I had occasion to attend an eye-opening webinar today put on by the USCSAHT that stressed that while many people consider human sex trafficking to be primarily a girl/woman problem, in fact, an almost equal number of boys and young men are trafficked as well.
One of the major groups to be victimized are those with a tendency to be runaways (or throwaways) – estimated to be between 100,000 – 300,000. 41% of all runaways are in the 14-17 age group.
No sooner did I finish that webinar, but I read about this webinar held by the Pasco Sheriffs Office in Florida. More distressing information, unfortunately.
An alarming revelation shared during the webinar involves the pervasive presence of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) that is being discovered on social media outlets and other electronic service providers.
Girls are featured in the overwhelming majority of CSAM, while prepubescent children are at the greatest risk to be depicted — through explicit drawings, pictures or videos, Wilkett said.
In 2020, there were more than 21.7 million reports of CSAM across digital platforms to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline.
Of that, over 20 million reports came from Facebook alone.
https://lakerlutznews.com/
Two more facts to be aware of if you have young children that are active on social media. Many apps like WhatsApp, Wickr, Telegram, Signal, and Calculator+, are being used to target children. To make matters worse, traffickers are developing systems of emojis to advertise sexual services, making it even harder to detect and prosecute.
If you have young children, you MUST become vigilant about who they are communicating with on social media and always be open to changes in behavior or attitudes.
Photo by Afta Putta Gunawan from Pexels
