Sex traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to lure their victims into exploitation. Porn is the marketing department of the sex trafficking industry.
“Sex traffickers are motivated by one thing,” Dr. Shively said. “They are trying to make money. It’s a market, and the commodity is people. Without demand, there is no motivation to come up with that supply.”
Sex trafficking shares a variety of symbiotic connections to pornography. Even in the production of mainstream porn, sex trafficking can still occur—and it happens more often than most people think.
The global issue of sex trafficking will take a global community of Fighters to join together and stop the demand for exploitation.
Sex trafficking is a global issue made worse by porn. Any form of sexual exploitation only fuels the demand for the sex trade as a whole, writes Dr. Karen Countryman-Roswurm.
If you hate the idea of sex trafficking, if it is shocking and horrible to you, then consider what millions of people consume around the world every day.
The FBI’s “Operation Cross Country” recently recovered 59 child trafficking victims and identified more than 125 suspects. While the 13-year operation has saved hundreds, the sex trafficking industry continues to grow.
Sex trafficking is legally defined as a situation in which “a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age.” That means that sex trafficking doesn’t always involve kidnapping or physical force.
Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta Platforms executives were recently sued for not doing enough to stop sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation on Facebook and Instagram.
Virtually every major porn site has reportedly hosted and profited from trafficking, child sexual abuse material, image-based abuse, and/or degradation.
Here are a few examples of real cases of sex trafficking in porn, and what survivors endured while they were exploited for profit.
FBI agents and investigators rescued 84 children, 141 adults, and identified or arrested 85 suspects of human trafficking in a nationwide operation.
