DEMAND Series, Part 3: Where Are They Buying?

By Lee Ellen Starks, Office Manager & Stacy Elliott, Community Engagement Coordinator

In the US, there was a time when the sale of sex often took place in certain areas where (mostly girls) “walked the track.” The “track” could be in urban areas, rural areas, or even truck stops. In newspaper’s Want Ads, there was an Escort section. Adult Book stores may have even served to front a brothel. All of these are openly public. If someone wanted to catch a buyer engaging in this illegal activity, it was not too difficult to do. Though, it must be noted that spouses and partners were most interested in discovery; law enforcement tended to give a wink and a nod. And, when there was a crackdown, buyers were not the targets for arrest. For more about the paradigm shift in law enforcement, listen to these Someone Like Me podcast episodes: Part 1 & Part 2.

Over the past couple of decades, easy and fast access to all kinds of goods and services has moved on-line. The marketplace to purchase sex is certainly no exception and, in fact, technology has enabled the consumption of sex to flourish. It has also made detection less traceable since locations do not have to be seedy areas or the streets. Buyers can go to hotels, apartments, suburban homes, etc. This allows for this crime to be hidden in plain sight.

Currently, trafficking-dedicated law enforcement and legislative advocacy are the best-practice approaches to shutting down those internet sites specifically used to sell sex. In 2017, End Slavery Tennessee founder Derri Smith testified at a U.S. Congressional hearing as part of an effort to change laws. Those changes led to the shutdown of the internet’s most prolific and lucrative site, Backpage.com, the leading website at that time used to advertise and sell sex online. Since the collapse of Backpage.com, numerous other websites that specialize in providing access to illicit sexual encounters have become more secretive and will morph to avoid detection. According to our colleagues at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), as agents make progress on identifying and shutting down a website or app, another one quickly pops up to take its place.

How does technology help trafficking hide in plain sight? Instead of exclusive websites dedicated to selling sex, countless social media apps have designs and functions that make it easier to manipulate and victimize. In a 2018 research article by the Polaris Project (1), the intersectionality of human trafficking with social media is examined. Sex trafficking has nine sub-categories and social media is used for transactions in seven of them. In 19 types of labor trafficking, seven are known to involve social media. The most used social media sites for trafficking were Facebook, Instagram, and chat apps, such as WhatsApp. These were closely followed in popularity by SnapChat, YouTube, and dating apps. Many of these anonymizing applications tout peer-to-peer encryption which make it impossible to discover by law enforcement.

Social media is not the enemy; it can be a wealth of positive interactions too. How can we be a part of stamping out human trafficking happening in those spaces? The above-mentioned Polaris Project study shows that between 2015-2017, 845 potential victims were recruited via social media platforms. At the highest level identified, 250 were recruited on Facebook. Some of the recruiting tactics included fraudulent job opportunities and “boy-friending.”

Since connecting with people on-line is a popular form of dating and meeting up, it is easier for traffickers to build relationships online. This tactic, often described as “boy-friending,” is an effort to build intimacy and trust through manipulation by a process called “grooming.” Traffickers are charming and complimentary, give gifts, get to know you, anticipate needs, just like someone would at the beginning of a romantic relationship. Then once a victim is emotionally dependent and isolated from support systems, traffickers make the switch to asking/demanding favors in return. At this point, a victim is emotionally and socially dependent on someone believed to be a lover. Sometimes, the trafficker has exploitive content (photographs or videos privately shared) and threatens to share them to force compliance. Many of the survivors End Slavery Tennessee serves are still in love with their traffickers when they enter our program. The psychological manipulation builds a tangled web of extremely complex trauma for victims. Often these dangerous relationships begin online.

Fraudulent job opportunities can look like DMs (Direct Messages) from a modeling agency recruiter, someone posting on Facebook about a way to earn quick cash, or a Craigslist advertisement about a “mag crew” selling magazines door-to-door. These are only a few examples. According to this study, Facebook and Craigslist are the top recruiting sites for labor trafficking and fraudulent job opportunities. Unfortunately, for those with job vulnerability, it has become widely believed that Facebook is a trustworthy site for job opportunities. Research shows this could not be further from the truth. Like “boy-friending,” there is typically some messaging back and forth to build trust and credibility before the hook is set.

Recruitment is also occurring through online gaming systems. Traffickers typically present themselves as a same-age peer to the victim. They build rapport while playing the online game and messaging back and forth. Many adults, including traffickers or sexual predators, have unlimited access via the internet to interact with children via photos, videos, and direct messaging. Please check out our blog post about internet safety (2) for prevention tips from Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Minors Care Coordinator, Marissa Brownell, who works with minor victims at End Slavery Tennessee. Also, according to Tennessee law, anyone who exchanges anything of value (money, shelter, food, drugs, game credits) for sex with a minor is a human trafficker… even if the buyer claims not to know the victim is underage.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) Law Center, has an open class action lawsuit against Pornhub and MindGeek right now involving a trafficker filming sexual encounters of a minor sex trafficking victim and uploading the videos to the named sites. Unfortunately, this happens all too often with teens. Phones are easily hacked and sites like TikTok and SnapChat where the video “disappears” after a number of hours leave youth feeling invincible. Anyone can upload any video to a porn site without any security checks. If someone gets access to videos or photos, they can be online the same day, exploiting the individual, driving demand and increasing the already $150 billion-dollar global industry.

It is difficult to imagine the peer pressure facing teens today. For most people born before 2000, peer pressure was from the classmates in your school and surrounding community. Today, teens have global access to countless peers all over the world. In the past, photos from cameras with film rolls would take days to process and involve some level of accountability from the people who developed the film. Now, teens have high quality cell phone cameras, ring lights, and millions of filters. Unfortunately, traffickers can easily screen capture photos from anyone’s posts and post them elsewhere online. Many social media platforms catering to teens and tweens encourage creating and recreating provocative images and videos that attract attention and feeds approval-seeking behaviors. By sharing these posts as well as other personal information that can reveal vulnerability, traffickers can use this to manipulate.

Is this dynamic contributing to demand? When posted images/videos are stolen and used for nefarious activity or if they prove to draw predators to social media sites for the visual stimulation, it is certainly not part of the solution. The Journal of Pediatric Health Care published an article about online sexual solicitation and referenced a study that found females posted more risky, sexual content than males on social media. This pattern that reinforces a social expectation for women and girls to commodify their sexuality sets up the social expectation for men and boys to objectify and thereby contributes to demand.

It is so important to hear from survivors. A Polaris Project Survivor Survey concluded that 26% of victims were exploited and advertised by their traffickers using the victim’s own personal social media profiles. Some traffickers will use their profiles or make fake profiles. It is advantageous to a trafficker to have the victim use their own profile so that if the victim is arrested for solicitation, it looks like the victim was advertising themselves by choice. Wouldn’t a victim’s friends notice if sexual ads were suddenly being posted on an individual’s profile? Not necessarily. Remember, traffickers look for vulnerable victims and will isolate them from any support systems they may have. If someone does reach out with concern, a trafficker can simply block that person’s account. Plus, computer algorithms work in such a way that it does not take long to shift into different newsfeeds especially when traffickers embed encrypted descriptions of price, location, and options within the comments under a photo. As with many illegal activities, there is a covert language that is known to the commercial sex world. Potential sex buyers can search specific buzz words in hashtags to find the types of advertisements they want.

Even though Facebook made efforts to monitor content posted on their site, a lawsuit was filed by the content moderators Facebook hired; it was for damages related to the emotional trauma they experienced viewing the explicit content. In an article by The Mercury News (3) posted in May of 2020, Facebook agreed to a settlement of $52 million to over 10,000 content moderators.

One last point about how the purchase occurs online. Once the initial messaging or commenting connects the seller and buyer, the financial transaction can be processed on another site or, very often, paid in cash directly to the victim. This keeps the transaction from being easily connected to the crime.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a vast increase in internet use. Exploitation did not decrease due to less in-person transactions. Many sites offer “webcamming” or livestream options so buyers can interact with individuals virtually. With the rise in unemployment, sites like OnlyFans preyed on the vulnerability and desperation sweeping the world offering “fast cash, empowerment, and even fame,” according to a post by End Sexual Exploitation (4) (ESE). Every year ESE puts out a Dirty Dozen List with the 12 companies in the US they have found to be the most complicit in sexual exploitation. Of OnlyFans, who made their Dirty Dozen List for 2021, they say, “It has been heralded by some as an empowering and safe way to sell sex—but the reality is that OnlyFans facilitates sexual exploitation, harms minors, and emboldens men to objectify and degrade women.” In the article, parents in the United Kingdom claim their children tell them teens all over the country are selling nude pictures of themselves and making lots of money. Law enforcement confirms that sex trafficking victims are being coerced to produce content on these sites as well. The escalation to increasingly violent or degrading sex acts is also prevalent on this site.

This information may be difficult to absorb, but it is important to show the blurred line between the sexualized images and videos teens and adults now share regularly on social media for attention and affirmation to the content being posted, sometimes stolen, and reposted from those very social media posts, to either make money from the content or advertise for an in-person sexual encounter. The blurred line and everything near it on either side is certainly driving demand.

So, what can we do?

Actions Items:

  • Read our blog about internet safety.

  • Keep the conversations going with young people in your life. Ask kids about their online friends, bring up the tough topics of sex and sexuality. Show children and teens what a healthy romantic relationship looks like.

  • Invest in a trusted online safety tool like Bark, (use our code to give back to our program, Referral/Promo Code: VRHWVDG), Canopy, Gryphon, Circle, and Family Link.

  • Get acquainted with the Community Standards of social media sites and report abuses.

  • Remember, human trafficking is often hidden in plain sight so if you see something – on-line or in your neighborhood – please take note of details and report:

    • Tennessee Human Trafficking Hotline (855) 558-6484 or text “BeFree” to 233733

    • National Human Trafficking Hotline (888) 373-7888 or text “HELP” or “INFO” to 233733

UP NEXT: Stay tuned for the next release and the close of our series, DEMAND Series Part 4: Is Media Driving Demand?

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