Did anyone see this part?
"Given that the average human trafficking victim is 12-14 years old, this increase in penalties for patronizing a minor victim is crucial to the cessation of human trafficking in PA."
Our local amps are filled with grannies. Don't take my word for it, read the reviews. So where are most of the hotline calls coming from?
Originally Posted by lustylad
It is a bogus number … used to scare up funds by those religious zealots who want to shut down prostitution/
http://eminism.org/blog/entry/382
Ms. Hovde,
I’m contacting you to correct the error in your Oregonian column about sex trafficking.
You cite USDOJ as the source to state that “the average age of entry into prostitution is 13.” This is incorrect.
DOJ has not conducted any such study, but cites a report from researchers at University of Pennsylvania titled “The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children In the U. S., Canada and Mexico” (attached for your viewing). This report is NOT based on representative sampling of people who work in (or have worked in) prostitution, or even of youth who are/have been in prostitution, as the report itself states.
The “average age” is also based on the minors who were studied, which means that no adults in prostitution, including those who started working in prostitution after the age of 18, were included. This is like studying the average age of death for those who died as minors: the average age of death would be probably something around 13, but it has no bearing whatsoever on the average life expectancy of the general population. Similarly, the “average age of entry” among minors has no bearing on the actual average age of entry for all people who are or have been in prostitution.
Further, because the study only surveys minors, those who entered prostitution early have much greater chance of being studied than those who started at 16 or 17. That is, someone who started at 13 has five years to be studied by the researchers (because that person can be 13, 14, 15, 16, or 17 at the time of the study), while those who started at 17 only has one year. As a result, the number of people who entered at 13 are inflated by the factor of five compared to the number of people who entered at 17.
But even without knowing this, common sense should tell you that the average age of entry cannot possibly be 13. Let’s consider two possibilities: 1) the distribution of the age of entry is normally distributed (bell curve), or 2) it isn’t normally distributed. If the age of entry is normally distributed, that would mean that there are equal number of 8 year olds entering prostitution as there are 18 year olds–which you know isn’t true (if it were, we’d see much more media coverage about 8 year olds being prostituted). If the distribution isn’t normal, it would likely mean that there are many times more 11-13 year olds entering prostitution compared to 16 and up (to compensate for the fact there are very few pre-teens entering prostitution)–which once again cannot be true.
The only conclusion that is consistent with logics and common sense is that the average age of entry isn’t 13, but is closer to 18 or older. That doesn’t diminish the fact that some 13 and 14 year olds are being recruited into prostitution, and we should do something about it. But we need to keep our conversations based on reality and reason, rather than falsehood and panic.