THE INNOCENCE LOST INITIATIVE

You may not realize it but this is going on in almost every city in America. THE INNOCENCE LOST INITIATIVE “Innocence Lost” is a nationwide initiative to focus on child victims of interstate sex trafficking in the United States. The initiative was started by the FBI and the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), in partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. As part of the initiative: • The FBI identified 14 field offices located in areas where intelligence indicates there is a high incidence of child prostitution and began to develop task forces that brought together state, local and federal law enforcement and victim service entities to address the problem and initiate cases. CEOS has assigned prosecutors to those task forces. • Specialized training courses, developed and conducted in partnership with and hosted by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, were initiated to bring together federal and state partners. The program has trained multi-disciplinary teams, with membership drawn from state, local and federal law enforcement agencies and local social service providers from cities all over the country. These teams have been trained in a multi-disciplinary approach to the problem of child prostitution, of which prosecution and victim assistance are equal parts. • More than 350 individuals have been trained. • The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has also acted as a clearinghouse for intelligence obtained from its citizen complaint line about children being exploited through prostitution. To date: • The Innocence Lost initiative has resulted in over 500 arrests and 67 convictions. • Approximately 200 child victims nationwide have been identified as a result of the initiative. For additional information, please see the following websites:

• The U.S. Department of Justice
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation
• The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
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