As many as 80 percent of the girls in some states' juvenile justice systems have a history of sexual or physical abuse, according to a report released Thursday. The report, a rare examination of their plight, recommends that girls who have been sexually trafficked no longer be arrested on prostitution charges.
The study, "The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls' Story," found that sexual abuse was among the primary predictors of girls' involvement with juvenile justice systems, but that the systems were ill-equipped to identify or treat the problem.
"Our girls, and especially our girls at the margins, are suffering, and what the study shows is how violence is part of their lives and how the response is criminalization," said Malika Saada Saar, the executive director of the Human Rights Project for Girls, a Washington-based organization that conducted the research with the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Ms. Foundation for Women.
The report's authors say that girls involved in criminal behavior receive far less public attention than boys because there are far fewer girls in juvenile detention centers and because crimes committed by girls do not usually involve violence.
Laws in many states allow the police to arrest girls as young as 13 on prostitution charges, even when they are victims of sex trafficking. The report says the policy of incarcerating girls at young ages for prostitution, as well as on suspicion of truancy and running away, leads to profound mistrust of the criminal justice system and, often, more arrests.
"When law enforcement views girls as perpetrators, and when their cases are not dismissed or diverted but sent deeper into the justice system, the cost is twofold: Girls' abusers are shielded from accountability, and the trauma that is the underlying cause of the behavior is not addressed," the report says.
Among the girls referred to the juvenile justice system - who are disproportionately impoverished African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans - 31 percent have been sexually abused, compared with 7 percent of boys in the system, the report says.
But in Oregon, 93 percent of girls in the juvenile justice system have been sexually or physically abused, including 76 percent who have been sexually abused by age 13, according to the report. And in California, 81 percent of girls have experienced such abuse, with 40 percent having been raped or sodomized at least once and 45 percent having been burned or beaten.
The study was conducted by interviewing girls and service providers and by examining state and federal records.
Withelma Ortiz Walker Pettigrew, 25, who spent years in and out of the juvenile justice system and is now in college, said she was sexually abused as a child and repeatedly fled abusive foster homes in the Bay Area. Her mother was addicted to drugs. Her father was in prison.
When she was 10, she said, a man she met while she was coming home from school forced her to begin selling herself for sex to men along the West Coast.
For the next seven years, Ortiz Walker Pettigrew said, she was arrested many times, but no one asked questions about her life. Each time, she said, she had little option but to return to the man who was exploiting her.
"No one came to talk to me to try to find out what was going on with me," she said. "And because no one connected with me at juvenile hall, he was the first person I was going to call for help."
Ortiz Walker Pettigrew said a key moment for her came when she met a female advocate at a youth center who helped her get a photo identification card.
"That was the first time in my life that I realized that I was a human being," she said. "I was thinking: 'Oh my God, I'm not an object. I am a human being.'"
The police, she said, had always made her feel as if "it was my fault, when all I needed was love, patience and empathy - a lot of patience."
Among the report's recommendations are to expand mental health and trauma services for girls in the juvenile system and to prohibit the arrest and prosecution of girls younger than 18 on prostitution charges.
Some states, including Minnesota, have "safe harbor" laws under which juveniles are not prosecuted but are instead treated as victims of sex trafficking. Police agencies in most states, however, continue to arrest underage girls.
The study also found that although the crime rate among girls has not risen in the past two decades, the number of arrests has, particularly in cases of nonviolent misdemeanors, outstanding warrants and running away.
"Our girls are not OK, and it's important that we see that and acknowledge that," Saada Saar said. "They are not even afforded the status of victim of sexual abuse. Instead, they are contemplated as bad girls, as delinquents."