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Many of these victims are lured with false promises of financial or emotional security; instead, they are forced or coerced into commercial sex (prostitution), domestic servitude, or other types of forced labor. Any minor under the age of 18 who is induced to perform a commercial sex act is a victim of human trafficking according to U.S. law, regardless of whether there is force, fraud, or coercion. Increasingly, criminal organizations, such as gangs, are luring children from Did You Know? Florida is the third largest hub for human trafficking in the United States. Each year, as many as 300,000 American children are at risk for sexual exploitation. The average age a child enters the commercial sex trade is 11-13 years old. local schools into commercial sexual exploitation or trafficking. Since 2009, Florida Departments of Juvenile Justice and Children and Families have investigated over 1,500 child trafficking cases. Child sex trafficking is a form of human trafficking defined as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, and/or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation before the child reaches 18 years of age.” Sex trafficking has been described as “the largest slave trade in history” and as the fastest growing form of contemporary slavery. As many as 300,000 school-age children are at risk for sexual exploitation each year in the United States. One in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually assaulted by the age of 18. The life expectancy of the commercially exploited “prostitute” is seven years. Up to 90% of minor victims are under the control of a pimp. (Shared Hope, 2014) Approximately one in seven youth online (10 to 17 yearsold) received a sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet. Victims of trafficking can be any age, race, gender, or nationality, including U.S. citizens. Child trafficking can take a variety of forms including commercial sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, or forced labor. Those who recruit minors for the purpose of commercial sex are violating U.S. anti-trafficking laws, even if there is no force, fraud, or coercion. Trafficking victims can be men or women, boys or girls, United States citizens or foreign nationals. Human trafficking can involve school-age youth, particularly those made vulnerable by unstable family situations, or who have little or no social support. The children at risk are not just high school students – studies show that the Protection of Vulnerable Persons Law Florida Statute 415.102 imposes a fine of up to $1 million on any public or private college or university whose administration or law enforcement agency willfully and knowingly fails to report child abuse that occurs on its campus, in any of its facilities, or at/during college or university-sponsored events and functions. “In the wake of the child abuse cover-up scandals at Penn State and Syracuse that rocked the nation last year, Florida will enact the most expansive abuse reporting law and the nation’s toughest penalties for failing to report abuse.” Governor Rick Scott average age a child is trafficked into the commercial sex trade is between 11 and 14 years old. Traffickers may target young victims through social media websites, telephone chat-lines, after school programs, on the streets, at shopping malls or in clubs. In some cases, teens who are already involved with the traffickers are used to recruit other victims. In fact, a person can be trafficked without ever leaving his or her hometown. While trafficking can occur to anyone in any situation, some factors have been known to contribute to a person’s vulnerability to being trafficked. These factors include poverty, the lack of an education or job opportunities, race, social caste, internally displaced people and refugees. Traffickers acquire their victims through numerous methods. They can be kidnapped and taken forcibly or they can be lured by false job offers in countries other than their own. In some cases, after victims have been willingly trafficked into other places based on false promises, their trafficker will charge them a previously undisclosed fine to cover the expenses of transporting them to another country. This subsequently creates a lifelong debt the victim must work off (through either commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor) to repay their trafficker. According to the U.S. Department of