Children and Youth

For decades, R&B singer R. Kelly preyed on young women and men, using promises of a career in the music industry to manipulate them into abusive sexual relationships. We examine this pattern of exploitation and highlight the importance of listening to and believing all survivors.

From the outside, it’s easy to tell ourselves we would never have been lured in by a trafficker who pretended to love us. But grooming - a methodical process of emotional manipulation - is time-tested and devastatingly effective. Learn more about how it works so you can spot it and protect yourself and those you care about.

This social media toolkit includes graphics and a video available for download to educate your friends, family, and followers on what we know about child sex trafficking. You can also visit us on Instagram to share our story highlight and tag us.

Survivor Cheri Crider describes her story of resilience. She emphasizes that people need to better understand the complexities of how trafficking works and how certain systems exacerbate the crime.

Not all the missing children recovered in recent high profile U.S. Marshals operations were victims of human trafficking. But what we know about those operations reconfirms what we know about how sex trafficking happens in the vast majority of situations.

When most people think about child sex trafficking they think of stories involving kidnapping, windowless vans, and chains. However, focusing on these rarer examples may cause us to miss out on the realities of how trafficking typically happens.

The Wayfair theory, like other viral stories, can potentially result in overwhelming services meant for victims, as well as increasing online harassment and privacy intrusions of people mistakenly believed to be victims. These theories also detract from the knowledge we do have about how sex trafficking actually works, and how we can prevent it.

Over the past several days the National Human Trafficking Hotline has received hundreds of reports that reference viral posts claiming Wayfair has been involved in sex trafficking children.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided two cases that together increase protections for the LGBTQ+ community and undocumented immigrant youth. These decisions are positive steps in the work to end sex and labor trafficking, both directly and indirectly.

With stay-at-home orders resulting in more children spending time online and at home, there has been an increase in reports of child abuse, which may also make children more vulnerable to trafficking.

Beginning in January 2015, Polaris has been working to further understand the relationship between drugs and human trafficking using data collected through the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

From sex trafficking to labor trafficking, the ways humans are exploited differ greatly. Each type has unique strategies for recruiting and controlling victims and concealing the crime.