If you don’t think money is empowering, try living without it.

I have an irrational hatred for Maria Menounos so I guess I’m Team Rancic on this one.

Her weave looks so good. Britney, take notes.

I was home sick last week, and wound up watching this doc on Netflix called Playground. It was made by a woman who set out to make a doc about international pedo sex-tourism, but while doing research was shocked to find how much exploitation of children, especially girls and young women, was taking place here in the…

Working for Child Services is an incredibly tough job that chews up and spits out on the regular well meaning young women with freshly minted MSWs. I don’t mean to suggest that only the cynical assholes survive in the job, it’s just an ugly system that’s going to wear down 99% of the people working in it. I think it’s…

I work for Children’s Law Center of California. We represent foster children in both Sacramento and Los Angeles counties. We do lots of good work with SECT (Sexually exploited children and teens.) A donation to either Children’s Law Center or SECT would help these exploited kids.

That happened to me when I was in foster care. A relative of my foster mom, a grown man, was caught in the basement with me. When I later told a school counselor that this man was abusing me, my foster mom tried to cover it up. She said that I had mental issues. My claim was ultimately dismissed because it was…

You’re honestly a fucking trooper and I don’t know how you do it.

It’s funny, even when we talk about the “drug traffickers” that need to be arrested, they turn out to be the 17 year old gang member or the addict that sells a relatively small amount to support their habit. Not the people that are at the top of the pyramid.

Girls sent into the juvenile justice system have experienced “overwhelmingly high” rates of sexual violence,

I recently put on a legal clinic for homeless teenagers - for whom this is obviously extremely relevant. Many had come from foster care where they had been sexually abused. The biggest shock to me was that all of those who had been abused had reported those crimes to the police, with the support of family, yet it was…

Writer/lawyer Andrew Vaccess wrote a fantastic article about the language people use when discussing abuse, and he talks about the term “child prostitute” vs the term “prostituted child.”

What’re you gonna do, lick a donut about it?

I hope no one is surprised: Most offenders are victims of a crime before they enter the criminal justice system. We criminalize certain kinds of victimhood and certain kinds of poverty.

Anna, you’re two for two today posting these really sad stories of sexual abuse, so I really hope that you’ve got a fucking hilarious set of “Grim Yelp Reviews” to counterbalance it later.

Money. The prison-industrial pipeline generates massive revenue.

HOW IN THE EVER LOVING FUCK DO YOU JUSTIFY ARRESTING A TEENAGER FOR FUCKING PROSTITUTION? Oh! You can’t legally have sex, but you can definitely be held responsible for older creep show fucking abusive weirdos paying you for sex you CANNOT LEGALLY FUCKING HAVE?

I’m sometimes the one on here to put links up where to go to help or donate. This time, I’d really like to know what I can do to help, from those of you who know who’s fighting the good fight on this issue. Thanks!

It kills me that there are states can arrest a kid for running away. Kids don’t run away for real (I’m not talking the one night I’ll show them!!!) unless there is real problem.

What is it with the recent rash of pathological liars who use phrases like “in my mind” and “that was my reality at the time” as if this is somehow simply another way of saying something was true or untrue?