Georgia foster care failures linked to child sex trafficking
Tiffani McLean-Camp, 19, gives personal testimony about her experiences when she entered foster care at age 15 after being physically abused by adoptive parents and sexually abused by a family friend. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Georgia youths in the custody of the state’s foster care system are disproportionately likely to become victims of child sex trafficking, several experts in the subject testified Monday.
Between 2018 and last year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received more than 2,400 reports of children missing from foster care in Georgia involving 1,790 children, many of whom went missing several times throughout the year, Samantha Sahl, supervisor of the national nonprofit’s Child Sex Trafficking Recovery Services Team, told a U.S. Senate subcommittee at a hearing in Atlanta.
Of those missing children, 410 were identified as likely child sex trafficking victims, she said.