® (NCMEC) is working to bring sexual exploitation to the forefront; raise awareness about this issue; and help combat its negative, long-term effects. NCMEC wants to help families and communities support the courageous child victims who come forward so they may begin healing. And NCMEC wants to make more people aware of the problem so other children don’t have to suffer in silence.

NCMEC wants people to know that the sexual exploitation of a child has multiple victims and the effects may extend like tentacles into the community. Often people feel powerless to fight its insidious nature because the problem seems too huge and overwhelming. Or people really don’t want to confront the issue of who the perpetrator might be. People don’t want to believe it could be a person in a position of trust or responsibility living in their own neighborhoods.

But there are steps that need to be taken. When taken they would lead to a reduction in the incidence of sexual exploitation, an improvement in how we protect our children from this scourge, and caring and support for those children who have suffered at the hands of these offenders. It’s all about empowerment and giving children, parents and guardians, and communities the strength to overcome what they have lost, so they may

live healthy and productive lives.

Listen to your children. Pay attention if they tell you they don’t want to be with someone or go somewhere.

Take the time to talk to your children. Encourage open communication and learn how to be an active listener.

Notice when someone shows one or all of your children a great deal of attention or begins giving them gifts.

Teach your children they have the right to say NO to any touch or actions by others that makes them feel scared, uncomfortable, or confused. Teach them to immediately tell you if this happens. Reassure them you’re there to help and it is okay to tell you anything.

Be sensitive to any changes in your children’s behavior or attitude.

Look and listen to small cues and clues that something may be troubling your children because children are not always comfortable disclosing disturbing events or feelings.

If your children do confide problems to you, strive to remain calm, noncritical, and nonjudgmental. Listen compassionately to their concern, and work with them to get the help they need to resolve the problem.

Be sure to screen babysitters and caregivers. Many states now have a public registry allowing parents and guardians to check out individuals for prior criminal records and sex offenses. Check references with other families who have used the caregiver or babysitter. Once you have chosen the caregiver, drop in unexpectedly to see how your children are doing. Ask your children how the experience with the caregiver was, and carefully listen to the response.

Provide oversight and supervision of your children’s computer use. Know who they’re communicating with online and where they may have access to computers. Establish rules and guidelines for computer use for your children.

Be involved in your children’s activities. As an active participant, you’ll have a better opportunity to observe how the adults in charge interact with your children.

Work with your children’s school to institute sound child-safety programs as part of their curriculum.

Practice basic safety skills with your children and discuss their safety openly and honestly. There is no substitute for your attention and supervision. Being available and taking time to really know and listen to your children helps build feelings of safety and security.

What Schools May Do

Make sure teachers, volunteers, and anyone else with access to children is properly screened and trained.

Implement and enforce a policy for reporting child sexual exploitation and handling disclosures from children.

Establish protocols and screening for school computer use. Provide training for students and teachers regarding the acceptable use of computers.

Choose or develop child-safety programs for the school that are based on accepted educational theories; are appropriate for the child’s age and levels of education and development; are designed to offer conceptsthat will help children build self-confidence in order to better handle and protect themselves in all types of situations, use multiple program components repeated several years in a row, and use qualified presenters who include role-playing, behavioral rehearsal, feedback, and active participation in presentations.

Assess your environmental structure and take every possible step to make it safer for children. Make certain children are properly supervised both in the classroom and around the campus.

Make certain campus security is in place so all visitors are screened through the office and unusualincidents/visitors are handled.

Provide programs and roles for parents and guardians to make them part of their children’s safety and security at school and while going to and from school.

Notify the public of the sex-offender registry and community-notification requirements. Schedule town meetings and community seminars to raise awareness about these policies and issues.

Support local law-enforcement efforts to establish neighborhood crime-watch programs. Report suspicious persons/activities to local law enforcement.

Support aggressive prosecution of offenders who victimize children within local communities and have an action plan and protocol in place to alert the community and assuage their fears when a high-profile arrest is made.

Mobilize community groups and child-serving organizations to help make your community more “child safe.” Determine if available services and programs are adequate to address the needs ofyour community.

Assess local law-enforcement technology resources, and advocate for systems and other technology available to quickly disseminate information about abducted and missing children. Such systems include

the

Lost Child Alert Technology Resource (LOCATERTM) that provides law enforcement, free-ofcharge,

the tools and technology needed to rapidly disseminate images of and information about missing

America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency

Advocate for meaningful legislative change with elected officials. It is only through unified and diligent preparation and persistent prevention efforts that the sexual exploitationof children may be effectively addressed. For information regarding NCMEC’s resources to help prevent the sexual exploitation of children, visit www.cybertipline.com

 or call 1-800-843-5678.

Know the Rules…General Tips for Parents and Guardians to Help Keep Their Children Safer, KIDS AND COMPANY: TOGETHER FOR SAFETY, and Guidelines for Programs to Reduce Child Victimization:

A Resource for Communities When Choosing a Program to Teach Personal Safety to Children.

® and CyberTipline® are registered service marks of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Copyright © 2003 National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. All rights reserved.

This article is reprinted and adapted from the Spring 2003 issue of

The Front Line published by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. All rights reserved.

In June 2003, the Federal Bureau of Investigation in conjunction with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the U.S. Department of Justice, Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section launched the Innocence Lost National Initiative (ILNI). Their combined efforts were aimed at addressing the growing problem of domestic child sex slavery in the form of child prostitution in the United States.

In the five years since its inception, the Initiative has resulted in the development of 24 dedicated task forces and working groups throughout the US involving federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies working in tandem with U.S. Attorney's Offices. To date, these groups have worked successfully to rescue over 400 children.

NCMEC acts as a clearinghouse for intelligence obtained from the public about children being exploited through prostitution. Since the inception of the Innocence Lost Initiative in June 2003, the CyberTipline has received 5,127 tips of child exploitation through prostitution. The number of CyberTipline reports of known missing children involved in prostitution is 944. During that same time period, NCMEC has intaked 41,978 endangered runaway cases. Case data shows that many of these children can be at great risk of being lured or forced into child prostitution.

NCMEC has trained over 950 law enforcement members on child victims of prostitution through specialized training courses, developed and conducted in partnership with the FBI. The program has trained multi-disciplinary teams, with membership drawn from state, local, and federal law-enforcement agencies and local social-service providers from cities all over the country. These teams have been trained in a multi-disciplinary approach to address the problem of child prostitution, of which prosecution and victim assistance share equal parts.

Success Stories

Preventing Child Sexual Exploitation - (English)

Preventing Child Sexual Exploitation - (Spanish)

Additional Information: Prostitution of Children

Download Campaign Posters:

If the above links dont work please click on the link below:

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/CampaignServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=3721

Unsuspecting pro-life cultures are regularly assaulted by the “logic” of the international abortion promoters who push their anti-life agenda into every culture that will cave in to the pressure. Their main argument goes roughly like this: “When abortion is not legal, women have abortions anyway but in unsafe conditions and back-alley clinics with untrained people who injure and kill them. All this death and injury is totally unnecessary and we could just solve the problem overnight by legalizing abortion to make it safe and keep all these poor women from dying.” That’s the main argument which, in one form or another, is repeated ad nauseam by the abortion lobby to sympathetic healthcare providers, social workers, government leaders and the media. It can be an effective argument for legalized abortion because people are generally more willing to sacrifice the rights of the unseen child for the immediate perceived needs of the suffering woman. However, that argument is a ruse. Abortion doesn’t work the way they say it does. In reality, legalized abortion, besides killing babies, creates a climate of disrespect for women’s health that leads to a greater number of maternal deaths. Let’s take another look at the most fascinating and heroic case study in the abortion wars that our modern age has seen: Nicaragua. That marvelous little pro-life country in Central America is a good example of what happens when a country chooses a culture of life. Remember that Nicaragua made abortion completely illegal in 2006 and then reaffirmed that prohibition in 2007. The overall positive results for Nicaraguan women have been just amazing. The abortion promoters screamed that making abortion illegal would cause women to die in droves because of more back-alley abortions, but that didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite is true—fewer women are dying now! A recent publication by Nicaragua’s Ministry of Health noted that the overall maternal mortality rate decreased by 58% in the year that abortion has been made totally illegal. There were 21 maternal deaths for 2007 compared to 50 maternal deaths the year before. This is a stunning reversal! The lie that women will die from back-alley, “unsafe,” abortions is nothing but a scare tactic to coerce pro-life cultures into compliance with abortion. The truth is that abortion-free cultures have a greater respect for women and babies and are not subject to that degrading pall of killing that lies over the medical profession. In the case of Nicaragua, their rejection of abortion in 2006/2007 coincided—not surprisingly—with a greater provision of basic pre-natal services for pregnant women and accompaniment in childbirth which is what led to the surprising turn-around in the maternal death rate. Even aside from legal protection of babies, pro-life cultures just protect women better, it’s that simple. We don’t have to listen to the liars who tell us that legalized abortion is “safe.” Women are much safer in countries where abortion is not legal. Abortion enthusiasts were never able to use the maternal death argument in abortion-free Ireland which has the lowest rate of maternal deaths in the world. They are also confounded by pro-life cultures like Poland that restricted abortion in 1993 and has seen a phenomenal increase in maternal wellbeing ever since. The abortion promoters tell us that certain abortions are unsafe. They’re half right. Actually, all abortions are unsafe. The numbers don’t lie.		SL Links   About the Author SL Archives Donate Tell Us About Yourself   SL Action Items   St. Michael Prayer Campaign to End Abortion
Sincerely Yours in Christ, Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, President, Human Life International http://www.hli.org/sl_2008-06-06.html

Copyright 2008 - Human Life International
Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.

Parents Agree: Abstinence education is the best health message for teens. A nationwide Zogby poll conducted in 2007 showed that parents prefer abstinence education 2 to 1 over comprehensive sex education. Among other findings from the poll:

• 9 out of 10 parents agree that being sexually abstinent is best for their child’s health and future.
• 8 in 10 parents support public schools promoting abstinence vs. encouraging contraceptive use.
• 2 out of 3 parents think the importance of the “wait to have sex” message ends up being lost when programs demonstrate and encourage the use of contraception.

Abstinence education works! Abstinence education has received WIDESPREAD federal funding for ONLY ABOUT 10 YEARS, YET, in that short time, numerous peer-reviewed studies have revealed that abstinence programs are effective in:

• Delaying the onset of sexual behavior
• Reversing risky behavior in teens who were previously sexually active
• Reducing teen pregnancy rates
• Decreasing the number of partners in sexually active teens

Current federal funding for abstinence education is nearly $170 million, but the results are a cost-savings to taxpayers! When teen birth rates are reduced, taxpayers save $6 for every $1 spent.

Defining Abstinence Education

Abstinence education empowers teens to avoid risk by making good health decisions, regardless of their sexual history. Abstinence means to voluntarily refrain from sexual activity including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse. Abstinence education, as funded by Congress, is decidedly more inclusive than “just say no”. The term, “abstinence only” is often used by opponents to create the false perception that abstinence education is a narrow and unrealistic approach. Abstinence education is in fact broader and more holistic than other approaches and focuses on the real-life struggles that teens face as they navigate through the difficult adolescent years.

Abstinence education realizes that “having sex” can potentially affect a lot more than the sex organs of teens, but as research shows, can also have emotional, psychological, social, economic and educational consequences. That’s why topics frequently discussed in an abstinence education class include:

• Identifying healthy relationships
• Avoiding or getting out of dangerous, unhealthy, or abusive relationships
• Developing skills to make good decisions
• Setting goals for the future and taking realistic steps to reach them
• Understanding and avoiding STDs
• Information about contraceptives and their effectiveness against pregnancy and STDs
• Practical ways to avoid inappropriate sexual advances
• Why abstinence until marriage is optimal

So, within an abstinence education program, teens receive all the information they need in order to make healthy choices. That’s a lot of information and skills packed into an abstinence curriculum! And all of these topics are taught within the context of why abstinence is the best choice. There’s nothing “only” about the abstinence approach!

What is Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE)?

There are vast differences between abstinence education and CSE. The major distinction is how each approach regards teens. Abstinence education believes teens can and increasingly do, avoid sex, so the discussion empowers them to make the healthiest sexual decision – which is to abstain. By contrast, CSE assumes that teens don’t have the ability to avoid sexual experimentation, so most of their time is spent talking about sex and the use of condoms and other forms of contraception. Comprehensive Sex Education assumes that teens will engage in high risk sexual behavior and are content to merely reduce the risk of that behavior.

A review of CSE curricula show that, on average, only about 5% of their time is devoted to the abstinence message, with the definition of abstinence usually subjectively defined by the student. One popular "abstinence plus" text promoted by comprehensive sex ed providers, asks students to brainstorm "what sexual behaviors a person could engage in and still be 'abstinent'" and suggested activities such as "cuddling with no clothes on", "masturbating with a partner", "rubbing bodies together".

Students are sent nondirective and confusing definitions for abstinence that are filled with risk and predictably, the discussion quickly moves to “the endless possibilities of outercourse” and “making the transition from sexual abstinence.” Alarmingly, CSE curricula present abstinence and condom use as equally “safe” options, promoting dangerous and medically inaccurate information to teens. A 2007 report by the U.S.Department of Health and Human Services (HH found that many highly recommended “comprehensive” curricula devote little time to teaching the merits of abstaining from sex but spend an overwhelming amount of teaching time topics such as condom demonstration and sexual game play as methods of "safe" sex. The study revealed startling components of the "comprehensive" curricula that taught teens as young as 13 lessons that include:

• Advocating showering together as a no-risk activity
• Promoting methods for sexual stimulation
• Conducting role-plays on how to help a partner maintain an erection
• Describing how to eroticize condom use with a partner
• Suggesting teens wear "shades" or disguises when shopping for condoms so parents and adults won't recognize them

Abstinence Under Attack

Organized efforts are underway in every state to replace abstinence education with comprehensive sex education. Parents are being misled by about the true content of comprehensive sex education programs being taught in their children’s classrooms. Expose the truth, your child’s health and future is at stake.

LifeNews.com Note: Roeten is a very conservative Catholic who likes the facts over readily displayed emotions. He is an editorial columnist who has frequently been published in numerous Internet and newspaper forums.

It’s been discovered. Nobody thought having “safe sex” was possible in every case. Each year 2.6 million teenagers become sexually active—a rate of 7000/day. With high school, nearly half report having engaged in sexual activity and 1/3 are currently active (Kim/Rector//Heritage Foundation).

As it turns out, teen sexual activity is extremely costly for teens and for society as a whole. From 1985-1990 alone, the federal government spent $120 billion on teenage childbearing. Teens who engage in sexual activity risk all kinds of costly and detrimental outcomes not limited to STD infections, emotional and psychological harm, lower educational attainment, and unmarried childbearing. All of these have direct impact on Medicare, Medicaid, government spending----and the budget.

It is known that STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) infect -- about 12 million Americans per year, with 65,000 plagued with an incurable form (CDC). STDs are a direct cause of infertility in both men and women .

Nearly half of all pregnancies as well as 1 million teen pregnancies (95%) are unintended (CDC), and there are approximately 40,000 new HIV infections per year. An estimated 1.3 million babies die every year through abortion, and 84% of all US abortions are performed on unmarried women (US Dept of Commerce; GPO/1998). Teens who have babies out of wedlock are more likely to end up at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. All of these numbers have huge economic implications for the country.

But society has found something that works 100% of the time. They found something on which you can completely depend---much better than condoms which may work part of the time. And that’s if you use them right.

The answer is easy, even though many don’t want to hear it--- “abstinence until marriage”. It breaks the unwritten rule of sex on demand. It clearly illuminates the slavery to our desires so many of us face. And it emblazons the oft repeated saying, “Why buy the cow, if the milk is free?”

Self-control is like an immune system. People who abhor sexual-control think they are breaking free, but in reality are breaking down. Control yourself and you will not be repressed—you will be free.

Our children are not animals incapable of controlling themselves and “will do it anyway”. Yet “comprehensive” sex-ed teaches them that they're just that.

But recently, a new study by the research firm Mathematica found that in the five programs that they studied, abstinence-instructed kids showed no statistical change in sexual behavior.

But what was actually learned was this study looked at only five programs out of more than 900 in place. It was also determined this program targeted children 9 to 11 who were not evaluated until four years later. Abstinence Education: Assessing the Evidence (Kim/ Rector) found 16 of the 21 studies completed so far reported positive results, while 5 studies did not report any significant positive results.

Zogby (5/8/07) found that 83% of parents think it is important for their child to wait until marriage to have sex. The Journal of Adolescent and Family Health concluded that a 66% decrease in teen pregnancy was due to teens choosing abstinence. The CDC showed a 53% decrease. But abstinence programs federally funded over the last 11 years still have many critics.

But several dozen Congressional abortion advocates have signed a letter to the House Appropriations Committee asking to cut all funds for abstinence education (Ertelt/LifeNews). According to the CDC, there has been a 13% decrease in the % of teens who have ever had sex between 1991 and 2005. Some 17 states have rejected this funding.

It’s interesting to note that our government has spent $12 on the comprehensive sex-ed/Planned Parenthood approach for every $1 spent on true abstinence projects. PP would love to zero-fund its competitors, especially since abstinent kids don’t spend any time in their clinics.

As parents, our offspring are worth everything. We want to keep them from developing STDs, AIDS, HIV, going through abortions, lower educational development, slavery, you name it. We have “abstinence until marriage” which guarantees freedom from the above. And we know simple abstinence education gives significantly better chances from those pitfalls.

Now what would make a parent shy away from 100% chance of surviving an experience with some of the worst occurrences that exist.
http://www.lifenews.com/nat3919.html

I later learned it was not what my father had done, but what they had done together.  Three abortions had taken their toll on my parents and our family.  Anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, relentless guilt, and shame had damaged their relationship.  There was no peace or joy; only an atmosphere marred with pain and hopelessness.  It was unbearable.

Added to that was the realization that I have four dead siblings that I will never know this side of Heaven.  (One sibling died by miscarriage because of the other three abortions.)  My own feelings towards my parents’ generation for the significant loss of my generation ran high for a long time and had to be sorted out.  I am glad that I am finally over that hurdle.

If my mom and dad had not received healing from all the emotional scars they endured, I am positive that I would be another statistic in the headlines.  We would be a broken home instead of one filled with love, laughter, joy and peace.  Because my parents became whole, our household became whole.