So You Want to End Child Sex Trafficking? Here’s How to Find Organizations That Are Truly Doing That

Kelsey Bourgeois

Aug 2, 2020·39 min read

By: Kelsey Bourgeois in collaboration with Kyli Rodriguez-Cayro, Grace Humiston, and Jinx.

There is a resurgence of energy around ending human sex trafficking right now. And we can all agree that no one should be forced into sex work, and that abuse of children is particularly heinous. But what actually is sex trafficking and, just as importantly, are our current efforts to end it really helping?

First things first. Why are so many people suddenly concerned now, particularly Republicans who otherwise were happy to rush to the defense of alleged child predator Roy Moore? What has caused this acute aboutface? I have a couple suspicions. It’s worthwhile to consider these trending issues with a meta view because you want to be sure you’re not inadvertently furthering a political or financial agenda you don’t actually agree with.

Ok, here are my four theories for *why* this is happening right now.

1. The main conversations in our country as of late have been around systemic racism and the mass deaths from COVID-19. What could possibly be more important to talk about than those things? ChIlD sEx TrAfIcKiNg. It’s a conversation-ender because it’s the perfect topic for whataboutism. Once someone mentions it, it shoots down any other conversations because this one just has to be the most important. The reality is that all these issues intersect, so there’s no reason to pit them against each other or fall for this distraction tactic. Fighting systemic racism would help victims of sex trafficking, so don’t fall for the either/or arguments. Why are people so eager to distract from those topics right now? Because COVID and racism are somehow controversial topics? Or because they actively don’t want to have to face those uncomfortable realities?
2. Another major conversation right now is about defunding the police. But again, what better argument against that than “BUT THEY HELP THE CHILDREN.” So, bad news: no they don’t. In fact, police are a major source of violence against all people, including people in the sex trade and they don’t do anything to really help them. More on that later. Just noting that child sex trafficking is absolutely not a valid argument against defunding the police. It is a valid argument for funding social services, though.
3. Republicans have a habit of passing horrible legislation under the guise of ending child sex trafficking. They previously did it with a pair of laws called FOSTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) and SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act), both passed in 2018. But actually, the FBI has reported the pair of bills has made it harder for them to find and catch child sex traffickers. They also made all people in the sex trade less safe and limited everyone’s — inside and outside the sex trade — free speech. Now, Republicans are at it again with the so-called EARN IT Act. EARN IT stands for “Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technology Act of 2020.” Its stated purpose is to “prevent, reduce, and respond to online sexual exploitation of children.” It sounds good. However, just like with FOSTA/SESTA, the name is totally misleading and is just there to make it hard for legislators to vote against it. The EARN IT Act would actually just completely end privacy for EVERYONE on the internet, including end-to-end encryption texting between two people. In other words: this act is a violation of our constitutional rights.
4. There are actual atrocities being committed against children that we could all be fighting against. Remember that there are children in cages here, and that the federal government has literally *lost* 3000 of them. Migrant children are being forcibly adopted (aka kidnapped) by American families. It is legal to bring a child to the U.S. to be married to an adult in 47 states, which could be considered a legal form of child sex trafficking. There are children living in poverty and food insecurity. There are children without health care and health insurance. There are clergy who continue to abuse children, yet are shielded by their “religious privileges.” Yet, instead of caring about these very real scandals, the internet was wholly engrossed by a conspiracy theory that Wayfair has been selling children in industrial sized cabinets — which has been traced back to a Qanon subreddit. By the way, Wayfair was not selling people, but they do provide supplies to ICE detention centers, so you can just hate them for that. Last but not least, there is actual human trafficking happening at the U.S. Mexico border due to 45’s policies. People and organizations focused on fake atrocities against children instead of any one of the actual ones listed here really seems like a distraction tactic.

Then of course the topic of child sex trafficking is getting ratcheted up and pressed on by orgs trying to make money off the moment. I’ll explain this later, but this isn’t necessarily nefarious, depending on how it’s done.

Ok, so whatever the reason for this topic trending right now, it is an actual problem and it’s a fact that we are now talking about it. Great. Let’s talk about it! I, like many of you, would love to live in a world where no one is coerced into doing sex work. I work with nonprofits, so I want to help you learn how to evaluate which nonprofits to support. If you really care about this issue, it would benefit you to find the organizations that are the most effective at the stated goal so that your dollars and support do the most good! I’m going to show you how to find those. Note: I’ll be focusing on sex trafficking specifically, even though the majority of trafficking that occurs is within other industries besides sex work.

Big content warning up front: I will not describe violence in detail, but will mention it. Additionally, I do not speak for every sex worker or survivor of human trafficking. Those communities are not monoliths and there are a variety of experiences among them. My opinions here are my own. They have been formed by listening to people with lived experience, reading actual research, and working with nonprofits.

If you don’t read any further, the TL;DR of this is that 1) trafficking is not what you’ve been led to believe it is and 2) all people in the sex trade, including those who’ve been coerced or trafficked, need rights, resources and support. They do not not need to be “rescued.” If your goal in getting involved here is to force every person involved in the sex trade out of it, you can turn around right now and find a new pet cause (may I suggest poverty because actual children suffer daily with food insecurity). Seriously. However, if your goal is to reduce violence against people within the industry, prevent coercion and trafficking, and make it so those who want to exit easily can, especially children and those who have been trafficked, read on! (If you are here purely to evaluate O.U.R., you can easily compare them to my criteria and I’ve also linked to a lot more information on them at the very end.)

• A note real quick since lots of Mormons and former Mormons will read this. Remember that the bedrock of your religion is ostensibly free agency. You have to extend that to everyone and cut the judgment out of your motivation. It truly doesn’t matter if you “agree with” sex work or think it’s okay as a chosen profession. The goal is to empower people to be able to have truly free agency, yeah? Also, Jesus was very into sex worker rights, so I guess WWJD? Definitely not what most Christians do. If you’re coming at this with the idea that you know best, take a deep breath and find some humility so that you learn from people who’ve been here longer and know more. You want to really help, right? Okay, then don’t come in assuming you know the answers to a complex issue, especially if you have no lived experience in it.

The first thing you need before evaluating an “anti-trafficking” org is a basic understanding of the sex trade (I’m choosing to put anti-trafficking in quotations because many of the orgs who call themselves this are not actually so). If you already know this stuff or genuinely don’t care about anyone except literal children who have been abducted, you can skip down to the heading “How to find an organization that is really helping end child sex trafficking.”

The sex trade is not nearly as simple as it’s going to sound here, but this is a good starting framework to begin thinking about it. There are a variety of reasons people participate in the sex trade. The three main groups of sex workers are those who do it because they want to and like the job, those who do it because it’s the best option for them even though they don’t necessarily want to, and those who are actively threatened, coerced or manipulated into it. The way legitimate groups like DecrimNY talk about it appears on the front page of their website:

“We seek to improve the lives of people who perform sexual labor by choice, circumstance, or coercion, people profiled as such, and communities impacted by the criminalization of sex work and sexual exchange.” -Decrimny

But those three groups — those performing labor by choice, circumstance or coercion — aren’t really as distinct as you’d imagine. It’s more of a spectrum and oftentimes people will exist on different parts of it at different times in their lives. Legally, people under 18, children, cannot consent to sex or sex work. But the reality of older teens especially is a bit more complicated.

So, first, the sex trade has been around forever and it’s not going anywhere. Second, consensual sex work is a thing. There are people who produce, sell, and buy erotic labor. They do so as consenting adults, whether they are workers or producers, buyers or consumers. Whether you like that or “agree with it” doesn’t really matter. You don’t get to control what consenting adults do. And if you’re trying, you’re actually not interested in “freeing” people from control, you’re interested in controlling people. More on this later when evaluating orgs. Additionally, every single effort at eradicating the sex trade altogether (like the Nordic Model or “end demand”) just makes it more dangerous for everyone involved. This has been studied and proven again and again. So just drop the notion that you’re going to get every single person out of the sex trade and get used to the idea that there are people who want to be there and they deserve rights and safety, the same as anyone else.

So what about those doing sex work who don’t really want to be? What about ChilDrEn?! Okay, now we are talking. First let’s address those who do sex work out of circumstance, including those people under 18. This group consists of people who don’t have a lot of choices; they present the most damning case against American society. These are people facing poverty who can make more money and have more flexibility and autonomy doing sex work than any other job. These might be people experiencing homelessness because society’s safety nets have failed them. They might be people living with criminal records for things related to homelessness, drug use, or doing what is sometimes called “survival sex work.” I’ve put the term “survival sex work” in quotes because it can be argued that all sex work is survival sex work. Sex workers need resources to survive: welcome to capitalism. All of us do survival ______ (fill in the blank with the way you earn a living). So in this sense, consensual sex work and circumstance-based sex work are the same thing.

But what I’m describing above is people who really would rather not be doing sex work, but for whom it is the best option. The difference, for discussion purposes, between consensual and circumstance-based sex work, is whether that person could easily exit the industry if they wanted to. Some of the most privileged sex workers could pretty easily walk away and get a different job. So, if it bothers you that some people’s best option is sex work, especially young people and literal children under 18, there is so much you can do to help. The main thing being: give them better options! Here are a couple ideas:

• You can advocate for decriminalizing sex work, so that those who have done sex work don’t have criminal records. Important note here: we are not looking to legalize sex work, we are looking to decriminalize it. And please don’t panic! Coercion, trafficking, and abuse would all still be illegal if sex work is decriminalized. A criminal record makes it very hard to exit the industry and get another job (look into “ban the box” for more on this). This would also reduce the amount of violence they experience from the state.
• You can advocate for more affordable housing so that people can be housed without having to do sex work if they don’t want to.
• You can advocate for decriminalization of drug use, so that using drugs and doing sex work are safer and folks are brought closer to resources for them to stop (if they want to) without fearing criminalization.
• You can advocate for free healthcare, free substance abuse treatment, free mental health care, free job training, free housing, free education, etc.

Basically, you can advocate for a society where people — especially young people — have other, better options. This would decrease the amount of people doing sex work out of circumstance. Additionally, these changes would make children less vulnerable to trafficking in the first place. Preventing coerced sex work is equally important as helping people out of it. Unfortunately, COVID-19 (and also FOSTA/SESTA) have actually made the number of circumstance-based workers swell. The main way to help the people doing this work that don’t really want to be, including children, is creating a simple and well resourced path out and letting them choose whether or not to take it. You can’t just pluck a person out of sex work and then wash your hands of them. Unfortunately, tons of orgs think they can and end up doing significant damage when those they “rescue” tend to fall back into abusive situations (looking at you, orgs who drop into foreign countries, “raid and rescue,” then abandon people without any resources).

More immediately, if you want to help circumstance-based workers, you can take the dollars you were going to give to some fear-mongering, racist, white savior org and give them to orgs that are on the ground working to better the lives of those workers. Your local SWOP chapter (Sex Worker Outreach Project) is a good place to go. But any organization doing harm reduction and street outreach is great. Workers on the streets are the most vulnerable to violence, coercion, trafficking, etc. So giving these people access to resources and items like condoms, clean drug use kits, toiletries, food, money, etc. is a super high yield and immediately beneficial way to help! Remember the goal is to give people choices and resources, not force them to do or not do anything (otherwise you are acting like a trafficker yourself by forcing your will onto people and ignoring their needs and desires). A lot of LGBTQ support orgs are also good because, unfortunately, members of that community often end up in the sex trade due to lack of choices and being abandoned by their support networks. Some BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) face disproportionate poverty and criminalization and may also do sex work out of circumstance. Hopefully you’re noticing a pattern. Those most oppressed and vulnerable to coercion are those who are most vulnerable, period. It’s all connected, y’all.

Okay, that background leads into the next idea you need to understand: sex work is work. It is labor in exchange for resources or money. It’s work. Ideally, in the workplace, everyone is compensated fairly and protected from abuse and when abuse happens, someone is held accountable and those to whom harm has been done are made whole. Now think about all the jobs you’ve had. Have you ever had to do things you didn’t want to or didn’t believe in? Have you ever suffered violence or abuse from a customer or boss? Were they held accountable? Now imagine you were working in an industry that was illegal. You’d have even fewer workplace protections. You couldn’t go to the authorities with abuse accusations because you’d be criminalized and potentially victimized again as well as discredited because of your “choice” to be in said industry.

Next, I’m going to discuss violence against sex workers, because the sources of that are not what you think and include some “anti-trafficking” orgs. This is also a content warning, though I will not describe any abuse in detail.

Sex workers everywhere along the spectrum (from consenting workers to the most vulnerable coerced or trafficked workers, including children) can experience violence. However, you need to understand that violence is not inherent in the trade. There is a way for sex work to exist without violence and with consequences for any violence that does happen. That is not the system we have now. Violence against sex workers comes from three main sources and, unfortunately, you are part of one of them. The first is the one outsiders like to fixate on: violence from clients. The second is violence from the state or institutions (law enforcement and our carceral system as well as *many* “anti-trafficking” orgs). The third is people outside the industry who treat those inside extremely poorly, allow the first two to keep abusing sex workers, and add to stigma and cruelty while blocking resources that could help.

I’ll start with the third since that might be you. If you’ve ever made, laughed at or stood by for a joke about a dead hooker, a dumb stripper, or a street worker living with addiction or other mental illness, you have actively participated in violence against sex workers. If you’ve ever discussed or played into the idea that anyone doing sex work must be broken and have daddy issues, you are part of the problem. If you’ve ever bought into the idea that everyone doing sex work got there by making bad choices, you have a really narrow and privileged worldview. If you’ve ever spouted off judgment about something you have no lived experience in, congratulations, you have made things worse. Cut it out now.

One of the things that makes it very hard for sex workers who want to exit the industry to do so is the stigma that we all perpetuate around it. Stigma feeds shame, makes it harder to access resources, emboldens abusers to harm workers, makes interpersonal interactions hurtful, and ultimately convinces society not to invest in the kind of resources needed to help make the lives of people in the sex industry better or to offer an exit strategy for those who want it. I know a lot about this because I used to be this way. I’m ashamed to admit that I used to genuinely think that no one would willingly do sex work and they all needed rescuing. I used to think the only way people did sex work was because they were addicted to drugs or facing poverty and I used to not see those things as a societal problem. The good news is that you, like me, can change your mind and start being a part of the solution as soon as today!

Ok, now a bit on violence from the state. Let’s start here: police officers in 32 states can legally have sex with people in their custody (aka: rape them because you can’t consent to sex if you are literally being detained). This is the kind of thing we shouldn’t need a law against but the fact that we do speaks volumes. Law enforcement officers are one of the main perpetrators of violence against sex workers. They will solicit sexual acts in exchange for avoiding arrest and charges, for example. Additionally, all kinds of workers end up in the “criminal justice” system. Yes, including actual victims of sex trafficking. Additionally, did you know that, in many places, a person can be charged with solicitation for simply carrying condoms? And that especially Black Trans women are often profiled as sex workers and criminalized for it, whether or not they actually are sex workers? And last, but certainly not least, actual children and young adults who are trafficked have been, and continue to be, jailed for defending themselves against their captors. Just take a look at Cyntoia Brown, Alisha Walker, Chrystul Gizer, Zephi Trevino and countless more (visit Survived and Punished for more on this). Side note: there is a documentary about Cyntoia Brown on Netflix, she did not authorize it, nor is she profiting from it, so I wouldn’t recommend watching it. If you want to know about her story, she wrote a book you can buy to actually support her.

The law and the people who uphold it don’t have the knowledge or interest in distinguishing between consenting workers and non-consenting. They will criminalize every kind of sex worker, regardless of why a person is doing sex work. The legal community will also try to impose their assumptions on any sex worker. A great example is the Robert Kraft sting in Florida a few years back. Initially everyone was reporting it as clear case of human sex trafficking, but upon further evaluation, that wasn’t true at all. This shows just how eager authorities can be to impose their narrative on a situation to get the outcome they want, rather than listen to the people actually involved. The main way to decrease this violence is to decriminalize sex work. Period.

Last, and in some ways least, violence from clients. People without lived experience in this realm are obsessed with this one. Talk to any stripper or sex worker and they have likely had someone ask “what’s the worst thing that’s happened to you while working?” It is a disgusting fascination that perpetuates a dangerous myth: that anyone who is a buyer in the sex trade is violent. Are there violent patrons? Absolutely. Are they all violent? NO. Two things that could help minimize violence: decriminalization of sex work so that workers can report violence without entering the system themselves and Bad John lists, which workers compile to help warn each other from problem patrons. Well, FOSTA/SESTA made it so that no website will host these lists. They get pulled from Google and everywhere else. Sex workers have had to get very creative in how they share these lists. FOSTA/SESTA also made it nearly impossible for workers to advertise online and screen clients, which forced more of them onto the streets where the rates of violence are much higher. So those are a few examples of ways we not only allow violence against sex workers, we have laws that actively make them less safe.

How to find an organization that is really helping end child sex trafficking

Alright alright alright. You may be wondering “when is she gonna get to the chained up children in basements that need us?!?!”. I’ll do that now. Yes, there are literal children who have been forced into sex work. No, it doesn’t happen how you think it does. And in fact, the myths about kids stolen from parking lots and smuggled through airports that you learned about from “awareness” campaigns are just that: myths. And they are actively harming actual victims while scaring you into giving them money that will not help anyone but the organization.

The narrative that organizations use to scare you: that your children could be kidnapped and sold into sex slavery is actually *extremely* rare. The majority of people being sex trafficked are coerced by people they know (and may trust) because they were vulnerable already. Also, they rely on emotional manipulation and isolation much more than physical shackling or blocking movements, for the most part.

So what would help? The good news is, we actually know a lot about what would help and I’ll describe that in my list of criteria I use when evaluating an organization that claims to be anti-trafficking. I should say up front that a lot of the organizations doing harm here may actually believe they are helping. I’m not making assertions as to their motives. I am making assertions as to their impact, which matters much more than their intent. It doesn’t matter if they want to do good if they actively harm people instead.

Here are the ten criteria I use.

1. Who runs it? Do they have any lived experience in the sex industry?

The reason this one matters is the people who know best the difference between a consensual worker and a trafficking victim and all that middle ground we discussed, are people who have been or are currently a part of one of those groups. Sex workers also don’t want anyone to be in the industry that doesn’t want to be there! And they know the fact I said above: many people will exist at different places on that sex work spectrum throughout their lives. Some people who did sex work because they had no other choice may end up sticking with it when they do have other choices. Some people who start out in full control can get caught up with a bad actor and be manipulated, coerced or trafficked. Lastly, I know this is hard for some to understand: but some people who are literal survivors of child sex trafficking choose to do sex work later, even though they don’t have to. You don’t have to understand this, but you do have to respect it and allow people to speak for themselves about their experience, needs and beliefs.

A lot of “anti-trafficking” orgs are little more than savior organizations. If, for example, an organization has a cult of personality around the leader and views him or her as a hero, but that leader has no lived experience in the industry, that’s a good indication this is a self serving project and that they’re gonna do some damage. Or, if the leader’s lived experience comes from their work in law enforcement. Since we know that trafficking victims often face violence from the state, you should be extremely skeptical of anyone moving from any type of law enforcement into “saving” trafficking victims. These are the people who actually do not know the difference between consenting workers and coerced workers and they have a proven track record of not knowing and not caring to learn. So ex-law enforcement run groups will either say everyone doing sex work is a trafficking victim or *only* be interested in helping the “perfect” victims, severely limiting their ability to help and perpetuating stigma and violence.

The exception to the rule about lived experience is if the org is run by someone without experience, but they have people with that experience on their boards or their staff. They listen to people who actually know. So look for that information.

Another thing that happens here is SWERFs jump on board and cause a bunch of problems. SWERFs (Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists) also have a very misleading name. They are neither radical, nor feminist because their ideology is quite literally built on *excluding* a marginalized group. What’s fascinating is that a lot of SWERFs take their ideas and create “anti-trafficking” orgs that are actually just anti-sex work orgs, which is why I’m usually using quotations when referring to these groups and these types of people. They do nothing to help people who are trafficked and only perpetuate stigma and violence. This group are some of the worst victim-blamers. Ashley Judd is maybe the most outspoken celebrity in this category, she has compared sex work to rape again and again, while not listening to workers telling her otherwise. Other ways to spot SWERFs since they won’t always identify with that acronym is if they say all forms of sex work are inherently exploitative, including porn, stripping and camming. They will also always speak over actual sex workers or cherry pick a survivor of trafficking that agrees with them while ignoring the vast majority of survivors and current workers. I don’t know about you, but my feminism is based on believing people when they tell you their truth.

It’s really tragic because often, SWERFs are survivors of sexual violence themselves and that’s the ground they stand on to say they know that sex work is inherently violent. In a better world, survivors of sexual violence would all support sex worker rights so that sex workers didn’t have to suffer sexual violence. This group of people will say things like “selling your body is wrong.” But sex workers aren’t selling their bodies anymore than a physical therapist, coal miner or NBA player is selling theirs. Sex workers are selling a service, and when someone doesn’t know the difference, they expose that they know nothing about the industry. They think all sex workers offer every type of sexual service and there are no bounds. Not so. Ideally, each sex worker sets their own limits on what they do and do not offer as well as the price of those offerings. Clients who violate those terms are perpetrators of violence. Workers who don’t get a say in what they do and do not offer are a group that needs some resources to either exit the industry or work in a different way where they can set their terms. Remember, we can’t end sex work. But we can make it safer and help people who want to exit be able to do so. This begins with decriminalizing sex work.

So, if the organization you’re considering supporting is run by someone centering themselves as the hero but has no lived experience (or is ex-law enforcement) or is run by SWERFs, that’s not an effective organization to support.

2. Do they support decriminalizing sex work?

One of the strongest arguments for decriminalizing sex work is to help victims of sex trafficking. There are lots of reasons for this, but I’ll share two:

1. When consenting sex workers don’t fear criminalization, they can work with organizations to identify who is being trafficked or coerced and who is choosing to be there. These are the people who know the difference.
2. This may surprise you if you’re new here: but people who have been trafficked often have criminal records for doing sex work. Seriously. Law enforcement and our system do not take the time or have the nuanced understanding to differentiate, so literal survivors of trafficking are often left with criminal records that make re-entering society SO MUCH more difficult. Again, just take a look at Survived and Punished for proof that even survivors of sex trafficking are not safe from the state.

A solid organization supports decriminalization for these two reasons, even if they don’t like or approve of consenting sex work. They, and you, don’t have to be pro-consenting sex work to understand that decriminalizing it would help the most vulnerable among the community. Because if an org’s true goal is to help people get out of dangerous situations, they will want every advantage they can get to accomplish this, including working with current and former sex workers. But I’m hopeful that if you’re someone who supports people’s bodily autonomy, you will support those who choose to do sex work.

Here is Human Rights Watch’s page on decriminalization.

Here is the ACLU’s.

Here is Amnesty International’s.

3. Where do your dollars go? Is there transparency and accountability for the work they do?

This one is crucial. Lots of the worst kinds of these orgs actually pay their top staff ludicrously high salaries and spend an exorbitant amount of money on propaganda, advertising (“awareness campaigns”) and “civilian training” (which is actually just horrifying vigilantism and causes a ton of harm — see number 5 for more on this). Where you actually want your dollars to go is towards helping victims. Any org worth its salt spends the most money on *actually helping* victims. Their tact for this varies from org to org, but take a good look at the financials, which are publicly available if they are a nonprofit. If they are not a nonprofit, run the other way. If they are, see how they spend their money and decide if that’s how you want your dollars spent.

Here’s one good aggregator of this data and here is another (this spreadsheet tracks Trafficking/Rescue Organizations with some of this data too for easy comparison). In general, looking at the pay of execs compared to other staff and services rendered is a good way to see what a nonprofit is about. It’s not always possible to find salaries for everyone at an org, one trick is to search job listings as the ethical nonprofits list salary ranges, usually. I also want to see that most of the money is going towards the cause I’m actually supporting. I also see if they are spending more on advertising to get more donations than they are on using the donations to help the cause. I don’t have a lot of money to give so I want to be sure the money I do give goes as far as possible towards the real issues. But again, it’s totally up to you to decide if those salaries and spending patterns seem reasonable and if you’re comfortable with your dollars paying them.

Some anti-trafficking orgs especially will offer total transparency into how many victims they’ve helped and what that help has looked like, these are some of the best to support usually. Every org can say whatever they want, but you want to look at what they are actually doing. If their tactics are opaque and they offer no public information or proof of their work, that’s a big problem.

4. How do they talk about sex work? Specifically, do they acknowledge the existence of people who do consensual sex work?

This question kind of dovetails with whether or not an org is for decriminalization. However, a lot of the more religious orgs just can’t bring themselves to that point. If you’re religious or have some other reason you can’t get there either, even though evidence says that would protect the most people, then you’re at least looking for an acknowledgement that consensual sex work is a thing. What I mean is that if an org literally says that all sex workers are trafficking victims, then that exposes that the org doesn’t know anything about the trade and are more interested in forcing their beliefs onto people than actually helping them have the freedom to make their own choices. I find this category of org especially fascinating because they talk about “saving” people, but then attempt to put those same people under a new set of guidelines and control. A few clues are if they’re using the pejorative and outdated terms “prostitute”, “hooker” and “whore.” (Note that actual sex workers are increasingly reclaiming those words, but that’s for them and not for anyone else to do.)

More generally, does the org seem to see the group of people they are aiming to “rescue” as people? Do they allot them any autonomy or say they allow the survivor to control what their “rescue” looks like? Even if they don’t think consenting sex work could possibly be a thing, they should *at a minimum* be focused on a tailored approach, led by a survivor. Not a one size fits all method of “saving” them that comes with more rules and regulations “for their own good.”

This is important because many of these orgs claim to want to “save” people from the sex trade using the argument that all sex workers are being forced into the trade. But if they can’t acknowledge that there are people who *want* to be there, then what they are ultimately doing is also trying to force people into something. In this way, anti-trafficking orgs actually act like traffickers. The arguments around this usually revolve around the claim that those in the sex industry don’t know better. If you see this level of condescension and “we know best,” this is not an org to support.

5. What kind of narratives do they use to convince you this is a problem?

Another reason there is a resurgence of discussion about this is that nonprofits who work on this will grab any news moment about trafficking as a chance to gain new donors. This isn’t a necessarily nefarious practice, all nonprofits do it. The important thing here is *how* they do it. Broadly, human trafficking (including sex trafficking) is a complicated issue. Anyone presenting it as a cut and dry issue through a narrative of good guys versus bad guys and then presenting themselves as the only people who can stop it, is not an organization who understands the problem well enough. These groups are very likely to do more harm than good.

For example, a bunch of orgs took this recent Wayfair conspiracy as a chance to push a compelling narrative about children chained in dark basements even though the data does not support this as even a significant minority of sex trafficking. This is an example of using fear-mongering to get money.

This use of fear-mongering is especially prevalent when orgs that are based in the U.S. fixate on foreign countries. These orgs are usually promoting the narrative that there are bunch of chained-up, enslaved children in other, less “civilized” and less “evolved” societies serving as sex slaves and that the savior, the American (very often white American) is the only person or group who can help! This is harmful because these groups literally show up in countries where they have no cultural competency and do something called “Raid and Rescue,” basically plucking people (oftentimes children) out of a situation with no plan for how to help them re-enter society. Or a vague plan of “working with other orgs” to provide aftercare services. Again, they should be able to always tell you exactly which orgs they work with and how they have been vetted. Even worse: some of these orgs actually will “rescue” kids and then bring them back to the U.S. to be adopted by parents who may or may not have the cultural competency and knowledge of trauma to appropriately support the children.

If you are genuinely worried about this issue in another country: find an organization in that country to give money to, or an established, proven global network like UNICEF. The people on the ground will know how best to support victims in their community, not random white people from the U.S. who fly home without any accountability or follow-up.

Another common scare tactic are the awareness signs and posters you see in public spaces like airports and bus stations that cite the most bizarre things as “signs of trafficking.” They will also cite some of the debunked stats I’ll mention in number 10. Sometimes this awareness campaign includes something some orgs call “civilian training.” Basically this just means “training” regular people to call law enforcement on others. This is ALWAYS a bad idea and I’ll show you why. Here are a few things I’ve seen actual organizations claim are signs of trafficking and train random people to look for:

• Anxiety
• Tattoos
• Tiredness
• Depression
• Lack of friends
• Women traveling alone
• Women dining alone
• Women with a small suitcase
• Disheveled hair
• Drug or alcohol use
• Women dressing sexually
• Women dating older men
• Someone dressed inappropriately for the weather

I wish I was joking about this list, because if you’re like me, you’ve fit many of these descriptions at various times. Were you trafficked? In reality, you can’t tell whether someone is being trafficked by using these lists. You actually can’t tell whether someone is being trafficked by looking at them at all. Trafficking victims often blend right into society. They may attend school, have friends, even participate in extracurricular activities. This is one of the reasons the issue is so complicated.

Unfortunately, it’s not only anti-trafficking orgs that have this list. Many businesses have started “training” their employees to spot “trafficked” people using these kinds of lists. Marriott is just one glaring example. What these lists do is give law enforcement cause for harassing someone. It also makes folks suffering from mental illness or experiencing homelessness a target.

So, if your org has lists like this or trains citizen vigilantes, they are exposing they do not understand the problem well enough to be working on it. Also, those tend to be structured like MLMs, which should warn you off them. Take your money elsewhere.

6. What does their actual work entail? Is it preventing the problem or claiming to solve an existing problem?

So, combatting child sex trafficking can look a lot of different ways and there is nothing wrong with a multi-pronged approach. But remember there are more and less useful ways and if you’re trying to be the most effective advocate possible, you need to know some of the most common methods and whether or not they are evidenced-based.

Some orgs focus on digital security and keeping kids safe on the internet. Others work to identify victims and then provide them with significant resources and support to exit the industry. Some focus on alleviating the underlying issues that may make children vulnerable to trafficking like poverty, lack of healthcare, homophobic policies and ideas, racism, issues in the foster care system, etc. These tactics, depending on how they are deployed, can be really effective ways to help children. Especially if they are able to provide significant resources and support for quite a while after someone exits the industry.

Now let’s talk about another class of “anti-trafficking” org: the savior kind, which unfortunately is more common. Their focus might be on going to foreign countries to do expensive and flashy rescue missions, but without any cultural competency or network of support and resources for people after they are “rescued.” Or going into the poorer neighborhoods where more BIPOC live to do the same type of thing. These groups are often led by privileged white people. They tend to see themselves as white saviors. This is a clear indication this is not a group to support as they are inherently racist and uninformed, and therefore more likely to do more damage than good. If the term white savior is new to you, I’d recommend spending some time learning about it. Another clue here can be what they name themselves. Do they co-opt savior language or maybe even use well known phrases associated with other movements?

This one is really important: do they say they are the only ones capable of doing this work? Do they say if they don’t save these victims, no one will? This exposes an extreme god complex and betrays a gap in their knowledge about this issue. This is also Abuser 101: I’m the only one who can help you/love you/save you, whatever. People with an understanding of the issue and a true desire to help will want to work with others with the same goal, not place themselves above all other efforts or present themselves as *the only* people who care.

Another clue they are more interested in painting themselves as heroes more than helping people is whether or not they care about the privacy of those they are “saving.” Ethical orgs will never use photos or videos of actual children they’ve worked with; they will use stock photos and be sure to tell you so. Any group using a child as a prop should not be supported. Imagine having one of the most traumatic experiences of your life painted all over the internet to earn someone money. Some orgs even use actual footage of raids in their marketing material. Some may even live stream their raids. This is horrifying given that not only can the victim not consent to their image being used beforehand, but no child can consent after. If your argument is that children can’t consent to the sex trade, they also can’t consent to give you license to use their image to get donations. These are not safe or effective places to put your money or support.

Another thing some orgs will do is pressure a survivor into “telling their story”, aka create marketing material for them with their personal trauma. Ideally, if a survivor does decide to endorse an organization, they do so with their own free will and have not been asked to. They should retain all legal rights to their own story and images that can be revoked anytime they feel the org is misusing them. Additionally, these stories are often procured right after “rescue”, when someone is most vulnerable and reliant on an org and so they may not feel they have a choice. In this way, orgs are essentially forcing newly “rescued” people into recruiting others to be “saved” using painfully similar tactics they may have been trained to use to recruit other trafficking victims. It’s really tough to know with these stories from the outside, which is why number 9 is so important to follow through on.

Another approach these orgs often use is “raising awareness.” They may literally spend all their time and money on glossy signs at airports and campaigns featuring kids locked in a basement somewhere. However, awareness of a fake problem doesn’t help anyone, and lots of the awareness based orgs present a false narrative of what’s happening. These are the groups who come up with the lists of signs of trafficking that don’t make any sense. These orgs are a huge waste of your money.

7. If they claim they are “saving” victims, do they offer victim services or work with orgs who do? If not, why not? Are there strings attached to the victim services?

In terms of what we know works and doesn’t work, the best place to put your money and support is either with preventative organizations working to make children less vulnerable or with an organization that helps extradite and rehabilitate people leaving abusive situations. What does the latter actually look like? Ideally a survivor gets to dictate what their exit looks like and a org offers access to as many of the following as possible for as long as possible.

• Free housing and basic needs like clothes, food and hygiene products
• Job training
• Free and accessible healthcare
• Access to education
• Free mental health care by culturally competent therapists that will not re-traumatize them or try to force them into doing one thing or the other.
• Access to substance abuse treatment
• A network of peers to plug into for support
• Legal resources. Some victims may want to pursue criminal charges or law enforcement may try to force them to. This should always be survivor led and *any* interaction with law enforcement should be mediated by a victim advocate and a lawyer, both of whom are not trying to sway the survivor, only inform them of the pros and cons of cooperating with law enforcement.

Unfortunately, some of the orgs that offer this kind of support will only do so if certain conditions are met. For example, a lot of religious orgs will only provide services if the survivor participates in their religion or at least adheres to its rules, especially around drugs or alcohol. Or they will only help if the person doesn’t do sex work again, even if they are now a consenting adult participating. If an org requires rule following and adherence to certain behaviors before they will help someone, they aren’t going to be very effective. The reality of leaving a situation where you have been coerced and manipulated, maybe for years, is actually extremely messy and traumatic in and of itself. It can take years for someone to sift through that process and heal. Conditional assistance severely limits the scope and effectiveness of that help and most commonly results in someone going right back into the abusive situation they were “rescued” from.

Sometimes an org says they offer aftercare but what they mean is they will yank a person from, say, a massage parlor, hand them a bag with flip flops, toothpaste, granola bars and religious pamphlets and that’s it. Now you’ve set that person up to fail in transitioning and made it potentially more dangerous for them to go back to their abusive situation as they may be punished for working with authorities. If an org says that they collaborate with others orgs for aftercare, they should be able to show receipts. As in, they should list exactly who they work with and how those organizations have been vetted. If there are only vague statements about working with other groups but no proof, that’s a red flag.

So, be wary of orgs who either do not offer victim services, offer barely anything, can’t show receipts or offer them with extreme strings or pressure attached. Reminder: all of this should be survivor-led.

Moreover, the most effective orgs live where they work, as they understand the specific needs and challenges within their community. If you want to support global efforts to end human trafficking, at least find a reputable and well-established org to support, such as UNICEF. However, your highest yield bet is going to be by supporting an org in your town, state or country that knows the unique challenges faced by those they are serving.

*A note on sexual abuse generally. When someone has suffered from sexual abuse, their choices were taken from them. The number one thing you can do in supporting a survivor of any type of sexual violence, including trafficking, is to respect their choices and autonomy. They need to learn to trust again that their wishes will be respected. That includes not forcing them to tell you what happened to them, which can be retraumatizing in and of itself. You may not like their choices, but you have to respect them anyway. Remember the main goal here is to give people choices, resources and support, not control them.

8. What is their stance on immigration policy? What are their political leanings generally?

Unfortunately, we know that one of the biggest risk factors in becoming a trafficking victim is immigration status or recent relocation. That means that any group who doesn’t care about immigration, supports a border wall or closed borders or has general animus towards immigrants but works on the issues of trafficking is a savior and doesn’t deserve your money or support. Plain and simple. If an org genuinely wants to help victims of trafficking, they will support immigration reform that allows this group of people to move freely to safety and access services without fear of deportation. Remember earlier when I mentioned there is actually human trafficking happening right now at the U.S. Mexico border? If an org claims to want to end trafficking, but supports the U.S. policies that created those conditions, they are not what they seem.

The reason general political leanings matter is that it doesn’t make sense to advocate for victims of trafficking while also advocating for diminished social services that help make children less vulnerable to being trafficked. This isn’t to say an org must have any specific political leaning, but this will tell you whether they are more interested in *preventing* trafficking or in being a savior to trafficking victims. If they generally want to cut social services, they don’t have an understanding of this issue at all and do not deserve your dollars. Whether or not they work directly on prevention in addition to extradition, they should support both if they truly care about victims.

9. What do other reputable people and organizations in the space think of them? Are there credible accusations of abuse within an org?

Sadly, it’s not uncommon for abusers to start or join these kinds of organizations as a way to shield themselves. Additionally, if your attitude is that you know best and are everyone’s savior, it’s a good bet that you don’t allot anyone their autonomy and cross boundaries often. This is one theory for why we actually see extremely high rates of violence, including sexual violence, from law enforcement. In fact, it’s estimated that law enforcement officers are perpetrators of domestic violence at a rate two to four times higher than the general public, with one study citing 40% of cops as domestic abusers. While there isn’t data available, the attitudes of law enforcement tend to be similar to savior organizations who see themselves as the people who know best for everyone around them.

Additionally, if you ask around the sex worker rights community in the area an anti-trafficking org works (or where they have a lot of supporters), they will usually know whether it’s ethical or not. Remember that sex workers of all stripes, including child sex trafficking victims, can’t really safely report abuse to authorities. But they may feel safe telling their peers. So peer run groups will have the dirt on whether local groups have credible allegations of abuse against those they claim to help.

10. Do they use accurate stats and cite their sources?

If an org has great graphic design and pithy infographics, but doesn’t cite their sources, you should be skeptical. Is this someone’s opinion? If so, whose opinion? Where did these numbers come from? This is just part of being a savvy social media user.

If their stats seem unbelievable or shocking, dig a little deeper. The data may be faulty and placed there to scare you into donating. Organizations who manipulate numbers or use numbers that are very obviously fake will likely be doing this in other places in their org. In other words, you can’t trust they do what they say they do. An org should always tell you where they are pulling those numbers from and a little Googling can usually tell you whether or not those numbers can be disproven (or if the data even exists anywhere else besides that org’s website).

Some of the most common stats that get thrown around by a lot by orgs in this industry have been debunked. Just remember that factual data from the human trafficking industry is extremely hard to accurately obtain, given the nature of the crime. If an org is using any of stats that have been credibly debunked, it is an indication that they either a) do not know how to evaluate data and information or b) they are willfully misleading you to hype you up, elicit an emotional response, and get your donation dollars. An important caveat before even digging into the numbers on any org’s site: you need to understand what definition of sex trafficking is being used to support their numbers. What is actually defined as “sex trafficking” varies between different organizations, law enforcement and actual laws.

Any number from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children should not be taken at face value. Their numbers come from people who call their tip line. Fewer than 1% of those calls are about stranger abductions. About 80% are from state agencies. But get this: they don’t track actual cases. Meaning that if a parent or foster system calls about a kid who ran away, they tally that as a trafficked child. They don’t follow up to see if the kid got home and they count each of these calls as individual cases, even if it’s a call about the same child.

Any number from the Human Trafficking Hotline can also not be taken at face value. They reported 10,949 reports of human trafficking in 2018. But they are also counting based on anonymous callers that are not verified or followed up with at all. Many of these calls, by their own admission, are vague claims like “there is a massage parlor that I think sells hand jobs” or “I saw a suspicious family at the mall.” The thing is, “suspicious” could literally mean a child was of a different race than the family they were with.

In reality, the Department of Homeland Security reported 428 victims of trafficking in 2019 in the U.S. That number represents ALL trafficking, not just child sex trafficking. Given this relatively small number, there is no reasonable explanation for the numbers in the hundreds of thousands or millions. A few other numbers that are commonly cited and have been debunked are that 800,000 children are brought into the U.S. as sex slaves every year. That 800,000 number seems to be a relic from an organization in 1999 that also had no proof behind it and may just be numbers of kids who ran away. Also that 100,000 children are in the sex trade in the U.S. — definitely not accurate. This is not an exhaustive list of misleading data commonly used by “anti-trafficking” orgs, but hopefully it will help you spot obvious misleading information. Oh, and I can’t finish this piece without telling you that the Super Bowl is not the biggest sex trafficking event of the year.

I really recommend listening to this podcast about Human Trafficking. They do the work to figure out where a lot of these numbers came from and show which are bogus and which are real. Update (Aug 11): they did an update debunking more of the myths floating around on Instagram graphics, find it here.

I hope this has been helpful for you in becoming a more effective ally and advocate. Here is a partial list of organizations and resources related to sex work, including trafficking that I personally trust as well as hashtags to peruse to learn more about the sex trade and how we can make it safer for those who want to stay in and easier for those who don’t to leave.

• #rightsnotrescue
• #housingnothandcuffs
• #nobadwhoresjustbadlaws
• #sexworkiswork
• #sexworkisrealwork
• #decrimnow
• #letussurvive
• #fuckfosta #fucksesta
• Anti-Trafficking Review (peer-reviewed journal)
• SWOP (Sex Worker Outreach Project)
• Decrimny
• DecrimNow
• Swop Behind Bars
• Butterflysw
• Survived and Punished
• Hacking//Hustling
• Revolting Prostitutes
• Rate That Rescue
• Police, Prostitution & Politics

O.U.R.

I’m purposefully putting this at the end because while they are getting a lot of focus right now, they don’t meet a single one of my criteria are one of the worst I’ve seen of their kind. I’m really hopeful that if you truly care about ending child sex trafficking, you will use my tips to find more effective orgs and not let this information discrediting one nonprofit turn you off from an entire issue. If you find yourself loyal to this organization, even after learning that their methods are damaging, that may be an opportunity to question what this is really about for you. The answer might be uncomfortable: that you want to *look* like you care without putting in the work to vet organizations, or that you are loyal to a hero character more than the victims that person is claiming to help. Remember it’s never too late to change your mind, and I’ve seen many anti-trafficking folks who used to support O.U.R. do just that upon learning this information.

Here is more info on the problem with O.U.R specifically.

• Lying For the Lord. (pages 19–26. Hint: most of their claims are outright lies)
• The New Abolitionists
• Lying For The Lord. One of their “operatives” has allegations of sexually abusing children they were “saving” on at least two occasions. There is a lot more in this document and elsewhere that you could try to unravel this or you could support an org that actually does good work and doesn’t have any of this baggage. And please remember that unfortunately, these orgs do often become havens for abusers.
• They seem to be working in tandem with the Qanon crowd.
• They use actual footage of children and raids in their promotional materials.
• The Problem With Forced Rescue and Detention in Anti-trafficking Initiatives.
• Borderwall justification…..
• O.U.R. financials.
• SWOPSLC posted some of this info and O.U.R. groupies attacked them for days. They even attacked *literal survivors of child sex trafficking* sharing their negative experiences with O.U.R. If you learned from this piece, please go leave some love there and tip those volunteers, who helped vet and edit this article.

There is more, but honestly I wasn’t interesting in spending any more time on this because a much better use of yours and my time would be finding organizations who are really doing this work and advocating for causes that would make children in our communities and around the world less vulnerable.