Measurements of Vulnerability to Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: A Systematic Review

Author: McCoy, Mary

Abstract: Domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) is one type of human trafficking, in which a minor American citizen or resident alien is commercially sexually exploited within United States borders. One of the areas of DMST inquiry that may benefit from additional attention are the domains of vulnerability and risk. The risk factors that are often named in the literature as predictive of DMST include youth runaway status, homelessness, involvement with the child welfare system, belonging to a sexual or racial minority group, and a history of child physical or sexual abuse. However, none of these named factors has yet achieved predictive validity in the literature, and the field appears confused about how to position and validate these hypothesized risk factors into a DMST vulnerability measurement tool. Within the present systematic review, a search for relevant publications occurred within numerous databases. A full text review of the articles that met inclusion criteria revealed that none of the empirical articles within the sampling frame utilized a validated measurement of DMST vulnerability. The articles, however, provided insight into the associations between risk factors and DMST victimization. The results of this review fill a sizable gap in the literature by assessing available publications for an operationalization of youth vulnerability to DMST. The review concludes with recommendations for the next steps that are required for the development and implementation of a DMST vulnerability measurement tool with predictive validity.

Keywords: DMST risk, DMST vulnerability, sex trafficking prevention, DMST risk factor scale