THE UNTHINKABLE - CHILDREN TRAFFICKED FOR SEX

"THERE IS A CHILD IN THIS PICTURE IF YOU LOOK HARD ENOUGH"

We often hear term “the innocents of children”. It should be a universal right for each and every child to keep that naivety, simplicity and purity from being spoilt by the exposure to all of societies nastiness and contaminations.

One of my most heartbreaking experiences as a policeman . . . and father of two daughters. . . was when I was working on transnational child exploitation because I interviewed a father who sent his daughter to Australia from Thailand after telling her she was coming to become a hairdresser. The girl was naturally excited, and she dreamt of the new life that awaited her in a country that is viewed throughout south-east Asia as a paradise because of the standard of living enjoyed.

The reality was that she would be forced into debt bondage to have sex with a seemingly never-ending queue of clients because she’d effectively been indentured by her father to human traffickers. When I asked how he, a father, could make such a decision, he responded pragmatically by saying that even though deep down he knew the potential horrors that awaited his daughter, sacrificing her would generate enough income to feed his impoverished family for four years.

His reasoning helped ram home why it’s so easy for criminal networks to prey and exploit people for their financial gain.

The globalisation of crime has seen its transnational proponents spread their trade and misery throughout all corners of the globe.

Human trafficking in all its forms is now considered the fastest growing and second largest criminal enterprise in the world generating over $150.2 billion of illegal profits a year - $99 billion comes from sexual exploitation. Human trafficking has surpassed the illegal sale of arms & it’s expected to surpass the global sale of drugs in the next few years.

Like arms and drug trafficking, human trafficking is also an illicit activity, albeit the commodity is not inanimate such as a drug or a gun. This commodity is a human being who, like a drug or gun attracts a tangible value, for example as a sex object. This object can be used, controlled and sold by traffickers for a good deal of their life and often results in a level of psychological, emotional and physical harm to the victim.

Human trafficking throughout the world is biased neither in gender or age; it is purely driven by demand and there exists a voracious appetite, mostly amongst me for underage children to be sexually exploited. They’ll be sold and used as child prostitutes, seen in the streets or indoors, in such places as brothels, discotheques, massage parlours, bars, hotels, restaurants, etc in many countries across the world. There are even groups who go on holidays on “sex tourism adventures” purely to have sex with a child, freely and without concern of arrest and prosecution due to the ease of corruption.

There are highly professional production entities who promote make and distribute pornography involving children for sale online and through publications and it’s not uncommon to have children sold into groups who make sex shows (both public or private).

Nothing is sacrosanct to the human excrement who financially thrive of the misery subjected into these children.

Individuals and groups will even prey on children following natural disasters. This was seen after the 2015 earthquake and 2010 earthquake in Haiti and also the 2003 boxing day tsunami in Indonesia where traffickers swarmed into the areas, mostly under false pretences to remove children who had lost their families in the event, offering them the ‘good life’ only to turn their hopes into the worst possible nightmare.

To limit the exposure to law enforcement, trafficked children are coached in how to respond to questions, posed by immigration and law enforcement officials of another country. They are threatened - such as threats of physical harm against the individual female and/or her family in their native land should they choose not to fulfil their obligation or contract; they are desensitised – a nice word which really means they are subjected to brutal physically, emotional and sexual abuse to prepare them for the sex industry.

A traffickers modus operandi is to focus and prey on people who are economically or socially vulnerable such as in poor communities in non or developing nations, youth who are living in poverty, or on the streets, or experience physical or sexual abuse, or addiction. They pose as a friend, offering to meals, gifts, or just a sympathetic ear. In some cases, traffickers may use another young person to befriend and recruit their victims. This recruitment can happen in public places such as malls or sporting events, as well as online, through social media sites, or through false advertisements or promises about job opportunities that might appeal to young people, such as modelling or acting. Although runaway and homeless youth are particularly vulnerable, there are also several examples of victims who were groomed and recruited while living at home and even attending school.

Using these methods, over time the trafficker is no longer a stranger, but someone the victim knows and even trusts which is known as “grooming”. With this trust in place, traffickers don’t need to kidnap their victims. They can convince them to show up willingly. This perceived choice in the beginning often results in feelings of shame, guilt, or self-blame for victims and survivors who later try to leave their traffickers.

It is also not uncommon in some circumstances for parents and family members to sell children for sex in exchange for money, drugs, or something of value. In these situations, the trafficker is already someone with proximity to the victim and knows enough about the victim to even isolate and manipulate them.

Nowadays, the internet is a major contributor of vulnerability for children, not just the open web, or surface web that is used by most when interacting online and criminal organisations have taken to human trafficking like a fish takes to the water because it is easy and inexpensive to buy, move and exploit vulnerable girls and children. Also, low risk of detection and prosecution of technology-facilitated human trafficking compared to the risk associated with traditional, forms of trafficking makes online sex trafficking an attractive illegal activity. One child or girl can generate several thousand dollars a day for traffickers as they can subject them to daily abuse and repeated sale unlike other illicit activities like the drug trade.

The web is the “visible” surface layer, it’s the top of the iceberg we see above the water line which represents about 5% of the total web. Below the water mark, the iceberg is the “deep web” and accounts for approximately 90% of all websites. In fact, this hidden web is so large that it's impossible to discover exactly how many pages or websites are active at any one time. Finally, there is the “dark web” which is used for keeping internet activity anonymous and private, which can be helpful in both legal and illegal applications. While some use it to evade government censorship, it has also been known to be utilized for highly illegal activity and requires specialist hardware and software to operate in and in many criminal activities requires a personal endorsement from an active member and user of a site.

There are several groups operating within the dark web who prey and exploit children. Groups such as the Black Death Group based in Eastern Europe that was operating on the Dark-Web and involved with selling sex slaves to Saudi Arabia as well as Dark-Web virgin auctions of girls as young as 15. Disturbing adverts for the girls included their age, hair colour and measurements. The group were known to ‘auction’ young girls with a starting price for some of $1.4 million (AUD).

The crime group also claimed “that they could transport their victims globally,” and they were also willing to kidnap a specific target for one’s needs. That is, if a particular child sex offender had a predilection for a specific gender, age, look or nationality they would “hunt” for them using their networks. However, such a service would come at a considerable price, especially for some destinations that were difficult to navigate around law enforcement. The method of capture was quite easy, simple and quick. Once a child was identified fitting a particular request, the child was snatched, quicky injected with ketamine or similar sedating type substance, handcuffed or restrained, mouth covered and placed in a gym bag or suitcase before being quickly transported to their destination where they would be handed over to their ‘owner’.

Across the Dark Web, experienced child sex offenders teach one another how to evade law enforcement authorities and discuss encryption and anonymity techniques to avoid detection online. In the United States alone, traffickers traffic nearly 200,000 children for sex, and a pimp can generate $150,000 to $200,000 a year per child. It is well known amongst law enforcement circles that several dark net websites provide live streaming of the rape and abuse of children for ‘pay per view’ is offered to ‘clients’. Child sex offenders throughout Asia connect to video feeds where they direct, the child-rapists to carry out specific fantasies. In one incident investigated by police, a person could order a group of eight men to rape an eight-year-old girl directing his fantasies in real time for a paltry sum of $100 USD. As the images are streamed instead of being downloaded, there is no recorded evidence to prove the crimes.

The dark-net has an estimated 2.5 million daily visitors. It provides not only a hiding place for human traffickers and pornographers; It has become a haven for many of them. Authorities estimate that 50,000 people in the U.S. alone access the Deep Web for trading child pornography. In Australia, the US based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) refers approximately 18,000 internet IP addresses to the Australian Federal Police each year for investigation and that number is exponentially rising each year, however it is unknown howe many are trolling the dark-net to assuage their personal pleasure. The nature of the dark-net makes it very difficult to track down these people, despite the best efforts of law enforcement. The dark-net is the reflection of the real world; dark-net is nothing more than an eyehole into this unfortunate reality. A solution for which lies in the real world.

So, what are some suggestions for ways you can help protect your child or a child you may know?:

· Educate yourself and your child on what human trafficking looks like and understand what common grooming tactics used by child sex offenders are.

· Learn about online safety and the risks of sharing personal information with strangers who may not be who they say they are online and educate your children on this.

· Establish open lines of communication early on with your child so they feel comfortable enough to talk to you about what is going on in their lives. Discuss how they can recognize and remove themselves from uncomfortable situations before they become urgent or dangerous.

· Talk to your child about human trafficking. There are different strategies for talking to children of every age.

· Lastly love and cherish our children, as not every child has an opportunity to feel and embrace this.