Exploited College Girls: Unveiling the Statistics and Complex Realities
The issue of exploitation among college-aged women is multifaceted, encompassing various forms of abuse, transactional relationships, and online victimization. This article aims to shed light on the statistics surrounding these issues and explore the underlying factors that contribute to the exploitation of college girls.
Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse
Domestic (or intimate partner) violence is a pattern of behavior in which one person seeks to isolate, dominate, and control the other through psychological, sexual, and/or physical abuse. According to analysis of the 2011 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), nearly one in three women (31.5 percent) experiences physical violence by an intimate partner at some point in her lifetime. A smaller, but still substantial, share experience partner stalking (9.2 percent), rape (8.8 percent), or other sexual violence by an intimate partner (15.8 percent). In addition, nearly half of all women experience, at some point in their lifetimes, psychological aggression from an intimate partner. Many victims experience more than one of these forms of harm. Often, perpetrators combine attempts to subjugate and control victims with physical and sexual violence, creating a condition of “entrapment” that undermines victims’ physical and psychological integrity. Nearly four in ten female victims interviewed for the 2010 NISVS reported having experienced more than one form of partner violence. Approximately 14 percent said they experienced physical violence and stalking; nine percent reported experiencing rape and other forms of physical violence by an intimate partner; nearly 13 percent said they experienced rape, other physical violence, and stalking; and a very small percentage said they experienced both rape and stalking by an intimate partner.
The prevalence of intimate partner violence and abuse varies across the largest racial and ethnic groups. Nationally, it is estimated that more than half of Native American and multiracial women, more than four in ten black women, three in ten white and Hispanic women, and three in twenty Asian/Pacific Islander women have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner. Sexual violence within intimate partner relationships also affects a disturbingly large share of the population. It is estimated that about 11 percent of women who identify with two or more races, 10 percent of white women, 9 percent of black women, and 6 percent of Hispanic women have experienced rape by an intimate partner. A larger proportion-27 percent of multiracial women, 17 percent of black and white women, and 10 percent of Hispanic women-have experienced sexual violence other than rape by an intimate partner. Other research indicates that Native American women experience particularly high rates of sexual violence within intimate partner relationships. Nearly four in ten (38 percent) Native American women who have experienced rape or sexual assault were victimized by an intimate partner, compared with about one in four white women and African American women (24 and 23 percent, respectively) and one in five (20 percent) Asian American women.
Violence and abuse can affect women of all ages, including in the later stages of life. One study analyzing data from the National Crime Victimization Survey-which focuses on violent crime, not including economic domination or psychological abuse-found that the rate for IPV victimization among older women (aged 50 and older) in the United States is 1.3 per 1,000; while this rate is much lower than the victimization rate for younger women (9.7 per 1,000 women aged 18-24, 12.1 per 1,000 women aged 25-34, and 9.6 per 1,000 women aged 35-49, the prevalence of elder IPV may be higher than the social science literature reports. In addition, older women are also at risk for other forms of family violence, including abuse from adult children and from other institutional and noninstitutional caregivers. One statewide study found that unlike younger women, older women were more likely to be abused by nonintimate family members than intimate partners. Older women who experience intimate partner or family violence and abuse may face challenges in accessing services and extricating themselves from abusive situations. Adult protective services in all states serve older women who are abused, yet these services focus primarily on frail elderly victims, and most abuse cases do not come to their attention. Shelters and services for abused women are also generally set up to address the needs of younger women with children. In addition, older women-who may have been out of the workforce for some time or lack the skills to obtain a living-wage job-may find that leaving their abusive spouse could leave them without financial security and health insurance, at a time when they most need it.
Abuse has many effects on women’s reproductive health. The tactics employed by abusers may include not only sexual assault or rape but also reproductive or sexual coercion, including behaviors such as demanding unprotected sex, sabotaging a partner’s birth control, impregnating a partner who does not want to become pregnant, and injuring a partner in a way that can lead to miscarriage. Analysis of the 2010 NISVS indicates that about nine percent of female survey respondents have had an intimate partner who tried to get them pregnant or stop them from using birth control. Domestic and sexual violence also puts women and girls at higher risk of sexually transmitted infections and HIV. One study analyzing data from ninth through twelfth grade girls participating in the Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Surveys found that among girls who have been diagnosed with HIV or another sexually transmitted infection, more than half reported having experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence. Domestic violence is sometimes fatal: in 2012, 924 women in the United States were killed by their spouse or by an intimate partner.
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Sexual Assault and Rape
Sexual violence and rape are alarmingly common and pose a serious threat to women’s health and well-being. One study analyzing data from the 2011 NISVS found that in the United States, 19.3 percent of women are raped at some time in their lives, and 43.9 percent experience sexual violence other than rape. Often, the perpetrator is someone the victim knows: almost half of the female rape victims surveyed (46.7 percent) said they had at least one perpetrator who was an acquaintance, and a similar proportion (45.4 percent) said they had least one perpetrator who was an intimate partner. Nearly eight in ten female rape victims were first raped before age 25, and approximately 40 percent were raped before age 18. Victimization at a young age is associated with revictimization later in life. One report analyzing the 2010 NISVS found that more than one-third of women who were raped as minors were also raped as adults, compared with 14 percent of women who had no history of victimization prior to adulthood.
Sextortion
Sextortion - threatening to expose sexual images of someone if they don’t yield to demands- has been a source of harm to youth for some time. In the last several years, concerns about a unique type of sextortion - financial sextortion - have been on the rise. Reports of financial sextortion revolve around demands for money and predominantly target boys, and young men. In addition, financial sextortion marks the emergence of new organized offenders leveraging technology to target and extort minors at scale. In partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), research examines more than 15 million reports made to the CyberTipline from 2020 to 2023 to pinpoint cases of sextortion and examine the evolving scale and nature of financially motivated sextortion. Importantly, while sextortion can affect all ages, this report focuses explicitly on the sextortion of minors.
Between 3.5 and 5% of people are believed to have experienced sextortion before reaching adulthood, with girls historically more likely than boys to be impacted. Previous surveys have found demands most often were sexual or relational, including but not limited to demands for additional intimate imagery, engaging in sexual acts, or returning or staying in a romantic relationship. Sextortion tied to financial demands was limited, reported in less than 10% of cases.
The overall trend in NCMEC reports shows a large wave of sextortion cases since the beginning of 2022; of the 144 million reports made to NCMEC that year, the hotline received 80,524 reports of online enticement (the reporting category inclusive of sextortion cases), reflecting an 82% increase over the year prior. Although the numbers do not, on their face, differentiate among types of sextortion, analysis of report details demonstrates this increase is driven mainly by reports involving financial sextortion. NCMEC received an average of 812 sextortion reports per week. More than two-thirds of these reports appear to be financially motivated. Unlike historical sextortion reports, this surge of cases targets new groups, with 90% of victims detected in NCMEC reports being male, aged 14 to 17. In addition, unlike historical cases where roughly half of the victims knew their abuser from their offline community, the offenders behind these cases appear to be concentrated internationally, with 47% of reports showing ties to Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire. Additional countries, though in lower volumes, also appear in reports, including the United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, and India.
Explicit discussion of impacts on the victim was available in only 9% of the cases studied. Accounts among these cases show a range of experiences, including continued harassment after paying, image distribution, and mental health consequences, including depression, anxiety, and thoughts of self-harm. Roughly one in three (38%) reports with impact information mentioned making payments. That being said, payments often did not stop the harassment, and 27% of victims who mentioned paying their perpetrator discussed ongoing demands experienced after their first payment. Often, the language used during threats focused on the release of images to highly public forums to increase the risk of viral spread and exposure. However, in accounts of those who reported their images were, in fact, leaked, distribution channels tended to be more narrowly focused on their immediate friends and family. When mental and emotional impacts on victims were reported, content was split into two categories: a more severe category of discussions of suicidal ideation and/or self-harm and a more general category of “other victim concerns” and mental stresses. Among reports that include details on victim impact, 1 in 6 discuss thoughts of suicide or self-harm.
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Although, historically, sextortion has often involved more time developing a relationship with the victim and more subtle forms of coercion and manipulation (at least in the earlier phases of the abuse), the tactics seen in reports of financial sextortion to NCMEC often featured aggressive, rapid exchanges highlighting potential life-altering outcomes if victims fail to pay. In the majority of cases, victims appeared to share a picture in response to images initially sent by the perpetrator, who often appeared to be impersonating another young person (usually an attractive, similarly-aged child). This approach using “catfishing” could serve to lower the victim’s inhibitions to engage while helping to evade platform policies limiting interaction between adult and minor profiles. Of the 31% of cases where specific methods are indicated for getting imagery from the child, 70% of reports had signs of reciprocating images in response to the perpetrator sharing imagery. However, threats were not always reliant on a victim sharing imagery. In 11% of reports with information about how images were acquired, victims report that they did not send sexual imagery of themselves but were threatened with images that were in some way fake or inauthentic. An additional 6% describe accounts being hacked or images stolen from another account. Beyond the threats to leak images, perpetrators describe outcomes such as the viral spread of their photos and distribution, resulting in them being kicked out of school, losing job opportunities, or facing criminal charges as sex offenders.
Perpetrators seem to employ a range of methods to attempt to make sure that their victims are required to make quick decisions, attempt to pay quickly, and do not have an opportunity to seek help from their caregivers or other sources of support. With countdowns and deadlines, perpetrators would give children fixed periods to encourage payment or to extract a promise of a method and amount of payment. For the second method in which perpetrators demanded constant communication from the child, perpetrators would threaten to expose a child’s imagery if children simply disconnected from the video chat or did not respond in text chat quickly enough.
A wide list of platforms were named in threats of distribution, including some with broad public reach. However, the platforms named explicitly as the location of distribution tended towards more direct network distribution rather than a general public audience. When looking at reports where victims stated that their images were actually leaked, the most common distribution platform mentioned was Instagram. The most common payment methods were CashApp and gift cards, followed by other easy-use payment apps such as PayPal and Venmo.
Child Sexual Exploitation
The volume of online child sexual exploitation continues to rise exponentially. In 2022, NCMEC’s CyberTipline received over 32 million reports containing more than 88 million images/videos and other content concerning child sexual exploitation. In 2023, NCMEC’s CyberTipline received 36.2 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation online. Those reports contained more than 105 million images, videos and other files. They also saw an explosion in reports of online enticement, an increase of more than 300% between 2021 - 2023. Younger and younger children are being targeted “on an industrial scale” by internet groomers. In 2021, there was a three-fold increase in imagery showing 7-10-year-olds who have been targeted and groomed by internet predators. 98% of child sexual abuse material reports involved children under 13 years old, 30% of which involved children under 10 years old, including infants and toddlers.
In 2020, IWF analysts processed 299,600 reports, which include tip offs from members of the public. This is up from 260,400 reports in 2019. This is an increase of 15%. Of these reports, 153,350 were confirmed as containing images and/or videos of children being sexually abused. This compares to 132,700 in 2019 - an increase of 16%. Every report contains between one, and thousands of child sexual abuse images and videos. This equates to millions of images and videos. Of these, 68,000 reports were tagged as including “self-generated” child sexual abuse content - a 77% increase on 2019’s total of 38,400 reports.
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Exchanging Sex for Compensation
Whether and how university students exchange sex for financial compensation in the USA is critically understudied. A total of 4.5% of participants reported exchanging sex for money, alcohol/drugs, or other forms of compensation. Bivariate analysis revealed that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans students (versus cisgender, heterosexual students), students who had more severe childhood trauma, who reported being removed from their family home in childhood, and students who were diagnosed with a mental health disorder before age 18 were more likely to report exchanging sex. In a multivariable model, only emotional neglect and greater alcohol use problems were significantly associated with likelihood of exchanging sex. Sex exchanges can include in-person (prostitution, stripping, exotic dancing) and virtual (“webcamming” or the videoing/photos of stripping, masturbation, sexting) forms.
Factors Contributing to Exploitation
Several factors contribute to the exploitation of college girls, including:
- Childhood Trauma: Students who reported exchanging sex had more severe CTQ total scores, with more severe emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect, scores compared to students who did not report exchanging sex.
- Mental Health Issues: Students who reported exchanging sex had significantly higher hazardous alcohol use scores, and drug use problems, and were more likely to report being diagnosed with a mental health condition prior to age 18.
- Economic Hardship: Students may be engaging in sex work in order to support themselves financially.
Addressing the Issue
To reduce domestic violence-related deaths, many states have established domestic violence fatality review teams (DVFRTs) that bring together professionals from different fields-including health, education, social services, criminal justice, and policy-to review fatal and near fatal domestic violence cases to identify trends and patterns, offer recommendations, and track the implementation of those recommendations. Over the last 20 years, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and other federal and state funding streams have provided funding to enhance the response of police, prosecutors, and the court system to partner abuse. The most recent reauthorization of VAWA, which was signed into law in March 2013, extends provisions for victims in multiple ways (Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013).
Findings suggest that universities could consider addressing exchanging sex in person-centered, supportive sexual health programming, university health services responses, and community spaces that support LGBTQ+ students.
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