Sex Trafficking & PornSex Trafficking (older archives available here)

  • In 2022, NCMEC received more than 19,000 reports of child sex trafficking from all 50 U.S. States, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico which included every type of community: cities, small towns and tribal land. (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Accessed March, 2023)

  • In 2021 NCMEC received more than 17,200 reports of child sex trafficking from all 50 U.S. States, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico which included every type of community: cities, small towns and tribal land. (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2022)

  • Nearly 26,500 runaways were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2020. 1 in 6 were likely victims of child sex trafficking. Source: NCMEC

  •  In 2020, 59% of ONLINE VICTIM RECRUITMENT in active sex trafficking cases occurred on Facebook. (2020 Human Trafficking Report, Human Trafficking Institute.)

  •  Since 2000, traffickers have recruited 55% of sex trafficking victims online, usually through social media platforms, web-based messaging apps, online chat rooms, dating apps, classified advertisements, or job boards (Federal Human Trafficking Report, 2020)

  • There has been a 40% increase in reports of sex trafficking crisis cases by the Trafficking Hotline (compared to the month prior to lockdown) (Polaris, June 2020). 

  • 24.9 M people are trapped in forced slavery, domestic servitude or sex trafficking, many in America. (White House, Jan. 31, 2019) 

  • Of the survivors of sex trafficking who entered the life in the past decade, 75% reported being advertised online. The number was only 38% for survivors who entered the life prior to 2004. This information is more valuable when we pair it with the knowledge that there are more than 150,000 new escort ads posted online every day. (Survivor Insights: The Role of Technology in Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking, Thorn, January 2018)

  • Sex and labor trafficking industry is second only to drug trafficking as the world’s largest criminal industry, according to the International Labour Organization and the nonprofit Polaris Project.
  • The internet was by far the most dominant business model sex traffickers used to solicit buyers of commercial sex (used in 87.7% of sex trafficking cases active in 2018) and was also the most common method for luring victims (used in 42.5% of sex trafficking cases active in 2018). The number of cases involving Backpage dropped 18.3% from 2017, following the shutdown of Backpage in April 2018. (2018 Federal Human Trafficking Report)
  • In 2018, over half (51.6%) of the criminal human trafficking cases active in the US were sex trafficking cases involving only children (2018 Federal Human Trafficking Report))
  • A national survey by Thorn found of the minors who became victims of sex trafficking in 2015, 55 percent met their traffickers through a website or mobile app. (Survivor's Insights, Thorn, 2018).
  • Men make up 29% of human trafficking victims worldwide (Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, International Labor Organization, 2017)
  • As many as 21,000 underage children are part of the national sex trade, according to a 2016 study funded by the Justice Department
  • Per the International Labor Organization, there may be as many as 24.9 million victims of forced labor across the world. Of these, 4.8 million were in forced sexual exploitation. THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary (April 11, 2018) whitehouse.gov
  • Over 99 percent of trafficked individuals trapped in forced sexual exploitation are women. THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary (April 11, 2018) whitehouse.gov
  • Over 21 percent of those trafficked for sex are children. THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary (April 11, 2018) whitehouse.gov
  • In FY 2017, DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (ICE/HSI) initiated 833 human trafficking cases, resulting in 1,602 arrests and 578 convictions, and identified 518 victims of human trafficking. THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary (April 11, 2018) whitehouse.gov
  • Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Hotline has received reports of 22,191 sex trafficking cases in the United States. THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary (April 11, 2018) whitehouse.gov
  • Of the nearly 25,000 runaway children reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, one in seven were likely victims of child sex trafficking. THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary (April 11, 2018) whitehouse.gov
  • The underground sex economy is a multimillion dollar industry. A 2014 Urban Institute study estimated the combined worth of the underground sex economy in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Miami, Seattle, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., to be between $39.9 and $290 million. THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary (April 11, 2018) whitehouse.gov
  • Reports of suspected child sex trafficking jumped 846 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary (April 11, 2018) whitehouse.gov
  • Human trafficking is the fastest-growing organized crime activity in the United States, making almost $32 billion a year for traffickers while destroying the lives of tens of thousands of innocent children. Nearly 70 percent of these transactions now take place online. THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary (April 11, 2018) whitehouse.gov
  • According to "The Global Coalition To End Human Trafficking Now" 10 Million child prostitutes worldwide. (The Global Coalition To End Human Trafficking Now)
  • 1 in 6 endangered runaways reported to NCMEC in 2014 where likely sex trafficking victims. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. (2015) Child Sex Trafficking. [Accessed 29th December 2015] http://www.missingkids.com/1in6
  • “Traffickers show pornography to sex trafficking victims to train them and desensitize them to the sex acts they will be forced to perform.” National Center on Sexual Exploitation. (2015) Pornography + Sex Trafficking: The Facts. [Accessed 29th December 2015] http://stoptraffickingdemand.com/facts/
  • “Porn users demand a constant stream of new, increasingly violent and fetishized content. In order to keep up with this demand, more women and children become prostituted and trafficked.” National Center on Sexual Exploitation. (2015) Pornography + Sex Trafficking: The Facts. [Accessed 29th December 2015] http://stoptraffickingdemand.com/facts/?
  • The United Nations estimates that out of the more than 1.8 million children who are exploited as part of the illicit commercial sex market each year, approximately 100,000 American children are the victims of trafficking. (June 6, 2014); The Internet Pornography Pandemic: The Largest Unregulated Social Experiment in History, Donna Rice Hughes, etc http://enough.org/objects/christian-apologetics-journal-spring2014.pdf
  • It is estimated that 100,000 children in the U.S. are in danger of sexual slavery. The average age of entry into the sex trade is 14 years old. “Child Sex Trafficking At-a-Glance.” Polaris Project (2011). http://www.traffickingresourcecenter.org/sites/default/files/Child Sex Trafficking AAG.pdf
  • The average age a teen enters the sex trade in the US is 12 to 14 years old. Many victims are runaway girls who were sexually abused as children (Human Trafficking Into and Within the United States: A Review of the Literature, August 2009)