WTFF? 1 in 100? Is this legit?

[Michael_Ellis]

The following was taken from Yahoo news, so think what you will:

Study: 1 in 100 Kids Sexual Victims

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Many children who become entangled in the commercial sex industry originally took to the streets to escape abuse at home, according to a study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.

The study, released Monday, reported that 300,000 to 400,000 children in the United States - 1 in 100 children - are victims of prostitution, pornography and other forms of commercial sex. Those most at risk are runaways, the homeless or teens thrown out of the house, the study said.

Child exploitation “is the nation’s least recognized epidemic,” according to Richard J. Estes, a professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who was the chief author of the three-year study.

Most of the children in the study were white youths who had run away from middle-class homes. Less than a quarter of the children in the report were from impoverished homes, Estes said.

Many of the children had histories of recurrent physical or sexual abuse at home and ran away in a desperate effort to bring their abuse to an end, Estes said.

The study - titled The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico - found gaps in policies and services intended to combat sexual exploitation of children and help the victims.

For the project, researchers selected 28 cities in the three countries, based on their size and for being known as having problems with the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Seventeen cities were chosen in the United States.

The researchers examined public records and interviewed about 1,000 children, law enforcement officials, and human services groups. They used previous data and field research from 288 federal and local agencies to extrapolate their findings to the U.S. population.

“This looks like it’s the most comprehensive study yet,” Eva Klain, of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, told USA Today in Monday’s editions.

The study found that 95 percent of the commercial sex that boys engaged in was with men, and it found that at least 25 percent of girls in gangs had sex with other members as part of the gang rites.

Married men who have children of their own are one of the most common customers who pay the children for sex, Estes said.

Is this credible? I mean, what the fucking fuck…

Really, is this true, or is it one of those worrying statistics people seem to like to shout from the mountaintops. (“In 14 years, one of every six children will be born with cranial-rectal inversions due to Global Milk Scrunge II - The Revenge!”)

I’m not being flippant, but this sets off my “Huh? Hey wait a minute…” alarm.

[racinchikki]

Now, maybe I read this wrong, but it looks like they are using data from 28 cities known to be hotbeds for child pornography, etc. to extrapolate data for the entire continent. Their data might be correct for the cities studied but surely not for the entire continent?

[Michael_Ellis]

*Originally posted by racinchikki *
it looks like they are using data from 28 cities known to be hotbeds for child pornography, etc. to extrapolate data for the entire continent.

Didn’t catch that part. I was too startled to catch it the first time.

You’re right, it does sound like a “Compton, Queeg, and Fletcher Dam caught fire, so therefore every other dam might catch fire, even though the dams that caught fire had been made of kerosene-soaked polyester-coated lumber.”

Hmm…

[Tretiak]

I really hate to detour this topic, but is your handle, Michael Ellis, a Monty Python reference?

[Michael_Ellis]

*Originally posted by Tretiak *
**I really hate to detour this topic, but is your handle, Michael Ellis, a Monty Python reference? **

[sub]*looks around[/sub]

Yes.

[jab1]

It’s on CNN, too.

The full report, which is more than 450 pages, is available here.

I haven’t read it yet, and I doubt I’ll ever have time to do so.

[JeffB]

*Originally posted by Michael Ellis *
The following was taken from Yahoo news, so think what you will:

Study: 1 in 100 Kids Sexual Victims

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Many children who become entangled in the commercial sex industry originally took to the streets to escape abuse at home, according to a study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.

The study, released Monday, reported that 300,000 to 400,000 children in the United States - 1 in 100 children - are victims of prostitution, pornography and other forms of commercial sex.

First off, the headline seems to be more accurate than the story in this case. According to the report on the site that jab1 provided:

Between 300,000 and 400,000 American children and youth are victimized by sexual exploitation each year

The report define “sexual exploitation” as:

A practice by which a person achieves sexual gratification, financial gain or advancement through the abuse or exploitation of a person’s sexuality by abrogating that person’s human right to dignity, equality, autonomy, and physical and mental well-being; i.e. trafficking, prostitution, prostitution tourism, mail-order-bride trade, pornography, stripping, battering, incest, rape and sexual harassment.

Given this definition, I can believe that 1% of children (defined as under 18) are victims of some sort of sexual exploitation. This is not the same as what this story states – that they are victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Criminal Victimization reports, almost 100,000 females age 16-19 and almost 60,000 females age 12-15 were victims of rape or sexual assualt in 1999. (The National Crime Victimization Survey, which these number are based on, doesn’t interview children under the age of 12.) If the study is including these types of victims, it’s not hard to see how it reaches the 300,000 - 400,000 figures.

*Originally posted by racinchikki *
Now, maybe I read this wrong, but it looks like they are using data from 28 cities known to be hotbeds for child pornography, etc. to extrapolate data for the entire continent. Their data might be correct for the cities studied but surely not for the entire continent?

You’re not necessarily reading that wrong, but it could be a valid extrapolation anyway. Without reviewing the methodology, it’s hard to judge. Those 1,000 children interviewed in 17 U.S. cities were merely the starting point. The abstract from the reports says,

Statistical surveys were analyzed for some 288 local, state, and Federal agencies serving sexually exploited children and their families.

There is quite a bit of data out there on crime that could be used to extrapolate to the rest of the country. For example, if I know that City A has a 10% higher rate of violent crime than then national average, I can extropolate national averages for murder based on City A’s murder rate. It may not be completely accurate, but it’s not a complete guess either.

[Badtz_Maru]

If they are including rape and incest I’m surprised the figures are so low.

[ITR_champion]

If the number 300,000 to 400,000 is 1% of the children in America, that would mean that there are 30 million to 40 million children. However, with the national population at almost 300 million, there have to be more children than that.