Rethinking Risk: Family Functioning and Hidden Patterns in Adolescent Commercial Sexual Exploitation Vulnerability

Background and Purpose: Studies have consistently noted childhood adversity and dysfunctional family relationships as factors that contribute to sexual risking vulnerability. However, little is known about whether and to what extent family factors associated with risky sexual behaviors, such as experiencing commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) or having prior sexually transmitted infections (STIs), differ across risk groups of adolescents. We assessed heterogeneity in family characteristics and childhood adversity within classes of individuals who engaged in risky sexual behaviors, as evidenced by experiences of CSE and/or an STI diagnosis.

Methods: We conducted secondary analysis using Waves I-IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) in-home interviews involving adolescents and parents. The analytic sample was reduced to adolescents (N = 1,018 ) who self-reported having a STI and/or experienced CSE (i.e., exchanged sex for money or drugs) by Wave II. About 50% of adolescents identified as female and approximately 58% identified as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, or American Indian. The mean age was 15.49 years old (SD = 1.34). Measures included family characteristics, child maltreatment, parental monitoring, parent-child interactions, family connections, and covariates (i.e., age, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual identity). Latent class analysis was used to identify the presence of unobserved subgroups of adolescents who had similar item-response patterns.

Findings: A five-class solution was deemed optimal. These classes were labeled: abused/neglected/unloved (12%); disengaged dad/connected mom (16%); disengaged mom/minimally present dad (9%); connected and active parents (35%); and hiding in plain sight class (15%). Adolescents who were CSE-impacted represented 49% of the analytic sample and were observed across all five classes in differing yet not insignificant proportions (i.e., ranging from 37% to 60%). CSE-impacted adolescents were the majority in the disengaged mom/minimally present dad class (60%) and hiding in plain sight class (55%). Adolescents in the disengaged mom/minimally present dad class were the only respondents that had no probability of engaging with mothers in any of the parent-child interaction items related to religious, social, and school activities. They also had low conditional probabilities of engaging in any of the parent-child interaction activities with fathers. Adolescents in the hiding in plain sight class had moderate probabilities of abuse, neglect, and feeling unloved or unwanted, and the highest probabilities of experiencing low parental monitoring, meaning they had more autonomy in decision-making than other classes.

Conclusion and Implications: Findings illustrate significant variability in family patterns and differences marked by demographic and sexual risk characteristics. The presence of CSE-impacted adolescents across latent classes speaks to the hidden nature of this crime and complexities related to CSE risk. Family relationships are often assumed to be protective against CSE. However, these findings point to considerable complexity in understanding how family functioning relates to CSE. CSE-impacted adolescents did not conform to many stereotypes highlighted in public discourse and associations documented in research. Our findings should dispel commonly held misconceptions about human trafficking that often oversimplify the issue in ways that diminish efforts to combat it.