The Florida Department of Children and Families verified three cases of child victims of commercial sexual exploitation, or child prostitution, in Flagler County in 2025, 14 cases in Volusia, five in St. Johns and two in Putnam, the four counties that form the Seventh Judicial Circuit.
In Flagler, Volusia and St. Johns, the identifying agency was the Community Partnership for Children. DCF verified 434 children as CSE victims statewide, the largest number in one year since the number started getting tracked 10 years ago. There were 379 verified cases in 2024 and 339 in 2023.
The increase is not necessarily due to an uptick in the actual prevalence of child exploitation but to better identification of human trafficking and a more coordinated response among state and local agencies to reports of exploitation, according to DCF, including enhanced training for investigators, case managers, and law enforcement.
The figures and conclusions are part of the 2026 report on “Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children” by the state Office of Program Analysis and Government Accountability known as Oppaga, the nonpartisan research arm of the state legislature.
Oppaga is recommending that the Legislature and state agencies expand access to safe foster care–which requires money–and require better two-way information sharing between DCF and the Department of Juvenile Justice, which is lacking currently. The Baker Act Data Collection System was also found to be lacking, all of which means that keeping track of exploited children or those at risk of being exploited remains more difficult than it should be. Oppaga is also recommending that DCF expand child victims’ access to survivor mentors and increase awareness of survivor mentor services.
In a response to the report, DCF wrote that “In Fall 2026, the Department will implement the Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS), which is expected to strengthen information integration, enhance reporting capabilities, and support a more streamlined and automated process for producing the information required by statute.”
In 2025, most victims–87 percent–were girls, 68 percent were between 15 and 17 years old (which is to say that 19 percent were younger), and 51 percent were white, continuing the trends Oppaga found going back to 2015. The counties most prone to child sexual exploitation were the largest counties by population–Broward (58 cases), Miami-Dade (35), Hillsborough (33), Orange (27), Duval (26), and Palm Beach (25).
Most CSE victims–69 percent–continue to be community children, the report found, as opposed to dependent children who may have been placed in community or foster homes from elsewhere. But dependent children were far more vulnerable to maltreatment. Nearly half (46 percent) had prior child welfare system involvement with a verified finding of abuse, abandonment, or neglect.
“Nearly a third of CSE victims experience DJJ involvement, and most CSE victims with DJJ involvement entered juvenile detention facilities,” the report states.
On June 23 Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly announced the partial results of an ongoing investigation into sexual exploitation and potential human trafficking in the region, including the rescue of three adult victims. No children were identified or involved in those findings so far. (See: “Ten Arrested On Prostitution And Drug Charges In Joint Flagler County Undercover Sting, 3 Victims Rescued.”)
Federal law defines sex trafficking as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.” Florida law does not provide separate definitions for labor and sex trafficking but rather specifies that while victims of human trafficking may be forced to work in prostitution or the sexual entertainment industry, trafficking may also occur in the form of labor exploitation such as domestic servitude, restaurant work, janitorial services, sweatshop factory work, and migrant agricultural work. The Oppaga report focuses only on sexual exploitation.
Once identified, CSE victims are placed in environments tailored to address their specific recovery needs, whether in safe foster homes, safe houses or at-risk houses. Safe foster homes, for example, are family foster homes that provide care specifically to CSE victims. Safe houses and at-risk houses are group homes for the same purpose. At-risk houses are open to children who are at risk of being exploited rather than only to those who have been verified to have been exploited.
The report notes that safe foster homes and safe houses can be limited and made more so by stringent training requirements on the recruitment of providers and lengthy application processes. As of March, there were just 35 safe foster homes and five safe houses. In the Northeast region Oppaga studied, which includes Flagler County and more than a dozen other counties, there were no safe houses and just four safe foster houses, even though the region as a whole had 61 verified victims.
“Most CSE victims recommended for a safe house or safe foster home in Fiscal Year 2024-25 were not placed in these settings,” the report found. According to DCF’s 2025 Annual Human Trafficking Report, of 399 CSE victims assessed for placement, 120 were recommended for a safe house or safe foster home and only 45 were actually placed. The rest refused placement, ran away, or were denied placement for lack of space.
The effectiveness of those safe environments depends on reporting by Community-based care lead agencies, or CBCs (such as the Community Partnership for Children in Flagler County). Residential treatment centers are also an option for CSE victims–and the most effective one, according to reporting agencies, but a limited one. Safe houses get better grades than safe foster homes for effectiveness as “recruiting safe foster homes is challenging,” the report found.
While telehealth counseling and substance abuse treatment is accessible in most areas, other forms of treatment, from survivor mentor services to equine therapy to group therapy to mindfulness and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (what’s known as EMDR) are not as accessible. Transportation and financial assistance are rarely available.
Case histories based on children who have been Baker Acted show that an exploited child will typically have been the subject of extensive histories of child welfare investigations, experienced multiple placement changes in the foster system, and had multiple arrest charges within three years of their first Baker Act examination after CSE verification.
The report includes several case histories based on Baker Act records that illustrate the ordeals exploited children go through and the challenges in attempts to care for them. Here’s an example.
Before the child was verified as a victim of exploitation, DCF conducted multiple child welfare investigations involving the child’s family, including for alleged substance use by the mother and family violence that could threaten children in the home. The child was diagnosed with ADHD and was exhibiting significant behavioral issues, including threatening other students with gun violence. A year later, the child was removed from the home due to the mother not meeting basic and essential needs and for allowing an individual who sexually abused the child to continue to have access to the child. The child was using marijuana, was not attending school, was being physically violent, and threatening to harm other students and children, and underwent two additional Baker Acts within a year of being identified as an exploited child. In the three years following the first Baker Act, the child changed placements 14 times, with most time spent with a relative or in in-home care. The child’s school attendance improved within three years of the first Baker Act following CSE verification, but the child’s grade level was two or more years lower than expected based on age.
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