In 2010, through the collaborative work of a number of community organizations and local government agencies, the issue of sex trafficking of juveniles came to the forefront of our community’s attention. This is an issue that for many years was understood as a problem that existed in our neighboring, and much larger, metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon. Through the work of Shared Hope, the YWCA and other community partners, we came to recognize that this tragic problem is as much a Clark County issue as it is a Portland issue.

Consistent with addressing many community concerns in Clark County, our history of collaboration among community partners has marked our response to minor sex trafficking. As has been stated by Shared Hope, the misidentification of youth involved in sex trafficking is a key issue that needed to be resolved. Through a year-long collaborative community process of education, planning, training and implementation of a pilot program, Clark County Juvenile Court and its community partners have developed a response to minor sex trafficking that focuses on the recognition of these youth as the victims of crime and the bringing of appropriate community resources to bear that can both protect and serve these youth.  The focus is on identifying victims as early as possible; starting with screening all youth who enter our detention facility; in addition, our staff has ongoing training aimed at identification and engagement of youth identified as victims. Our commitment is to provide a victim centered approach combined with complex trauma knowledge in helping the victims.  Specialized Juvenile court staff continue to be active members of the Clark County Human Trafficking Task Force, which meets monthly to develop collaboration and strategies to combat this abuse of our children.