What to Know About Porn and Sex Trafficking

Many people justify their consumption of pornography as a victimless indulgence. After all, the thinking goes, the women are consenting adults, this is how they are choosing to make some money? But what if they're not choosing? What if they're not consenting, and aren't even adults? The huge amount of money involved in the "adult entertainment" industry has proved irresistible to organized crime, pimps, and other illegal profiteers. Sex trafficking is not just providing unwilling prostitutes around the world. It's also responsible for "casting" pornographic movies all over the world.

"Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.” – Benjamin Franklin

What is Sex Trafficking?

Sex traffickers seek out vulnerable boys, girls, and women and lure them, or outright kidnap them, and remove them from their friends and family and force them into performing sex acts and sexual slavery. Most victims find themselves in abusive situations from which escape is both difficult and dangerous. These predators use everything from drugs, physical and sexual abuse, lies, psychological manipulation, and actual imprisonment to get their victims to do what they want.

Often victims are illegally taken across international borders. These people then have to worry about the police and getting arrested and/or imprisoned in a foreign country, whose prisons are not nearly as accommodating as those in the United States. This fear of law enforcement prevents them from getting help even when they have the chance to escape.

Sex traffickers are pernicious criminals that exploit their victims for profit. While organized crime and terrorist organizations play major roles in sex trafficking, local criminals such as pimps and madams also play a role. In a growing number of instances, even schoolmates are playing a major role in entrapping classmates in order to “sell them to others.

How Does Sex Trafficking Interact with Pornography?

Sex traffickers are not particular about the source of their income. Not all victims of sex trafficking are solely used in prostitution or as sex slaves to paying customers. Pornography allows these predators to make money several times from one film. Taking just a few hours to create a low-budget film where they don’t have to pay the “actresses”, gives the criminals another income stream.

Sex trafficking and pornography often have a symbiotic relationship with pornography outlets in constant need of new products and sex traffickers having a steady supply of “talent”. Sex traffickers are not particular about the age of their victims and often use children in these films. While sex trafficking is often thought to be a big problem in third-world countries, it is the money from industrialized countries that allows sex trafficking to flourish. Contrary to popular belief, the United States is a major perpetrator of sex trafficking crimes.

Most pornographic films are sold to sites that make money from advertising revenue. When you are watching pornography, you have no way of knowing the source of the film. Based on the numbers of these films that are being produced with the cooperation of sex traffickers, any viewer of pornography has probably unwittingly funneled money into sex trafficking. Thus, not only supporting the sex trafficking crime, but creating higher demand for these crimes to be committed so further pornography can be consumed.

The more money sex traffickers make, the more they will expand. The more victims they will seek. The more young girls and boys they will kidnap, entrap, in prison and violate.

Pornography is not a victimless indulgence. An ever-increasingly large amount of the world’s pornography is made through sex trafficking. Watching porn is giving money to criminals who kidnap, rape, torture, and kill. Lives are destroyed because of the demand for pornography, sex trades and sexual abuse.

“People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used.” – Unknown