The currently available data on Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE), prostitution, and trafficking is incomplete and somewhat dated. However, here is a review of some of the key data available at this time.

• Internationally, an estimated two million women and children enter the $20-billion-per-year sex industry per year. An estimated 10-million women and children are ensnared within the system of commercial sexual exploitation. This includes trafficking into prostitution, sex slavery, pornography and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation. (UNICEF, the U.N., and the U.S. Department of Justice.)
  


• A 2001 study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and conducted by Richard Estes and Neil Weiner of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work found that there were "at least" 250,000 U.S. children are victims of sexual exploitation each year (in the study's Working Guide to the Empirical Literature, Estes cites a "conservative" range of between 300,000 and 500,000). Approximately 244,000-325,000 youth are at risk of becoming victims of sexual exploitation, according to the report. Many organizations believe the actual numbers to be higher.
  


• The United Nations Children's Fund has estimated that more than one-hundred-million children are being sexually exploited for commercial purposes worldwide (e.g. prostitution, sex rings, pornography, etc.).
  


• All sources agree that the problem and extent of commercial sexual exploitation of children and adults is increasing.
  


• The DOJ-Estes/Weiner study also indicated that 75-percent of the children highlighted in the research are from working-class and middle-class families. “Child sexual exploitation is the most hidden form of child abuse in the U.S. and North America today. It is the nation’s least recognized epidemic,” say the study’s co-authors.
  


• A 1999 study by the Presbyterian Church Office of the General Assembly, Advocacy Committee for Women's Concerns, found that 90-percent of the prostitutes surveyed came from "church-going" homes or church-based orphanages, 85-percent had been childhood victims of incest by a male family member, and 60-percent were adoptees or had been in long-term foster care.
  


• Multiple studies indicate that the average age of entry into prostitution in the United States is between 13 and 14 years of age, with children being sold and trafficked at even younger ages in impoverished areas throughout the world.
  


• A high percentage of children and adults involved in prostitution or other commercial sexual exploitation were sexually abused between the ages of 3 and 14, predominantly by a family member, an adult associated with the family, or another trusted adult. Many report that their first sexual experience was being raped prior to adolescence.
  


• According to Advocates for Youth and other organizations, sexual abuse of children is vastly underreported, making statistical data very conservative at best. (Advocates for Youth “Child Sexual Abuse: An Overview,”)
  


• According to advocacy organizations and law-enforcement agencies, there is limited data on the number of children – young individuals under the age of 18 – involved in prostitution and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation. (One source: STOP, Police Department of Clark County, Nevada)
  


• In the United States, findings from the National Survey of Adolescents indicate that as of 1995, 1.8 million youths age 12 to 17 had been sexually assaulted. (National Institute of Justice 2003. Youth Victimization: Prevalence and Implications. Washington DC: US Department of Justice.)
  


• Between March 1998 and September 2003 the CyberTipline operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has received a total of 118, 987 reports of child pornography, and 1,890 reported cases of child prostitution. There have been 867 cases of child sex tourism. Also, there were 8,768 reported cases of online enticement. (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Cybertipline Fact Sheet.
  


• A recently published eight-year study indicates that when perpetrators of rape are current or former husbands or boyfriends, the crimes go unreported to the police 77 percent of the time. When the perpetrators are friends or acquaintances, the rapes go unreported 54 percent of the time. (Ibid.)
  


• Adolescents and young adults are at a higher risk of victimization and are more likely to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome after being victimized. (Kilpatrick, Dean and R. Aciemo. "Mental Health Needs of Crime Victims: Epidemiology and Outcomes." Journal of Traumatic Stress, 2003,:1612.)
  


• Victims of rape are 13.4 times more likely to develop two or more alcohol-related problems and 26 times more likely to have two or more serious drug abuse-related problems. (Ibid.)
  


• In general, the data that does exist indicates that prostitutes are more likely to be arrested, prosecuted and convicted than are the men who purchase the services of prostitutes, even though prostitution is a system perpetuated by demand (see next bullet). For example, in 1993, 42-percent of women and just 8-percent of men arrested in Seattle on prostitution-related charges were convicted (Sample sources: Julie Pearl, "The Highest Paying Customers: American Cities and the Cost of Prostitution Control", Hastings Law Journal, Volume 38 (1987), p. 770, and Seattle Women’s Commission, 1995).
  


• Though statistics vary from city to city, general estimates are that prostitution-related arrests are 90-percent prostitutes and only 10-percent those who purchase the services of a prostitute. (Source: Prostitution Education Center, BaySwan)
  


• Men from all social strata purchase prostitutes. In one sting operation by the Kansas City Police Department, a priest, a sheriff’s deputy, a high-school track coach, and a Baptist college executive were among those arrested for purchasing prostitutes. The sting was a collaborative effort that focused on escort services and internet ads. Perhaps tellingly, the priest and the deputy had not been charged at the time of the report, but the executive and the coach had been charged. (“Police tout success of prostitution ring that led to 100 arrests,” The Kansas City Star, June 19, 2003)
  


• Significant percentages of men have purchased sex at some point during their lives. One study indicated that was the case for 95-percent of men in Thailand, and was true for 75-percent of men living in London. (PROMISED, “Facts About Prostitution, and Far Eastern Economic Review, February 13, 1992, p. 29)
  


• Violence is used to enforce the paradigm. Studies of teens and adults involved in prostitution have shown that 79-percent had been beaten by pimps, 79-percent reported being physically assaulted by purchasers or “customers”, and 50-percent report being raped by purchasers.


• So-called pimps, reinforcing dominance through violence, typically demand 50- to 100-percent of the revenues produced by prostitution.

• Founded by Norma Hotaling in 1992 as an organization providing advocacy and offering alternative solutions to the “revolving door” of law enforcement’s typical approach to prostitution and commercial sexual exploitation.
  


• Co-founder with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the San Francisco Police Department of the First Offender Prostitution Program (FOPP), also nicknames “John School”. FOPP is a restorative justice program that takes a multi-pronged approach – offering services to minors involved in prostitution (most of whom are sexually abused as children and trafficked into prostitution at about age 14); early interventions to assist children and adults in leaving prostitution; and an alternative-justice program that allows men who purchase prostitutes to enroll in “John School” rather than go to court.
  


• SAGE also offers a variety of San Francisco-based services to assist teens and adults in transitioning from commercial sexual exploitation and prostitution. Services emphasize a holistic approach, including health, mental health, peer support, life skills, etc.
  


• SAGE also offers a “transition to work” program—many of the SAGE Project’s program staff are survivors of commercial sexual exploitation. This perspective makes SAGE unique among sister organizations and agencies, most of which are operated by law enforcement personnel, academics, or mental-health organizations (though all efforts are most welcomed).
  


• SAGE’s programs, including FOPP, have been replicated by municipalities throughout the United States, as well as internationally.
  


• SAGE’s mission, in addition to continuing its San Francisco-based outreach and service program (which includes FOPP), is to meet the increasing need for public and legislative awareness, policy change, and requests to assist in program replication in other municipalities, states, and countries.