Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Evaluation of the My Life My Choice (MLMC) Program for Victims of Sex Trafficking, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, 2015-2018

Metadata Updated: November 28, 2023

Commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) is an increasingly urgent problem for criminal justice systems in the United States. Despite the staggering individual and societal consequences of CSE, evidence-based prevention and intervention programs are profoundly lacking. This study used a quasi-experimental, mixed methods, longitudinal follow-up design to evaluate a service provision program for CSE survivors or those identified as high-risk for CSE, My Life My Choice (MLMC). Researchers followed youth who received MLMC services from baseline to multiple follow-up points to see how they progressed over time in terms of building up resistance to being sexually exploited. Youth received one of two different type of MLMC services. One group (Source 1) received one-on-one survivor mentoring, otherwise known as "tertiary prevention." Participants in this program are paired with mentors who have been trained and free from CSE for at least five years. Mentors provide long-term and consistent emotional support to exploited youth or those MLMC believes are at high-risk for exploitation. The Source 1 youth were recruited only from Massachusetts. They participated in quantitative and qualitative data collection at baseline, six months post-baseline, and 12 months post-baseline. A second group (Source 2) received 3-10 sessions of a psychoeducational prevention group following the MLMC curriculum, otherwise known as "secondary prevention." These groups are led by trained facilitators and are intended for youth at high-risk for exploitation. Participants are taught about sexual exploitation, healthy relationships, sexual health, and how to find help. Source 2 youth received MLMC services in Massachusetts, Florida, New Jersey, or Connecticut. They participated in quantitative data collection at baseline, time of the last group session, and six months post-baseline. Measured outcomes included instances of sexual exploitation in the past six months, frequency and type of substance use, partner abuse victimization, and housing stability. Researchers hypothesized that, among the secondary prevention group, youth who chose to interact with MLMC staff more often (in terms of attending educational sessions) would score higher on desired outcomes than those frequently absent or who do not interact with staff as often. Among the tertiary prevention group, researchers hypothesized that those who participated would demonstrate improved outcomes from baseline to six months and baseline to 12 months.

Access & Use Information

Restricted: This dataset can only be accessed or used under certain conditions. License: us-pd

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date February 13, 2023
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOJ JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date February 13, 2023
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023
Publisher National Institute of Justice
Maintainer
Identifier 4227
Data First Published 2021-05-25T09:29:25
Language eng
Data Last Modified 2021-05-25T09:38:08
Rights These data are restricted due to the increased risk of violation of confidentiality of respondent and subject data.
Public Access Level restricted public
Bureau Code 011:21
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://www.justice.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id f80417a9-ffea-4eeb-ad02-2c85581e378d
Harvest Source Id 3290e90a-116f-42fc-86ac-e65521ef3b68
Harvest Source Title DOJ JSON
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Program Code 011:060
Publisher Hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > National Institute of Justice
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 04c0243e2c6b4676bd6035718e4aa239dfba63c116606090f6774d964635ba9f
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.