For six months, Rose was beaten and forced to sell her body on the street. Her pimp kept her under 24-hour surveillance and deprived her of food and vital medicine.¹A new study released in November 2017 estimates that 700,000 children between 13 and 17 years old experienced homelessness over one year in the United States of America.² Because of their vulnerability and inadequate support, they often go unnoticed, quietly trafficked into forced labor or the commercial sex industry.Congress has the power to help prevent child trafficking. Introducing, then passing the Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act (RHYTPA) will be a step toward improving services and protections for homeless youth and children either experiencing or at high-risk of trafficking and exploitation.This Act would provide important updates to current Runaway and Homeless Youth Act programs, which expired in 2013. Traffickers target homeless children and youth because they are low risk, making them easily susceptible to human trafficking, often being exploited through sex and labor.Thirty-six per cent of all labor trafficking and almost half of all sex trafficking cases reported in the United States in 2016 involved victims whose exploitation began when they were only children, between the ages of 12 and 17. Covenant House International, an international network of providers of services to homeless youth, found that nearly one in five homeless youth had been a victim of human trafficking – inclusive of sex and labor trafficking or both