Child sex tourism goes suburban, rural, online

But these days, Camp­bell, who works for the anti-traf­fick­ing group The Exodus Road, says it is far less com­mon to see young girls for sale in sex tour­ism hot­spots in cit­ies, as child sex traf­fick­ers turn to out-of-the-way places and the internet.

“Three or four years ago I could walk into sex tour­ism areas and you could see girls that were 14, 15 years old very eas­ily,” said Camp­bell, vice pres­id­ent of glob­al oper­a­tions at US-based The Exodus Road, which helps loc­al author­it­ies res­cue chil­dren sold into forced prostitution.

“But now you are not going to find that. You will find maybe 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds … where we do still see very young girls being sold are in rur­al areas,” he told the Thom­son Reu­ters Foundation.

He said traf­fick­ers oper­ate in sub­urbs or small towns and vil­lages, “where they feel they can oper­ate with impun­ity because the nation­al police aren’t as act­ive there.”

Human traf­fick­ing is the world’s fast­est grow­ing crim­in­al enter­prise worth an estim­ated $150 bil­lion a year.

More than 40 mil­lion people are trapped in mod­ern slavery, accord­ing to new estim­ates by the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Organ­iz­a­tion, human rights group Walk Free Found­a­tion, and Inter­na­tion­al Organ­iz­a­tion for Migration.

In Lat­in Amer­ica, women and girls traf­ficked into sexu­al exploit­a­tion is the most com­mon form of trafficking.

Camp­bell said Venezuelan women and girls are increas­ingly at risk of fall­ing prey to traf­fick­ers look­ing to exploit poverty as tens of thou­sands head to neigh­bour­ing Colom­bia and Brazil to escape a human­it­ari­an and polit­ic­al crisis at home.

“There’s a mar­ket right now for vic­tims that is very enti­cing to traf­fick­ers,” said Camp­bell, adding Venezuelan women are being traf­ficked with­in Lat­in Amer­ica and beyond.

“Traf­fick­ers are experts in exploit­ing the vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies of mar­gin­al­ised people. They are really adept at manip­u­lat­ing the des­per­a­tion of the poor.”

Camp­bell trains people to work under­cov­er and raid places where chil­dren are sold for sex, from bars and brothels to hotels and squares, to identi­fy vic­tims and gath­er evidence.

Typ­ic­ally evid­ence includes video foot­age taken with hid­den cam­er­as of chil­dren being sold that can be used by police to res­cue them and put sex traf­fick­ers behind bars, he said.

Oper­at­ives trained by The Exodus Road work­ing in Thai­l­and. By The Exodus Road.

For the past five years, The Exodus Road has worked mainly in South­east Asia and India but recently moved into Lat­in Amer­ica, a region known as a hub for online child porn, Camp­bell said.

The char­ity has trained five loc­al invest­ig­at­ors who are work­ing under­cov­er and in cyber forensics, he said.

Some of the tech­niques being used to crack child porn rings and identi­fy vic­tims include tech­no­logy to decode encryp­ted files and data scrap­ping, which can pull inform­a­tion off the inter­net on traffickers.

“And then there’s just the por­no­graphy side, the live stream­ing of child rape and so you can have tens of thou­sands of men log­ging in and watch­ing these things take place,” he said.

“There is an issue in Lat­in Amer­ica where it’s kind of a hub for a lot of the traf­fick­ing and recruit­ing of young, young chil­dren and the live stream­ing is done from Lat­in America.”

He said traf­fick­ers are increas­ingly dis­trib­ut­ing child por­no­graphy and selling chil­dren via instant encryp­ted mes­saging ser­vices like What­s­App, social net­works such as Face­book, and sites on the dark web that can allow users to remain anonymous.

“It’s cer­tainly is safer for the traf­fick­er to sell online,” Camp­bell said.

Source: Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, the char­it­able arm of Thom­son Reuters.

Fea­tured image: Child sex tour­ism is mov­ing away from red light dis­tricts like one pic­tured and into the sub­urbs, coun­try areas, and online. Image by The Exodus Road.