex trafficking, and when   the
definition does  not reflect the full scope of  minor  sex-trafficking
victims, vulnerable youth  are excluded  not only from  the definition
of victim but from  the very protections that are being  developed to
help stop the cycle of exploitation.2



     * Director of Public Policy, Shared Hope International. Thanks to Sarah
Bendtsen, J.D., and Sarah Breyer, Esq., for their research assistance and to the
Wake  Forest Law  Review at Wake   Forest University School of Law for
convening this Symposium on human  trafficking. Special thanks to Rachel
Harper, Esq., former Shared  Hope International Policy Counsel, for her
contributions as coauthor of Shared Hope International's policy research on the
issue of third-party control, which provided foundational research for this
Article.
    1. HOLLY  AUSTIN SMITH, WALKING  PREY: How   AMERICA'S YOUTH  ARE
VULNERABLE TO SEX SLAVERY 14 (2014).
    2. See Amanda   Peters, Reconsidering Federal and State Obstacles to
Human  Trafficking Victim Status and Entitlements, 2016 UTAH L. REV. 535, 548
(2016) (Victim labels qualify or disqualify individuals from receiving victim
services. A person's right to be called a 'human trafficking victim' is directly
connected to the entitlements the victim receives. (footnote omitted)); id. at 554
(Entitlements earmarked for trafficking victims are inaccessible for individuals
who  cannot prove their status to the gatekeepers of trafficking benefits,


435

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