Alexandra Rodriguez/Contributing Writer
Florida International University’s Initiative for Gender Violence Prevention will soon begin conducting a needs assessment survey for the community, according to the program’s director.
Sondra Skelaney, the program director for the initiative, said that it began in January 2017.
“Our primary objective is to do research and education and outreach on the issue of gender based violence,” Skelaney said.
The survey addresses three areas: sex trafficking, violence between intimate partners and violence against the LGBTQ community.
With the help of her interns, Skelaney said the assessment will see how they can be most helpful and will help them understand what they will be dealing with.
Skelaney is also part of the South Florida Human Trafficking Task Force and the Miami-Dade County Human Trafficking Coalition and has been in the field of sex trafficking for 15 years.
She has also previously worked Kristi House, a child advocacy center in Miami.
About one in ten children– one in seven girls and one in 25 boys– will be sexually abused by the time they are 18 years old, according to Darkness to Light, a non-profit organization that educates adults to combat child sex trafficking.
Skelaney said that with some laws, loopholes exist that will prevent different agencies from taking the proper actions to help minors. This not only refers to child trafficking cases, but to child marriage cases.
Skelaney said that there is a contradiction between statutory rape laws and marriage laws. She said that because of this contradiction, there is a campaign to end child marriage.
Ending child marriage, she said, is important because there is a law that allows minors as young as 16 to get married if the parents consent to it. However, if a pregnant female minor is involved, there is no age restriction.
Skelaney said people are quick to make minors seem more mature and able to make rational decisions, no matter what the age.
“Not that it’s shocking. People still have a hard time thinking that children don’t really have the developmental capability to consent to having sex with adults, especially with children that young,” she said.
There was a case in France where a 28-year-old man lured an 11-year-old girl to his apartment and had sex with her, and the man was charged with sexual abuse, but not rape. Since there was no evidence that violence was involved, that meant that the girl consented to having sex with him, according to French laws.
Skelaney hopes that the loopholes, like the one in France and similar ones in the U.S., no longer exist. This will allow for proper actions to be taken, and for the victims to get proper justice.
Image retrieved from Flickr.
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