NYC To Help Teens Remove Lasting Marks Of Gangs, Traffickers

LOWER EAST SIDE — Gangs and sex traffickers often brand their young members and victims with tattoos, forcing teens to live with lasting reminders of their exploitation, New York City officials say. But a new program the city's Administration for Children's Services announced Monday will give kids a way to wipe those markings away.

The agency has partnered with three doctors in Manhattan and Queens who will remove tattoos from at-risk youth at no cost. Dubbed the NYC Child Tattoo Eradication Project the initiative aims to help teens recover by removing markers of their trauma, officials said.

"No young person should be forced to go through life with a permanent mark of exploitation and abuse on their body," said ACS Commissioner David Hansell.

The program is open to any youth already receiving services from ACS. The agency hopes to eventually get more doctors involved with the program.

The effort grew out of an ACS official's encounter with a teen girl who wanted to get rid of a tattoo of her pimp's initials on her forehead, Hansell said.

Those and other markings that gangs and traffickers force their victims and members to wear — such as barcodes and Roman numerals — can leave teens with reminders of what they lived through while making it tougher for them to get a job, Hansell said.

One of the doctors involved is David Ores of the Lower East Side, who helps formerly incarcerated people and others get rid of unwanted tattoos through his nonprofit, Fresh Start Tattoo Removal.

A tattoo can be removed with 10 to 15 treatments that take only 20 or 30 seconds apiece, Ores said. But at up to $2,000 for a face tattoo, the process can be prohibitively expensive for many New Yorkers trying to get back on their feet, he said.

"For 20 seconds of my time, you're giving a person a different life, hope and a job, so it's a really big payoff in terms of return, social return on investment," Dr. Ores said.

The initiative could help an unfortunately large number of young New Yorkers. A 2017 report found nearly 3,000 youth in the city were identified as trafficked or at risk for trafficking, a 21 percent increase over 2016 levels, Hansell said.

The program will also have a counseling component to help teens deal with the trauma of their experiences, said Selina Higgins, the executive director of ACS' Office of Child Trafficking Prevention and Policy.

"Removing the tattoo is just one aspect of removing the trauma bond from the trafficker," Higgins said. "So the counseling is as important as the actual tattoo removal to help this person move on to a positive life."

In addition to this new initiative, ACS conducted nearly 2,000 training sessions aimed at helping people spot and prevent trafficking last year, Hansell said.

Any youth receiving services from ACS who wants a tattoo removed can send an email to child.tattoo.removal@acs.nyc.gov.

(Lead image: ACS Commissioner David Hansell speaks at a Monday news conference announcing the NYC Child Tattoo Eradication Project. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)