Child Sex Abuse and Trafficking Through Foster Care Continues in the U.S.
A year ago this month (January 2018) attorney Michael Dolce wrote an opinion piece published in Newsweek titled: WE HAVE SET UP A SYSTEM TO SEX TRAFFIC AMERICAN CHILDREN. Attorney Dolce speaks from experience from representing children abused in foster care. He wrote: "Here’s the ugly truth: most Americans who are victims of sex trafficking come from our nation’s own foster care system. It’s a deeply broken system that leaves thousands vulnerable to pimps as children and grooms them for the illegal sex trade as young adults. We have failed our children by not fixing the systemic failures that have allowed this to happen for decades." A year later, has anything changed? If you monitor news reports about abuses in foster care, apparently not. Even local corporate-sponsored "mainstream" news organizations are now reporting on many of the abuses happening in foster care. Large-scale studies have been done comparing children in foster care with children left in troubled homes, even with parents who have issues like drug-abuse, and the results are clear: children left in troubled homes do far better than children put into the foster care system. So we have identified the problem, but so far no one seems willing to implement the only solution possible: abolish federal government-funded child welfare. The system is broken and beyond repair.