Social media is now the most common way traffickers make initial contact with their victims. Here’s how they do it.

Sex traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to lure their victims into exploitation. Porn is the marketing department of the sex trafficking industry.

“We lie to you. We’re selling a product—the sex, the persona. Like actors do press tours, everything a porn star does on social media is advertising.”

Ashton Kutcher, Carrie Underwood, Emma Thompson—when stars use their public platforms to give visibility to the realities of sex trafficking, people start paying attention.

Trafficking hides in plain sight. Just ask Suzie, a trafficking survivor turned police officer whose boyfriend sex trafficked her when she was 19 years old.

“When I was two years old, I was sold into human trafficking and was taught that children needed to allow grown men to use their bodies.”

If someone is forced, manipulated into, or threatened into performing any sexual act in exchange for money, safety, or to evade punishment, this is sex trafficking. It can be situational—it doesn’t have to be a lifetime of sex slavery.

These signs can appear anywhere in any context, whether it’s someone you know or not. It’s better to report something that isn’t actually trafficking than to avoid reporting when it actually is.

The collective efforts of the healthcare, trucking, and hotel industries show us that change is possible when we fight together against sex trafficking.

The hospitality industry has long been a hotspot for sex traffickers. Due to a policy lapse, Airbnb could be permitting sex trafficking like other hotel chains.

The global issue of sex trafficking will take a global community of Fighters to join together and stop the demand for exploitation.

Around the US, researchers are focusing on the issue of sex trafficking and doing their best to raise awareness to both educators and students.