New data shows Facebook is the largest online recruitment site in active U.S. sex trafficking cases. This week, Human Trafficking Institute CEO Victor Boutros said social media sites have become a dominant tool sex traffickers use to recruit victims for exploitation.
Data from the institute shows 30 percent of all victims identified in
federal sex trafficking cases since the year 2000 were recruited
online. Boutros added nearly 70 percent of child sex trafficking victims
that were recruited on social media were contacted on Facebook.
The tech giant, which has faced major backlash regarding censorship,
claimed they have policies in place to prevent sex trafficking. However,
data shows that not enough is being done to prevent children and
primarily women, from being trafficked.
In 2019, the family of a 12-year-old girl from Houston who was
trafficked and not found until she was 15, sued Facebook for not
protecting its younger users. The lawsuit claimed Facebook has no
identity verification and had a weak warning system for human
trafficking.
The study by the Human Trafficking Institute showed traffickers often
prey on existing vulnerabilities in victims. Additionally, it said
despite the common idea that traffickers are large group networks that
exploit a large number of victims, the reality is that most traffickers
operate individually and exploit small numbers of victims at a time.
Sarah Cooper, a member of the survivors’ council of ECPAT-USA, an
anti-child trafficking organization, requested the tech giant prepare a
report of sex trafficking on the platform for investors and immediately
make improvements to keep users safe. However, the proposal lost and the
board opposed the move.
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