Rising sexual abuse on unaccompanied minors in US

It has been revealed that the United States received more than 4,500 complaints of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors from 2014-18, as per internal agency documents released by Representative Ted Deutch on Tuesday.“I am deeply concerned with documents that have been turned over by HHS that record a high number of sexual assaults on unaccompanied children in the custody of the Office of Refugee and Resettlement,” the Representative from Florida stated.

"Together, these documents detail an environment of systemic sexual assaults by staff on unaccompanied children," he further said at a House hearing, held on Tuesday, on the US administration's "zero tolerance" policy, which led to the separation of scores of immigrant children from their parents.The complaints have been filed with the US Department of Health and Human Services, in addition to 1,303 complaints reported with the Justice Department.

Deutch outlines that the documents "demonstrate over the past three years, there have been 154 staff on unaccompanied minor, let me repeat that, staff on unaccompanied minor allegations of sexual assault." "This works out on average to one sexual assault by HHS staff on unaccompanied minor per week," CNN reports while quoting Deutch.

A few of the staff members, reported in complaints with the Justice Department, are accused of having relationships with minors, indulging in unwanted sexual touching and showing the minors pornographic videos, CNN further reported while quoting Axios. Out of the thousands