At Covenant House New York (CHNY), we have seen firsthand the difficulty in identifying victims. As New York City’s largest provider of services for homeless youth ages 16-21, we provide comprehensive care including shelter, food, clothing, counseling, medical and legal assistance, case management, job training and education services to over 3,000 youth each year. And since we opened our doors in 1972, we have always known that traffickers and other exploiters seek out vulnerable youth to recruit and victimize. Yet young people do not arrive at the doors of our shelter stating “Help, I have been trafficked.” Instead they say, “Help, I need food and a place to sleep.”

Although we were certain that there were large numbers of trafficking survivors among our clients, we were having difficulty identifying them due to the reluctance of young people to disclose their experience. For this reason, we sought out the assistance of the Applied Developmental Psychology Department at Fordham University to help us develop and scientifically validate a screening tool to better identify trafficking victims among our youth. In addition to developing the tool, we hoped to learn more about the type and amount of trafficking our youth have experienced to better inform both our practice and our advocacy. Using the tool we developed, we surveyed a random sample of 174 youth between 18 and 23 years old.