Abstract
The sexual exploitation of children is not new, but in the last quarter of the twentieth century to the present day, this set of horrific practices has continued to grow. The phenomenon is worldwide and exists as a continuum of sex crimes committed against children: child sexual abuse, child sexual assault, and the exploitation of children for commercial sexual purposes. This phenomenon annually brings suffering to the lives of tens of thousands of children between the ages of 7 and 19 in the North American region, i.e., Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This chapter explores the nature, extent, and severity of sexual exploitation (in all of its forms) for the youth in these three countries. The chapter also presents a series of recommendations designed to reduce the suffering associated with both commercial and non-commercial child sexual exploitation.
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Notes
- 1.
The United States is one of two countries that is not a signatory member state of the United Nations’ Convention of the Rights of Children (1989); the other country is Somalia. Thus, all laws pertaining to the protection of children from sexual exploitation, including commercial sexual exploitation, in the United States are either national or state in origin.
- 2.
Mexico frequently is considered as an exclusively Latin American country. Geographically, and as a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), however, Mexico is included in this study as a member nation of the North American region. Another justification for doing so is the large number of Mexican nationals as well as the nationals of other Latin American nations that use Mexico as a gateway into Canada and the United States.
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Estes, R.J. (2017). The Commercial and Non-commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in North America: Canada, Mexico and the United States. In: Anderson, R. (eds) Alleviating World Suffering. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 67. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51391-1_23
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