Elizabeth Payne watched the evening news with disbelief from her home in Fairfax County. Four Fairfax County Public High Schools students were sex trafficked, and targeted via social media in May 2012.  

She could not believe kids in Fairfax County were victims of sex trafficking.

Anyone under the age of 18 who performs a commercial sex act is considered a victim of child sex trafficking, says Second Lieutenant John Brusch from Fairfax County Police. Force, fraud, or coercion needs to be proved for adults.

A few days later, Payne learned of another sex trafficking case. Her brain switched into work mode.

“I am going to be asked: What am I doing for students?” Payne said. Payne oversees Fairfax County Public Schools curriculum on Family Life Education.

“If it is right for students, I am going to find a way,” said Payne.

“Disbelief, shock, followed by curiosity,” is what led Payne to meet with former Lead Detective Woolf, to better understand the situation.

Once Payne determined it was important for students to learn about sex trafficking, she vowed to be part of the solution.

School administrators like Payne, students, parents, and nonprofits are pressuring high schools and colleges in Virginia to do more to combat the growing number of sex trafficking cases targeting students, despite lack of data and federal funding.

Legislation passed in Virginia Assembly in January 2019 states Virginia Department of Education must incorporate human trafficking prevention education into the Family Life Education curriculum across the state.

“If it is right for students, I am going to find a way,” said Payne.

She couldn’t find instruction that reflected how trafficking looked like in her community.

The unfunded mandate puts the onus on public schools in Virginia to create and incorporate appropriate curriculum to combat the growing problem of sex trafficking.

Fairfax County Public Schools is an “anomaly,” as we identified the problem and are taking preventative efforts, said Payne.

Sex trafficking was implemented this year into the curriculum for Loudoun County Public Schools. Natalie Porter, a Family Life Education teacher in the county’s school system, is one of the ten teachers at Loudoun County Public Schools responsible to teach Family Life Education.

Porter teaches sixth to eighth grade at four different schools. “We are spread very thin,” said Porter.

Regulation implemented on July 1, 2018, requires schools to provide training on human trafficking to school counselors, psychologists, social workers, and anyone else the division feels appropriate. Payne and her team are creating an online module.

Porter believes all teachers should be trained on sex trafficking because they see the kids’ everyday.

According to the 2018 report released by the Human Trafficking Institute, “Virginia ranks sixth in the nation for active human trafficking cases.” This validates the need and role education can play, according to Payne.

Large sheets titled, health, community, nutrition, and disease prevention, along with a map adheres to her office wall. Payne, overseas everything from safe routes to school to how sensitive topics should be presented to kids.

Since 2013, an incident of sex trafficking has occurred in each high school in Fairfax County Public Schools, according to Bill Woolf, former detective and executive director of Just Ask Prevention Project.

On the contrary, Brusch said he “challenges” those numbers as they don’t release figures that deal with minors and sex trafficking. Numbers are difficult to report because sex trafficking can be difficult to identify and prove, as it requires cooperation from the victim.

According to Barbara Amaya, an advocate and sex trafficking survivor, victims are brainwashed and don’t tell anyone because they are deceived to believe it is their fault.

Payne worked over a year and half, to add sex trafficking to the curriculum.

Payne had experts speak to the advisory committee consisting of teachers, parents, physicians, students, and school staff, to help them understand the scale of the problem. 

Payne had to first dispel myths around sex trafficking,  have many meetings with the school board, work with the school counselors and social workers, and help with curriculum development. Payne also had to create a plan for when kids reported.

Stories of sex trafficking survivors continued to surface at meetings, validating Payne’s work. Sex trafficking is prevalent in all sorts of communities, regardless of income, socioeconomic status, and race, according to Payne. Traffickers are able to prey on a wide range of vulnerabilities. 

Meetings took place to win over the committee’s support and to incorporate revisions. Community members’ input was collected during the 30-day community review process. The School Board voted in May 2013 and approved the lessons and objectives. Schools hosted mandatory curriculum parent preview nights. Payne attended, since schools didn’t feel as prepared to respond to parents’ questions.

The video, Tricked: Inside the World of Teen Sex Trafficking, was created to help students identify traffickers’ manipulation techniques and how to obtain help.

Payne tackled the difficult topic and collaborated with the police department, counselors, school psychologists, social workers, and advisory committee to create a well-informed curriculum, reflecting the trafficking situation in Fairfax County.

Thanks to Payne, Fairfax County Public Schools added sex trafficking to the curriculum in January 2014 for sixth-grade to 10th  grade and 12th grade, and in 2016 for 11th grade.

She shares advice and the curriculum nationally to other districts and agencies.

Sex trafficking is tied into existing Family Life Education topics like community safety, unhealthy relationships, exploitation, and Internet safety from sixth grade onwards.

Students reported incidents of sex trafficking and cases have been prosecuted, as a result of the instruction.

Ibrahim Idris, 15-year-old ninth grader at Woodson High School, watched the video this year. The video informed him of the situation and was beneficial. “It seemed realistic and relatable as the characters in the video were the same age,” Idris said.  

Initial broadcast registrations for the video include over 4,641 schools representing 3.1 million students. Parents are given access to a portion of the video to learn about the sex trafficking and red flags from experts.

Susan Young, 41, a parent of a sex trafficking survivor, has been petitioning schools to do more to protect students. Young and other community members have petitioned Fairfax County to conduct a prevalence study.

Young’s daughter met her trafficker at a local movie theater, at the age of 15. She was a student at West Springfield High School in Fairfax County.

She was introduced to other gang members at her school. They befriended her; then they gang raped her. She was first sex trafficked on school property. Then they trafficked her daily after school from 2012 to 2013, according to Young.

She reached out to her counselor more than 22 times and teachers, but they neglected to help.

Young later found out her daughter’s boyfriend was a MS-13 gang member who lured girls into sex trafficking.

Her family didn’t get any support from the school or the school system. Due to their work and others, that is changing.

Virginia doesn’t have adequate data collection regarding minor sex trafficking, said Melissa McMenemy, statewide facilitator, Virginia Office of the Attorney General Mark Herring. Funding is not there to collect or create a streamlined way to collect data.

“It just isn’t on the radar of folks in higher education,” Conley said.

The office is also working with the Department of Criminal Justice Services to create training for college and high school teachers and administrators, so they can help identify possible victims.

Abigail Conley, assistant professor counseling and special education at Virginia Commonwealth University, decided to ask questions pertaining to sex trafficking in the school’s climate survey on sexual violence.

In 2017 and 2018, Conley asked, “have you ever been tricked, pressured or forced into working and/or exchanging sex for something else (money, tuition, food, etc.) and felt you could not get out of the situation?”

Three percent of the random sample answered positively in 2017 and 2018.

If you extrapolate 3% students from the random sample, then we are talking about a large group of students, Conley said. VCU has over 33,000 students. There is a lack of published literature regarding data of college students being trafficked.

“It just isn’t on the radar of folks in higher education,” Conley said.

Fay Chelmow, president and founder of Impact Virginia, a nonprofit fighting to prevent and end sex trafficking of children in Virginia, has been working to combat sex trafficking across all sectors.

Chelmow “bets” those who answered affirmatively had a trafficking history that was never addressed in high school or middle school.

Certain jurisdictions have taken the necessary steps to implement proper education and response policies including, Fairfax County and Loudoun County Public Schools. Other jurisdictions have been hesitant to implement similar curriculum because they fear parents will reject it, Woolf said.

The mission of Just Ask Prevention Project is to inoculate communities against the threat of human trafficking. Prevention programs focus on in-school curriculum, youth group activities, and awareness events.

“To me it is a scary thing,”MacMillan said. “How are we supposed to stop it if they don’t know what it is?”

Just Ask creates customized curriculum for the school districts, as many young people are not being taught about human trafficking and schools do not have funding to create curriculum and implement instruction on sex trafficking, said Woolf.

The Just Ask Prevention Project supports clubs in high schools. Cora MacMillan, 16, student at Dominion High School, in Sterling, Virginia, is the president of the Just Ask Prevention Project team advisory board.

Last year, she noticed the FLE teacher didn’t mention human trafficking and inquired. Her teacher had been fighting to teach about human trafficking for years. Just Ask Prevention Project created a curriculum for Loudoun County, which was implemented this school year.

MacMillan found many students in her school had “no clue” what human trafficking was.

“To me it is a scary thing,”MacMillan said. “How are we supposed to stop it if they don’t know what it is?”

Christina Dumas, 45, a mother of four in Northern Virginia, believes it is her responsibility to give kids a “moral upbringing.” Being a teacher is “exhausting,” and now they have to teach them about morals.

“It is my responsibility to educate my child,” she said.

The county should help people who come from abused homes because they are the ones that are more inclined to be taken for sex trafficking due low self esteem and a lack of social awareness, she said.

Fairfax County’s proximity to the District of Columbia, soaring population, and access to highways and airports, makes it a hub for sex trafficking.

The more education kids have around the issue, the more students come forward, Chelmow said. From 2013 to 2018, 223 students came forward in Prince William County who were sexually assaulted, groomed, or victims of trafficking, after learning about sex trafficking in school.

Special Agent Alix Skelton, a member of the Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force at the FBI’s Washington Field Office, noticed sex trafficking is increasing, which could be due to an increase in victimization of child sex trafficking or an increase in enforcement. Sex trafficking cases involving affecting minors include gang activity and runaways.

Traffickers don’t present him or herself as a stranger.

Special Agent Alix Skelton, a member of the Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force at the FBI’s Washington Field Office said, “what I think more often than not, there is some planning and organization involved.”

“When I mean organization, I don’t necessarily mean a gang or organized group, but there is some planning involved, targeting,” said Skelton. “Social media makes targeting of all kids incredibly easy,”  

According to Anna Hansen, director of operations of Northern Virginia Human Trafficking Initiative, the “beast of the internet,” and all online platforms are “breeding grounds” for human trafficking. They target people who listen to certain type of music, watch certain movies, or post photos of them alone. 

Gang related trafficking is surpassing drug trafficking. It is more profitable for gangs to sell a person than a drug. Without education, the traffickers would “win” and sex trafficking would increase, said Payne.  “We have a lot of work to do.”