Cyntoia Brown, R. Kelly and the refusal to recognize black and brown female victims

A highly-cited paper from the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, Human Rights Project for Girls and Ms. Foundation for Women titled “The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline,” found “that in a perverse twist of justice, many girls who experience sexual abuse are routed into the juvenile justice system because of their victimization.”

Authors of the report say that child sex trafficking is child sexual abuse, though many jurisdictions still view those victims as perpetrators: “These girls are arrested on charges of prostitution even though they are too young to legally consent to sex.”