Children and Youth

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.

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.