Pathways to Commercial Sexual Exploitation --- Responding to Sexual Exploitation of Teens.

This paper will report findings from in-depth narratives of and research interviews with sexually victimized (prostituted and trafficked) teens and run away youth at high risk for such victimization. Research participants are teens interviewed in the U.S. in two large urban areas—Boston, MA and Washington DC. Narratives from the youth will form the basis of the paper that will present findings on factors (individual, family, peer, school, and community contexts) that increase the risk of involvement in commercial sexual exploitation, maintain and escalate such exploitation, and impede or empower exiting from commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). Factors that propel involvement in and victimization via prostitution vary for boys and girls and for youth across life course stages as each confronts different lifetime challenges, opportunities, and milestones. This paper will present the perspectives of teen boys' and girls' who have been prostituted or who are at risk for prostitution or CSE and make recommendations for justice system response. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]