The Department of Justice is committed to advancing work that promotes civil rights, increases access to justice, supports crime victims, protects the public from crime and evolving threats, and builds trust between law enforcement and the community.

This program is designed to develop, expand,

credit:

and strengthen assistance programs for minor victims of sex trafficking..

Under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a victim of trafficking is defined as a person who has been subjected to a "severe form of trafficking in persons," which, as defined in 22 U.S.C.

§ 7102(11), means— sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.