The Safe Harbor for Exploited Children Act will protect the children in the commercial sex trade throughout Calforinia by preventing the state from incarcerating and prosecuting children on prostitution charges. Safe Harbor will require the state to provide a range of specialized services, such as, safe houses, long-term residential options, mental health care, and remedial education programs; as well as adding more provisions into the Safe Harbor Act properly punishing the traffickers.

The victimization of children is one of the most abhorrent acts that could be committed, yet hundreds of thousands of children every year  get sold 10-20 times a day, seven days a week; sold for as little as $40 and most times without any birth control or STD protection.

Human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry. Human trafficking is the act of recruiting, transferring, buying, selling, trading or receiving a person through coercion or other means for the purpose of forced labor, organ harvesting, or sexual exploitation. This is modern day slavery and 10-30 million people fall victim to this $32 billion industry.

Nearly 80% of revenue from human trafficking comes from commercial sex trade. Although this is an international issue, the United States is leading the pack in the commercial sex trade.

The domestic sex trafficking is rampant and the FBI (Federal Beaurea of Investigation) has identified 13 major cities as "hot spots" for child prostitution. Out of the 13 cities, California is a host to three: Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and San Diego.

The age of consent to have sex is 18 years old but children as young as 12 years old are routinely charged and incarcerated for prostitution. The California law needs to decriminalize these children of prostitution and ensure other legal protective measures such as safe houses, long-term residential options, mental health care, and remedial education programs. Only about 1% of these victims ever get rescued.

Only 1 in 100,000 traffickers are ever convicted, and that is because the legislature has made it so easy to find loop holes in the system, making it very difficult to find full justice for the victims. 

Although all states prohibit pimping and pandering, the punishments that are attached to them are unacceptable; the normal imprisonment time for a trafficker is 3-8 years.  The law should to appropriately punish all commercial exploitation of children, without any requirement to prove force, or coercion.  The purchasers of commercial sex acts should also be reprimanded and be registered as sex offenders.

Numbers and statistics are desensitizing and separate everyday people from the problem at hand. Ignoring the problem and ostracizing these defenseless children only perpetuates this modern day holocaust. Give a voice to the voiceless, and protect the children who suffer at the hands of adults.

These children come from different backgrounds, races, and classes. Anyone can be a victim: your mother, sister, friend, co-worker, classmate, anyone!