Systems that vulnerable youth interact with — including child protective services and juvenile justice — have a critical opportunity to intervene and protect youth who have experienced sex trafficking from further harm. Yet current approaches often penalize traumatized youth rather than support them. When youth experience chronic maltreatment, the resulting dysregulation and survival-driven coping frequently surfaces as externalizing behaviors: running away, truancy, and substance use, which in turn may create a context of risk that a trafficker can exploit. This presentation discusses findings from analyzing over 140,000 child sex trafficking risk screenings collected by Allies Against Slavery from juvenile justice and child protective services partners in Texas, examining how adverse childhood experiences shape trafficking vulnerability. The number of adverse childhood experiences was significantly associated with trafficking risk across both systems, and this relationship was largely mediated by externalizing behaviors. Specifically, the number of externalizing behaviors a youth exhibited accounted for 76% of the maltreatment-trafficking association among child welfare youth and 45% among juvenile justice youth. These findings offer empirical evidence that behaviors often perceived as delinquent are maladaptive trauma responses that heighten exploitation exposure. The presenters will conclude with policy and practice implications centered on cross-system collaboration and data integration, including how shared screening infrastructure can help juvenile justice and child welfare agencies identify at-risk youth earlier, coordinate responses, and shift from siloed penalization toward unified, trauma-informed intervention.
Sarah Sowell Van Dyk is a doctoral student at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on the intersection of public health and sex trafficking using community-engaged methods. She brings four years of experience in anti-human trafficking and is a former Allies Against Slavery intern, where she supported the organization’s research operations.
Deniz Cansin Rodoplu is a Data Scientist at Allies Against Slavery, where she manages the Lighthouse Screening platform and serves as a data subject matter expert on multiple human trafficking datasets. She brings over three years of experience in the anti–human trafficking field, conducting research and translating complex data into actionable insights.