A stunning new report ties social media platforms – the most prominent of which is Facebook – to “the majority” of online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases.
The data was revealed in the Human Trafficking Institute’s 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report, according to CBS.
Human Trafficking Institute CEO Victor Boutros said on CBSN Wednesday: “The internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites. Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases.”
The report uses data from every criminal and civil human trafficking case that’s active. “This report actually looks at the last 20 years of trends in the federal government,” Boutros continued.
The report revealed that 30% of all victims identified in federal sex trafficking cases since 2000 were recruited online. In 2020, 59% of online recruitment in active cases took place on Facebook. 65% of identified child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were also attributed to Facebook.