Savoia, E.; Liu, A.; Leffler, A.; Nadril Churchill, L.K.; Su, M. Raising Awareness about Sex Trafficking among School Personnel. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health2024, 21, 978.
Savoia, E.; Liu, A.; Leffler, A.; Nadril Churchill, L.K.; Su, M. Raising Awareness about Sex Trafficking among School Personnel. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2024, 21, 978.
Savoia, E.; Liu, A.; Leffler, A.; Nadril Churchill, L.K.; Su, M. Raising Awareness about Sex Trafficking among School Personnel. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health2024, 21, 978.
Savoia, E.; Liu, A.; Leffler, A.; Nadril Churchill, L.K.; Su, M. Raising Awareness about Sex Trafficking among School Personnel. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2024, 21, 978.
Abstract
Background: We aimed to 1) Understand the level of knowledge about sex trafficking of minors among school personnel and the determinants of such knowledge; 2) Test the effectiveness of short educational videos in increasing awareness about sex trafficking of minors among school personnel.
Methods: We employed an online survey to gather responses from 741 teachers and school counselors living in the US. The McNemar test was used to test for differences in awareness before and after exposure to the videos. Logistic regression was used to identify predictors of awareness based on the respondents’ characteristics.
Results: Predictors of knowledge about sex trafficking were years of experience, level of education and being a female. Exposure to the educational videos improved the respondents’ level of awareness about this crime and prompted respondents to seek additional educational material. There is a need to develop training initiatives for school personnel on sex trafficking and response protocols to support victims of this crime.
Conclusion: School personnel have a high level of awareness of risk factors for sexual abuse but less awareness of what constitutes sex trafficking in children. Exposure to short educational videos can increase such awareness.
Keywords
sex trafficking; human trafficking; schools; teachers; adolescents
Subject
Social Sciences, Behavior Sciences
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
