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Some of you pinged are doubters about the accuracy of numbers reported in the ABC article, and some of you aren't. In an effort to find out more about it, I took a peek at the link from Solson. I found it interesting.

According to a study by the University of Pennsylvania, a child is defined as any male or female under the age of 18, and with that, they have detailed there are approximately 300,000 youth currently at risk of becoming victims of commercial and sexual exploitation. Other organizations have estimated this number is as high as 800,000.

We do not currently have a definitive number for the serious problem of child prostitution itself, although judges, police, and outreach workers report both the increase in the numbers and a decrease in the ages of the children involved. Unfortunately, we know of no studies to date that specifically and primarily address juvenile prostitution. Accurately quantifying the existing problem of victimized children (as opposed to “at risk”) is difficult for a variety of reasons. For example, in the case of children exploited through prostitution, many of the prostituted youth are charged with some other offenses such as substance abuse; thus data that relies on crime reports masks the true prevalence of the problem.

According to the 2002 National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Throwaway Children (NISMART II), 1.6 million children are estimated to run away from home each year, and it is estimated that approximately 40,000 of those children will have some type of involvement in or brush with sexual trafficking. Many of these victims are abandoned or neglected children who are usually not reported as missing to law enforcement or are runaways from their homes or the foster care system. Also, when arrested, many juvenile prostitutes have fraudulent identification and social security cards and are reluctant to help authorities determine their true age and identity. In addition, sexual trafficking, particularly of children, continues to move even further underground. With the increasing use of pagers, cell phones, and the Internet, victims are even less visible today than they were in the past.

So, in my estimation, the idea that there might be 100,000 children who are trafficked in this way in 2005-2006 numbers could be reasonable. Even if the numbers aren't as high as 100,000, it is a deplorable situation, and one that we must guard against.