Young people as victims: exploitation, online harms and crossover youth

In October, during one of his counseling sessions with Anita Shah, Devon Hart said something that changed how Bell saw the robbery. An older man in the Lindell towers, about 21, had been giving Devon and two other boys money and vape cartridges for months, and had told them he would pay for phones 'no questions asked'. When Devon fell behind on what he owed him, the man said Devon would have to 'make it up'. Shah, who, like police, is a mandatory reporter of child abuse and neglect under Ohio law, contacted Bell and children services. Desjardins tells the class that this is a common pattern: the young person who offends is often also a young person who has been harmed, and youth officers must be able to see both at once.

Young people are the most victimized age group

Victimization surveys in both countries show that adolescents and young adults are victimized at higher rates than any older group, for violent offenses especially. Much of this victimization is by other young people: assaults at school, robberies of phones and shoes, bullying and harassment, sexual assaults by peers and dating partners. Much of it is never reported to police. Young people may fear retaliation, worry about getting into trouble themselves, distrust police, or not see what happened as a crime. Ben Arsenault almost did not report the robbery; the dog walker called 911. When young victims do come forward, the way officers respond affects whether they will ever do so again.

Desjardins draws on what students learned in the victimology course. Young victims benefit from the same trauma-informed approach as adults: safety first, a calm explanation of what will happen, choice where possible, and no blame. They also need things adults may not: a parent or other trusted adult, if they want one; an explanation pitched to their age; and attention to how the incident affects school, friendships and online life. Nadia Brooks helped Ben's school arrange a different route home for him and checked in with him twice in the months after the robbery.

Duty to report child abuse and neglect

Under Revised Code 2151.421, law enforcement officers, along with teachers, health care workers, social workers and many others, are mandatory reporters: if they know or have reasonable cause to suspect that a child under 18, or a person with a disability under 21, has suffered or faces a threat of abuse or neglect, they must immediately report it to the public children services agency or law enforcement. Failure to report is an offense. Many Ohio counties have child advocacy centers where police, children services, medical and mental health staff work together, so that a child is interviewed once, by trained people, rather than repeatedly. Bell reminds students that a young person in front of them as a suspect may be a child in need of protection, and that the two investigations must be kept separate in the officer's mind even when they involve the same people.

Crossover youth

Researchers use the term crossover youth, or dual-status youth, for young people who are involved with both the child welfare system and the youth justice system. Studies in both countries have found that young people in care are much more likely than others to be charged, detained and placed in custody, and that some of that involvement arises from behavior in group homes, such as damaging property or assaulting staff, that would be handled by parents at home. A call from a group home about a teenager who has smashed a window may be a police matter, but it is also a sign that the placement is not working. Many jurisdictions, including several Ohio counties, have adopted crossover youth practice models that bring child welfare and juvenile justice agencies together to make joint decisions, avoid unnecessary detention and share information appropriately.

Bell gives the class a rule of thumb for calls from group homes and foster homes: before charging, ask what staff would have done if this were a teenager in their own family, and whether the home's own behavior management plan has been tried. Charge when the behavior is serious or someone has been hurt, not because a placement wants a young person removed. And always ask the young person, privately, whether they are safe where they live.

Exploitation by adults

Adults sometimes exploit young people to commit offenses for them, believing that youth will be treated more leniently. The pattern Devon described, with gifts, debts and then pressure to commit crimes to pay them off, is typical of what researchers call criminal exploitation. It is similar to the grooming process used in sexual exploitation. Signs that a young person may be exploited include new possessions or money they cannot explain, relationships with much older people, frequent unexplained absences, multiple phones, sudden changes in friends, and fear of a particular person. Officers should treat exploited young people as victims first, even when they have committed offenses, and focus enforcement on the adults. Ohio law treats adults who involve children in crime seriously, and Ohio's Safe Harbor provisions, enacted in 2012 in House Bill 262, allow a juvenile court to hold a delinquency complaint in abeyance when there is reason to believe a child charged with certain offenses is a victim of human trafficking and the offense relates to that victimization; the court must appoint a guardian ad litem, may order services, and must dismiss the complaint and expunge the records if the child completes the diversion.

Bell's investigation of the man Devon described, assisted by the major crime unit, led to charges against him in November for possessing stolen property and contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of children, an offense under Ohio law, among others. Devon's disclosure did not change his own disposition, which he had already received, but it changed his supervision plan: Shah arranged for Devon to move his counseling to a program for youth involved with older offenders, and Devon's grandmother asked for help moving to a different building. Desjardins tells students that Devon's case is a reminder that the most important question in a youth investigation is sometimes not 'who did this?' but 'who else is involved?'

Online harms

Much of young people's lives happen online, and so do many of the harms that bring them to police attention. Three kinds of cases are especially common in youth work. The first is cyberbullying and harassment: threats, humiliating posts and campaigns against a young person, which may amount to criminal harassment, uttering threats or other offenses when serious. The second is the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, which is an offense in Ohio and most states. The third, and fastest growing, is sextortion: an offender, often an adult posing as a young person and often outside the country, persuades a young person to send an intimate image and then threatens to share it unless the young person pays money or sends more images. The FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children report sharp increases in financial sextortion, which most often targets boys, and some victims have died by suicide.

Officers responding to sextortion should reassure the young person that they are the victim and that they are not in trouble, tell them not to pay or send anything more, preserve the evidence without forwarding the images, help them report the accounts to the platform and to the NCMEC CyberTipline, and connect them with support. Images of young people also raise a specific legal problem. Intimate images of anyone under 18 fall within child sexual abuse material laws, even when a young person took them of themselves. Prosecuting teenagers under child pornography laws for consensually sharing images with each other has been widely criticized, and Ohio's legislature has considered bills to create a separate, lesser response for minors. Port Ardent's policy, like many services', is that consensual image exchange between young people of similar age is dealt with by education, parents and the school, not charges, while coercion, distribution to others, threats and exploitation by adults are investigated as serious offenses.

# Screening a youth file for possible exploitation indicators (invented checklist).
indicators = {"unexplained money or goods": True, "relationship with much older person": True,
              "debt or 'owing' someone": True, "multiple phones": False,
              "frequent unexplained absences": True, "sudden change in friends": False}
present = [k for k, v in indicators.items() if v]
print("indicators present:", len(present), "of", len(indicators))
for k in present:
    print(" -", k)
print("refer for exploitation assessment:", len(present) >= 3)

indicators present: 4 of 6
 - unexplained money or goods
 - relationship with much older person
 - debt or 'owing' someone
 - frequent unexplained absences
refer for exploitation assessment: True

A checklist like this is not a diagnosis. It is a prompt to ask more questions and to involve people with specialist training. Bell says that, looking back, three of the indicators for Devon were in the file in May, and no one connected them.

Missing and runaway young people

Reports of missing young people are among the most common calls youth officers handle, and most involve teenagers who have run away from home or a care placement and return within a day or two. It is tempting to treat these as routine. Bell warns against that. Young people who run away repeatedly are at much higher risk of sexual and criminal exploitation, substance use and violence, and a pattern of running is one of the strongest warning signs that something is wrong at home, in a placement or in the young person's relationships. Running away is a status offense in Ohio, but the JJDPA restricts detaining status offenders, and detention is not a safe place for a child who runs. Good practice includes taking every report seriously, recording the circumstances, speaking with the young person privately when they are found, in a return interview, about where they went, who they were with and why they left, and passing concerns to the child protection agency or an exploitation specialist. A return interview is often the moment a young person first discloses what is happening to them, and an officer who treats the conversation as paperwork may miss it.