Child advocates and human trafficking activists across the country have all eyes turned to New York State, where a bill that includes protections for child victims of sex trafficking is plodding its way through the Legislature. The bill, known as the Trafficking Victims Protection and Justice Act,...

Today we are releasing the findings from one of the largest human trafficking studies among homeless youth in New York history, and the news is numbing. In interviews with almost 200 randomly selected homeless youth over the last year, researchers at Covenant House and Fordham University...

As I looked around the South Auditorium in the Old Executive Office Building during the White House's Forum to Combat Human Trafficking, I felt a surge of hope in a field that could use so much more. Members of the Obama administration joined with many of the nation's...

When I read that Congress had sent its budget to President Obama for his signature today, all I could think of was the nearly 1,700 homeless young people who will sleep beneath a Covenant House roof in one of 19 cities across the country tonight. Tens of thousands...

New York leads the nation with many superlatives: it's the biggest, the artiest and most visited of our cities. Now, it has topped its own unfortunate record, with more homeless people sleeping in shelters each night than ever: more than 50,000 each night, according to a new report...

This headline immediately filled me with foreboding: "Homeless youth who died included four 17-year-olds." Now what, I thought? What horrible event had stolen away more of the young people we try to save, every day, in our shelters?

But it wasn't an event. It was daily attrition, evidence...

Pop was a teacher when I was a kid. My brothers and I watched him work late into the night grading papers and writing college recommendations. He visited his students' families when they were in trouble, helped kids find their first jobs through a huge network of employers he developed,...

Pop was a teacher when I was a kid. My brothers and I watched him work late into the night grading papers and writing college recommendations. He visited his students' families when they were in trouble, helped kids find their first jobs through a huge network of employers he developed,...

As I sat by the bedside of Covenant House's former president, Sister Mary Rose McGeady, in her final days, I thought about all the homeless kids she had comforted in their time of need. In September, the very same month we marked our 40th year of helping kids across the...

In the almost three years it took to write Almost Home: Helping Kids Move From Homelessness to Hope, our book about homeless young people who have been helped by Covenant House, I was floored by the generosity of the kids we came to know.

Creionna, who came...

Backpage.com, the site owned by Village Voice Media that posts adult services ads online, has claimed it is "a critical ally" in the fight against child sex trafficking. So why is it fighting a Washington law that makes it a felony to advertise the sexual services of juveniles?...

In the course of the last three weeks, we lost three of our young people in Honduras, each found murdered. They were among the homeless, trafficked and exploited children and youth who live with us at Casa Alianza Honduras, Covenant House's programs in Tegucigalpa. We have no news...

I recently had the chance to talk with former First Lady Laura Bush, who has, along with many members of her family, worked hard on behalf of the homeless young people we serve at Covenant House. In 2009 she received Covenant House's Beacon of Hope Award for...

I look at the figures on my screen, and all I can see is the challenge ahead. Nearly half the young people entering our shelter in Washington, D.C. report having been physically abused, sexually abused, or both. The people they were supposed to trust most in the world caused them...

I have always been a big fan of Jon Bon Jovi, not only for his music, but for his deep involvement in the community. He has been a friend to Covenant House for more than 30 years, and last year was enormously generous in his support of our Rights of...

Fourteen men appeared in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Monday, charged with patronizing a prostitute, after a crackdown on a brutal sex trafficking ring run by a father and son team from Pennsylvania.

This is one of the few...

Here's some news to cheer about, from the grim world of sex trafficking.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. announced yesterday charges against traffickers and the drivers they employed, in a father-son pimping operation that lasted years and involved at least five women, six taxi...

Juan lay there in a hoody and a baseball cap, looking for all the world like a student taking a nap. He was handsome, scrappy, hard-working and smart (he had just breezed through his high school equivalency test at Covenant House). He was beloved and admired, and a doting younger...

Asbury Park, N.J. is a lot like many of the homeless kids we help: full of promise, but beset by the violence of the streets. And lately, the news out of Asbury Park has not been good. An 11-year-old girl cleaning her room on a recent Sunday night was rushed...

When is a homeless child not a homeless child? Lawmakers, Covenant House, the online human rights community Care2.com, and other advocates for vulnerable young people are trying to make the fairest definition of homelessness part of the law of the land. We need your help.

Right now, if...