Bridge Over Troubled Water: Safe Harbor Laws for Sexually Exploited Minors
Date
2014
Authors
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Publisher
North Carolina Law Review
Abstract
This Article contributes to the emerging legal scholarship on child sex trafficking by exploring the impact and the potential of recently enacted safe harbor laws. Scholars have already begun to explore the need for new legal responses to domestic child sex trafficking. But, few scholars have explored whether state safe harbor laws are consistent with emerging best practices and model legislation such as the Uniform Act on Prevention of and Remedies for Human Trafficking. Thus, several key questions remain ripe for scholarly debate. For example, do safe harbor laws effectively shift the paradigm from punishment to protection of sexually exploited minors? Do state safe harbor laws represent a new and improved legal approach to child prostitution? Do these safe harbor laws adequately protect sexually exploited children from further exploitation? This Article argues that, while safe harbor laws for prostituted minors have great potential to protect sexually exploited minors in the United States, “prosecution-based models,” such as the New York Safe Harbour for Sexually Exploited Minors Act (“NYSHA”), fail to address some of the key public policy goals behind safe harbor laws. First, because these laws still threaten all minors with prosecution or adjudication as delinquents, they fail to end the age old practice of treating prostituted minors as the main or sole agents of their own commercial sexual exploitation. Safe harbor laws still allow for prosecution or punishment of prostituted minors if the minors fail to meet certain conditions. Second, safe harbor laws that condition rehabilitative services on criminal or juvenile justice adjudication undermine efforts to shift the paradigm. In order to protect minors from commercial sexual exploitation, safe harbor laws must adopt a protective, victim-centered approach. (Author Abstract)
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Keywords
child abuse, prostitution, CSEC, legislation, policy
Citation
Butler, C. N. (2014). Bridge over Troubled Water: Safe Harbor Laws for Sexually Exploited Minors. North Carolina Law Review, 93, 1282-1338.