One Woman’s Commitment to Children Helps Spur National Campaign

For Laura Barnitz, producing a little green booklet on child involvement in commercial sex was what turned her into a crusader against sexual exploitation.

To conduct research for the publication, Ms. Barnitz, program associate at Youth Advocate Program International, went to the streets, where she talked with child prostitutes who were getting by on what they earned on any given night. “It was compelling, and really heartbreaking,” she says.

Today Ms. Barnitz is the unofficial coordinator of the new U.S. Campaign Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. The 25 nonprofit organizations that have banded together for the campaign hope to prevent kids from getting enticed into commercial sex and to improve services for children who want a way out. A public-awareness program and an effort to get more federal funds for housing, counseling, and job training are both part of the coalition’s plan.

The campaign is an extension of the work Ms. Barnitz does day in and day out at her Washington charity, which tries to develop stronger legal protections for youngsters — especially kids in the sex trade, child soldiers, child laborers, and juvenile offenders who are sentenced to die.

Among other measures, the youth-advocate program has fought hard for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by all U.N. members except the United States and Somalia. That statement stipulates a list of basic human rights for children, such as the right to a name and access to health care. It says, among other things, that national governments should do what is necessary to prevent children from engaging in unlawful sexual activity.

The group is also pushing for a related agreement called the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, and Child Pornography. That agreement gives countries a way to endorse strong action against those who use children for illegal commercial sexual activity without being required to ratify the full U.N. convention.

Nancy Nye, Youth Advocate Program International’s director, says that her charity could not have stayed true to its mission of promoting the well-being of children without taking up the issue of commercial sex. “This group of children is one of the most vulnerable, one of the most exploited groups,” she says. “We were drawn to it as well because it is a group of children at risk in almost every country of the world.”

Gathering Allies

It was Ms. Barnitz’s idea to try to get many of the organizations that work on the issue together for the first time at a March meeting in San Francisco that was cosponsored by Sisters Offering Support, a Honolulu group, and the Fund for Nonviolence, a Santa Cruz, Calif., grant maker. And it is largely Ms. Barnitz who is keeping them focused on the campaign, nonprofit leaders say.

“It’s hard because they are far-flung groups, all around the country, which all have other priorities besides a campaign,” says Carol Smolenski, coordinator of the United States branch of an international organization called End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes. She says Ms. Barnitz is “very good at all of the details of moving along a process.”

Finding time to work on the campaign is no small challenge. With only two full-time staff members and half-time administrative help, Ms. Barnitz and Ms. Nye train nonprofit leaders, social workers, foster parents, and young people to be better advocates. They publish quarterly research reports and one or two informational booklets a year and maintain three Internet discussion lists for people interested in the topics that Youth Advocate Program International covers.

Youth Advocate Program International’s biggest foundation supporter is the Fund for Nonviolence, the only financial backer of the campaign so far. Most of the charity’s $300,000 budget comes from the National Youth Advocate Program, which provides services to troubled youngsters in seven states and started the international organization.

Providing Information

Youth Advocate Program International prides itself on arming nonprofit leaders with information that can turn them into champions for better policies. After a talk by Ms. Barnitz in May, Edward M. Farmer, state director of the Illinois Youth Advocate Program, met with staff members of Illinois legislators on Capitol Hill to push for new money for services to help child prostitutes and others.

Mr. Farmer would like to see more counseling and other treatment options for children who have suffered emotional and physical damage in the sex trade, as well as specialized foster homes for that population and group-living arrangements that would reduce the children’s reliance on pimps for basic needs.

“I made it clear that I would be willing to design and run programs for that population if funding were available,” he says.

Mr. Farmer says that while federal legislation was passed in 2000 that provides money to help foreign women and children who were transported to the United States by people who then forced them into commercial sex, there is no comparable legislation for people in the sex industry who grew up in this country.

Sharon Payt, an aide to U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, agrees that it is a good time to introduce new legislation in behalf of child sex workers. Senator Brownback was the leader of the effort to pass the 2000 bill to help foreign women and children.

“It’s a serious proposition because we have already done this on an international scale,” says Ms. Payt. She attended the March conference in San Francisco and says it helped her to “parse out how to approach this issue.”

A month after that conference, Ms. Barnitz and Laura J. Lederer, director of the Protection Project, a Washington group that does research on the commercial-sex industry, met with Mr. Brownback and others on Capitol Hill to lay the groundwork for a federal legislative agenda. The work is still in the preliminary stages; no actual legislation has been written.

Ms. Barnitz plans to travel to Japan in December to represent both the campaign and Youth Advocate Program International at the Second World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children.

The first world congress, held in Sweden in 1996, drew representatives from 125 countries and marked the first time the issue was put on an international agenda.

In Yokohama, Ms. Barnitz will be joined by other members of the campaign. They plan to release a report there on child involvement in commercial sex in the United States, with descriptions of the sex trade in various regions of the country and essays on such topics as boy prostitutes — whom some report are as common as girls, although their problems can be quite different — and racism in child prostitution. The U.S. government is expected to send a delegation as well.

The nonprofit presence is essential at such a meeting, Ms. Barnitz says, because charities have the most experience working with kids in the sex industry and know firsthand why many of them get involved, how tough it is for them to survive, and what a challenge it is to reinvent children’s lives.

“They know what the realities are for children on the streets and in other aspects of this business — the constant and continuous threat of violence, the demeaning and degrading action taken against them,” says Ms. Barnitz. “There’s nothing glamorous about commercial sexual exploitation.”