By Gavin Boyle
While human trafficking can still look like a person being kidnapped on the street, more often than not, it now starts with a vulnerable person crossing paths with the wrong individual online.
“Where [human trafficking] is growing the fastest is online,” Hope for Justice co-founder and Christian singer Natalie Grant told Relevant. “Perpetrators are making relationships with teenagers online, and they don’t have any idea what they’re actually getting involved with…A lot of people don’t even understand that a lot of those people that are being exploited and used online in that way are actually victims of human trafficking.”
“If you are listening to this and you think that human trafficking is not happening in your community, it is,” she added.
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Human trafficking today does not always mean that a person is being physically taken and held against their will. Rather, it could be someone who is being blackmailed online to, for example, engage in unwanted sexual acts. The young Americans who are being sexually exploited in a variety of ways are victims of human trafficking.
Unfortunately, this practice has become all too easy for bad actors to engage in through a variety of avenues that the internet provides to make contact with minors and those who are vulnerable. Video games and social media offer perpetrators with direct access to their victims, while also allowing them to hide their true identity as they get close to the person. Young men are especially vulnerable and are being specifically targeted.
“What they do is they identify weakness in people,” internet safety expert Ben Gillenwater told podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey. “So, teenage boys specifically are targeted for this in particular. And then, you know, flirting and whatnot. And then, eventually, the girl will send a naked picture. And so, they’ll send a photo to the boy and then, okay, ‘Send one back,’ and then the blackmail begins.”
Raising awareness about what human trafficking looks like in the modern era is extremely important because it helps parents know what to look for.
January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, but thousands of people are working year round to combat this issue. Tim Tebow is one of those people, and he has helped many escape this life through his foundation. His team works rescue thousands across the globe, while also aiding the victims suffering in America as well.
“I’ll never forget the day my dad called me from overseas and told me he had just purchased the freedom of four young girls from traffickers. I was in my mid-20s at the time and completely unaware [of] human trafficking,” the former NFL star said, explaining where his heart for the problem comes from. “Even surrounded by a group of good men while on a long-term mission trip, no one around him was willing to step in to help the girls.”
“So my dad, not wanting to leave these girls in the darkness they were in, decided to open his wallet and free the girls with the cash he had on hand,” Tebow continued. “There’s a saying that evil triumphs when good men do nothing. My dad was not going to be the man who did nothing. Had he just stood there silently, who knows where these girls would have been taken and what would have been done to them.”
While this problem can feel insurmountable given just how many people are trapped in the human trafficking system, it is only by educating ourselves and understanding what the problem looks like today that we can start to be a part of the solution.
Read Next: How NCOSE Uses AI Technology To Combat Human Trafficking
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