Meredith L. Dank: The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

Excerpt

In The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Meredith Dank presents her study of sexually exploited youth. The study was funded by the National Institute of Justice, which was interested in obtaining an estimate of the number of sexually exploited children in New York City. Dank was one of the primary researchers involved in the data collection, and at this point she is one of the few to have analyzed this rich source of quantitative and qualitative data. Aside from providing the most accurate estimate to date of commercially exploited children in New York City, her book offers a fascinating account of how they located and interviewed this extraordinarily hard-to-reach group, as well as a description of the youth, how they got into prostitution, and the different forms of social capital that they possess. …