Gathering evidence of the sexual exploitation of children and young people: a scoping exercise

The government commissioned this scoping exercise to provide insight into the progress being made to challenge the perpetrators of child sexual exploitation, to report on emerging good practice and to identify the barriers and challenges that local partnerships are facing. The government’s coordinated prostitution strategy2 responded to the evidence submitted in response to the consultation document, Paying the Price3, and recognised that abusers seek out vulnerable children and young people, offering what appears to be affection and friendship. The reality can be that they are manipulated to become so dependent on their abusers that they can be coerced into sexual activity. Research also shows that young people often become sexually exploited as a result of long term social exclusion, poverty and deprivation and that there are complex relationships between sexual exploitation and ‘risk factors’ such as problem drug and alcohol use, poor mental and physical health and previous experiences of abuse.4 It also shows that boys and young men can be affected as well as girls and young women.5 Many local partnerships have built up considerable experience in safeguarding victims and developing strategies to help them to move on from exploitative relationships in safety and security. However, focussing on the offender is also crucial to prevent successive generations from becoming targets of sexual exploitation yet there has been little