Social agents from protection networks in fighting commercial sexual exploitation

This article shows the data collected in a research regarding the perception of Social Agents who act in fighting children and adolescents' commercial sexual exploitation. The networking is composed by Governmental Organizations, Non-governmental Organizations, Justice System and Human Rights entities. They compose a network of 15 institutions, and 31 Social Agents who belonged to 12 of them were interviewed. It was used a questionnaire composed by open and closed questions about protection systems knowledge; perception of children and adolescents' commercial sexual exploitation; forms of fighting children and adolescents' commercial sexual exploitation; procedures and actions in case of suspicion, identification, denunciation and notification. Most of the Social Agents who make part of the network know the role of the institution where they work, although some of them do not know part of the Legislation which deals with this problematic and they also do not know the forms to effectuate in practice the purpose of the Legislation and its inter-institutional articulation.