17-Year-Olds Are Children

At the Love146 staff lunch table today, we were chatting about our adolescent years. “Oh, I was so sure that I was grown! Looking back though, I see I was just a baby!” one of my coworkers said with a sigh. Have you ever had that thought? I know I have.

17-year-olds are children. 

At Love146 we have this fact at the top of mind as we regularly interact with people who are blaming kids for being trafficked. While our brains are still developing until 25, 18 is the number we have landed on in society as a magic number. If you’re under 18 you’re a juvenile – a minor – a kid. We don’t mean that in a demeaning way at all! Childhood is a beautiful thing, even the adolescent years, when kids are pushing back against authority, think they are grown, and question who they are and who they want to become. Both in early childhood and adolescence, there is also vulnerability, which is why we have laws to protect children.

Yet, sometimes (too often) when we talk about youth who are victimized by sex trafficking, people often say things like: Well, that’s not really trafficking. It sounds like they were fine with it. They looked older. They should have known better. Nobody forced them. It was their own bad choice. They should have… They shouldn’t have…

Here’s the truth: children under the age of 18 cannot legally consent to commercial sex. So if something of value is exchanged for a sex act with a minor, that is child sex trafficking. (This is true even if the child is the one receiving something of value from the exchange).

So it doesn’t matter what choices they made.
It doesn’t matter what they were wearing.
It doesn’t matter if they were forced or not.
It doesn’t matter whether or not they fought back.
It doesn’t matter if they are “rude” to the people trying to help.

A seventeen-year-old is still a child. (And let’s remember that an 18-year-old was a child a few days ago…)

We’re working to end child trafficking. Survivors of trafficking deserve compassion, advocacy, and support, without judgment. Love146 is making sure they get the care they need on the long journey of recovery.

Your donation helps make this crucial work possible. Will you give today to stand alongside survivors of child trafficking who are too often unheard, dismissed, disbelieved, or negatively labeled? Every child deserves the chance to grow up safely, to look back one day and realize how young they were—and how loved they were through it all. That’s what your support makes possible at Love146: the space, care, and time each child needs to heal.