Child Sexual Exploitation And Abuse Is A Multibillion-Dollar Industry – New Report Shows Who Benefits

An estimated 3.5% of children globally had experienced sexual extortion in the last year. Andrew Angelov/Shutterstock

BY DEBORAH FRY

The sexual exploitation and abuse of children has become a multibillion-dollar global trade. The chilling reality of this profit-driven, highly lucrative industry is laid bare by new findings from myself and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh’s Childlight Global Child Safety Institute.

Our new report shows child abuse isn’t just a crime restricted to a hidden corner of the dark web. Based on a review of 20 publications across multiple disciplines (including big data reports, systematic reviews, discussion papers and qualitative studies), the report paints a picture of the financial mechanisms enabling abuse on a global scale.

Our previous work estimated that 3.5% of children globally had experienced sexual extortion in the last year. This is when children and their families face threats to share sexual content of a child if they do not comply with monetary demands.

Offenders aren’t the only ones who profit. Financial institutions, tech companies and online payment platforms — sometimes unknowingly, sometimes by omission — facilitate the flow of profits made from the abuse of children. Some of the money moves through legitimate payment systems and advertising revenue streams. Other financial flows are deliberately obscured through cryptocurrencies and the dark web.

Many organisations do take proactive steps to detect and report this activity. Inhope, a global network of hotlines, works with law enforcement and tech companies to remove child sexual abuse material and disrupt the associated financial streams. And the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the US receives and acts on reports from tech companies of child sexual abuse material, alerting companies and authorities to suspicious financial activity.

But these systems remain inadequately checked or challenged by financial regulators and laws.

Sexual extortion has also spawned the creation of companies that provide cybersecurity and reputation management services to victims to combat the extorters. Fees are often paid upfront and can amount to thousands of dollars. In effect, this forces victims to pay for a solution to the crime committed against them.

There is also a market for the sale of child sexual abuse material, both recorded and livestreamed, delivering profit for the offender and the systems they use. One video file of on-demand child sexual abuse can cost US$1,200 (£940). With the estimated prevalence of technology-facilitated abuse experienced by 300 million children annually, this is a massive industry.

The scale of profit is staggering, in contrast with the price some perpetrators pay to sexually abuse children. One particularly haunting finding is abusers paying as little as 27 pence (UK) to offend against children.

Taken together, the industry is estimated to reach multiple billions of dollars annually.

While the financial value placed on a child may be measured in pennies, the lifelong cost to that child in trauma, health and opportunity is incalculable. It is a grotesque marketplace where takings are vast and suffering is immeasurable.
Changing markets

Our findings also expose how perpetrators themselves are rapidly changing their approach, constantly exploiting gaps in legislation and regulatory frameworks to continue harming children.

For example, we find in the Philippines, a livestreaming hotspot, that technology is enabling large organised crime syndicates to be replaced by smaller, covert groups. Often operating within families, these perpetrators have profited as crime shifts online, facilitated by cryptocurrency and digital payment systems.

The proliferation and growing sophistication of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has also opened troubling new frontiers. Child abusers can now produce realistic AI-generated child sexual abuse material, using the photos of real children in order to extort. This can make detection harder and muddy the water in terms of legal accountability. Many jurisdictions are still playing catch-up.

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Rescued Trafficked Women Held In 'Abhorrent' Conditions In Nigerian Shelters, New Report Says

BY BUKOLA ADEBAYO

LAGOS, NIGERIA (CNN) -- When Adaura was promised a job as a domestic worker in Libya, she jumped at the chance. Little did she know she'd end up in a sex trafficking ring, enduring years of physical and sexual abuse. 

The woman who told her about the job said she'd earn more than $400 a month, a fortune for the then 18-year-old who had lived a life of poverty and abuse. 

She willingly embarked on a journey that took her from Nigeria, across the Sahara desert and into Libya in 2013. 

Adaura unwittingly became one of tens of thousands of vulnerable Nigerian girls trafficked across Africa and Europe by criminal networks that lure them with job offers that never materialize.

Thousands of people leave Nigeria for Libya -- a treacherous destination and route for migrants going to Europe in hopes of better job opportunities. Most are fleeing economic hardship and conditions that make them easy prey for traffickers.

More than 10,000 Nigerians stranded in Libya and other countries returned home between April 2017 and October 2018, according to the International Organization for Migration estimates.

Survivors held under abhorrent conditions

But Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a new report titled " 'You Pray for Death:' Trafficking of Young Women and Girls in Nigeria," said many rescued victims on their return are kept in "abhorrent" conditions in Nigerian shelters similar to those they faced when they were trafficked.

The report said though Nigeria has taken steps to address trafficking problems in the country by signing on to international laws and creating shelters, authorities have failed to provide adequate resources that survivors need to rebuild their lives.

Adaura, now 24, is interviewed in the rights agency report, where she is referred to as Adaura C. She said she was forced to work as a prostitute in Libya by her trafficker who told her she owed $4,000 paid to transport her from Nigeria. 

Adaura said a woman, who was part of the trafficking ring and known as the "madam" forced her to have sex with different men without condoms and made her have abortions when she became pregnant.

She was eventually rescued and sent back to Nigeria where she now lives in a shelter but says there is not enough food and she only receives 100 naira (around 27 cents) per day for transport. Adaura told researchers that she "sometimes thinks about killing herself."

Another unnamed trafficked woman told HRW in the report that she had been held against her will at a National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) shelter for six months.
"I have been here for almost six months.... I eat and sleep and shout. They do not open the gate...I told NAPTIP I do not want to stay here; I want to go home. They said they will allow me to go. I do not feel okay being here. I cannot stay here doing nothing," one of the women says in the HRW report.

Some of the women told HRW they were detained in government-owned shelters run by NAPTIP for months without adequate food, toiletries and medical care. Others said they were kept in closed shelters and denied access to their families.

"We were shocked to find traumatized survivors locked behind gates, unable to communicate with their families, for months on end, in government-run facilities," said Agnes Odhiambo, HRW senior women's rights researcher in the report.

They also told HRW they were kept in the dark about their rehabilitation process and officials did not give them information on when they would be reunited with their families.

HRW said the report was based on field research between 2017 and 2018, which included interviews with 76 trafficked victims, experts, NGOs and authorities working with survivors in Nigeria.

Odhiambo told CNN that many of the shelters visited were "rundown" and many of the women complained that their mobile phones were taken away from them.

"Women and girls looked so unhappy to be there. They complained about being controlled. Basically, like a transfer of conditions from captivity," Odhiambo said.

However, Arinze Osakwe of NAPTIP'S public education unit said the right's agency's report did not capture many aspects of their work in rehabilitating trafficked victims.

He admitted that some victims were delayed at shelter longer than the six weeks stated by the agency because of ongoing investigations from partner agencies. 

 
"Even among those rescued are traffickers who pretend to be victims to recruit more people from the shelter on their release back to Libya for instance. We work with a lot of agencies to profile them depending on the intelligence report we have from the countries they came from. Their release is not that simple," Osakwe told CNN.

He denied that victims were denied food and said the agency was working to make survivors as "comfortable" as possible.

Osakwe said the agency runs closed shelter for survivors and regulates their access and communication to protect victims from their traffickers who may still be after them.

"Most of the victims are witnesses to crimes committed by traffickers who will stop at nothing to get them. Let's not forget that the survivors were initially trafficked by family members who want to get them out of the shelter to recruit them again," Osakwe told CNN.

Osakwe said officials conduct medical screening on victims while tracing their families for joint counseling, a process that often takes time.

"We need to know they have family that will take them back. Some victims are rejected — the easiest person to traffick is a returnee victim with no support from society. We have had cases where we rescued and released a victim, and six months later, we are rescuing them from another country," he said.

Trafficking hub

Nigeria is a source, transit and destination point for many criminal trafficking networks operating in Africa, and the majority of their victims are women. 

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 11,000 women and 3,000 children who arrived by sea in Italy in 2016 were from Nigeria. More than half the victims have been sexually exploited, according to recent data from the UN migration agency.

One survivor shared a harrowing account of her journey across the Sahara desert to Europe.
"You pray for death. You cry until you cannot cry any more. People die, faint, are beaten, raped. I would not advise even my worst enemy to travel by land," the woman was quoted as saying in the HRW report.

Stephanie Linus Seeks To Prevent Sex Trafficking To Italy

BY ADAOBI TRICIA NWAUBANI

ABUJA (REUTERS) -- Nigerian actress Stephanie Linus says celebrities like her can mobilise their fanbase and help stem the flood of women who swap Africa for a better life in Italy only to end up selling sex.

The Lagos-based Nollywood star said she hopes to raise awareness and so prevent more women and girls becoming victims of the global sex trafficking trade.

She spoke after visiting reception centres for victims of trafficking in Sicily, where she met Nigerian women who detailed their journeys to Europe and the dangers they faced.

“Because of the large network of fans we often have … we can … educate people in our networks about the dangers of trafficking and do our best to provide hope and inspiration to those who have already fallen victim,” Linus wrote in an email to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

She emailed during a visit to Italy organised by the medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which runs health centres that help migrants who come to Europe via the Mediterranean, most from sub-Saharan Africa.

The number of female Nigerians arriving in Italy by boat surged to more than 11,000 in 2016 from 1,500 in 2014, with at least four in five of them forced into prostitution, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

In 2017, the MSF’s search and rescue ship, Aquarius, rescued 15,078 people, of whom 86 percent were male and 14 percent were female. According to the ship´s communications manager, Carolina Montenegro, more than six in 10 of the women rescued were single female travellers, and most of them were from Nigeria.

“Many patients told MSF they did not know about the risk and the abuse they would face, that they wished they had known,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, an MSF humanitarian affairs adviser.

“For women and girls to make informed decisions, they need information and Stephanie (Linus) … is making sure their message is reaching home, that a girl in a remote area of Nigeria does not easily fall prey to predators and traffickers.”

More Nigerians will heed warnings about trafficking if celebrities are involved, according to Arinze Orakwue, who works at Nigeria’s anti-trafficking agency, NAPTIP.

“It builds the conversation, makes it more engaging and takes it beyond the frontiers that NAPTIP can,” said Orakwue, who urged other Nigerian celebrities to get involved.

“When they see an icon, an individual who has nothing to lose, saying that it is wrong, there are more people who will believe her more than believing the agency,” he said.

Linus is one of Nigeria’s most recognisable stars, with a strong fan base among young people. She directed the 2014 film, Dry, which highlights the horrors of child marriage.

(Reporting By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Modern Day Slavery And Trafficking In Persons Report

“Ending modern slavery must remain a foreign policy priority. Fighting this crime wherever it exists is in our national interest. Human trafficking undermines the rule of law and creates instability. It tears apart families and communities. It damages the environment and corrupts the global supply chains and labor markets that keep the world’s economies thriving.”...........John Kerry, US Secretary of State, Thursday, June 19, 2013.

The State Department in its release said as many as 27 million people are working in slavery today, saying it's now the fastest growing problem in the world. In the 415 pages report, three countries has been placed in the worst offenders category - Russia, China and Uzbekistan - bringing the figure to 21 countries in the worst category. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, June 19, 2013, in Nigeria, the DSS, Directorate of State Service, rescued 17 pregnant girls from a baby making factory for human trafficking in Aba operated by Dr. Hyginus Ndudim Orikara who is now in custody.

Remarks:

Secretary of State John Kerry
At the Annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) Release
June 19, 2013

Benjamin Franklin Room
Washington, D.C.

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very much, and welcome, all of you, to this remarkable room, a room named after a Founding Father who was a lonely voice against slavery long before there was a United States of America. And it is called the Franklin Room, and you can see Ben Franklin looking over us from the wall over there above the fireplace. It’s fitting that we gather here today in this room in order to mark the importance of our country remaining committed to this message that we send to all of the world today.

Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you, Lou, for your kind words. Thank you most importantly, I think everybody here would join me in agreeing, you are a TIP hero and we thank you for everything you’ve done these past years. (Applause.) And I want to thank you and your team and everybody who works in the Trafficking in Persons Office. Thank you, all of you who are part of this effort today and those of you around the world who helped produce this report. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into this. This is a year-long effort. We’re already working on the next one and we will make measurements that are based in fact and common sense.

To our TIP Report heroes who have made a very long journey on very short notice, we welcome you here and we’re very grateful for your efforts. And everybody here will get to share in the remarkable individual, personal journeys that they represent.

When we think of the scale of modern-day slavery – literally tens of millions who live in exploitation – this whole effort can seem daunting. But it’s the right effort. And there are countless voiceless people, countless nameless people except to their families or perhaps a phony name by which they are being exploited, who look to us for their freedom and for the possibility of life itself. It’s no understatement to say that we are working to tackle an issue that millions of people assumed had been dealt with a long time ago.

But the problem unfortunately persists, and I hate to say in some places can grow, and the challenge continues. And that is why the inspiring examples that are here today remind us not just that we have work to do, but that the actions of a single person can make all the difference in the world and they can actually bring so many lives out of bondage, out of the shadows, out of darkness. So I thank our TIP heroes for their very personal individual commitment, for the example that they set. And I thank all of you, those here and millions of others who are out there waging this battle. I thank them all for their commitment.

I want to acknowledge Somaly Mam, who is a survivor, who was a TIP Report hero in 2005, and who is a hero every single day in helping women and girls who have been abused to try to get their lives back.

I’m also particularly happy to be joined here today by Congressman Chris Smith. I’ve worked with Chris on this stuff. There’s nobody more committed or dedicated. So thank you, Chris, for your strong voice and leadership in these efforts. (Applause.) Trafficking in persons is one of those rare issues that can bring people together across the aisles without regard to ideology and without regard to politics, and that’s the way it ought to be. I appreciate Chris’s advocacy on this issue. For years together in Congress, we were able to work on this and some other issues. And it’s no understatement to say that he was banging the drum on this long before many in Congress even knew the term “trafficking in persons” or understood what it really meant.

Lou mentioned a number of great American diplomats, but he left one out, and that was one of our first African American ambassadors, Frederick Douglass. A century later, the Douglass family continues to fight against all forms of slavery. And his direct descendant, Kenneth Morris, who is the head of the family’s foundation, is here with us today. He just came from the Capitol, where today Douglass was honored at long last in our National Statuary Collection. And we welcome Ken here. Thank you for being here with us today. Appreciate it. (Applause.)

I want to thank you, all of you, who are partners and stakeholders from civil society who are here from government, from the private sector. You are literally what keeps this effort moving forward, and you’re making a difference for the victims of this crime.

As we look at the challenge of modern-day slavery, regrettably, our focus has to begin with the victims. Long before the TIP Report or the UN’s Palermo Protocol, or even the term “trafficking in persons” was coined as we use it today, long before that – I hate to say how long – I served as a prosecutor in one of the 10 largest counties in America, in Middlesex County in Massachusetts. And back then, we were one – I’m proud to say one of the very first jurisdictions in America to set up a victim-witness program. 

And it was a time, sadly, when the concepts of trafficking and sexual crimes, abuse of women, still hadn’t registered fully on much of modern law enforcement. And I remember, starkly, I tried a number of rape cases, a number of abuse cases. I even tried one case which was the rape of a prostitute. And everybody said to me you can never win that, that’s impossible. Well, they were wrong. It is possible.

There is abuse that can take place in even the most improbable places in the most probable ways. And I learned then, looking in the eyes of young women who had been the victims of these crimes, that they were terrified of being victimized again, by the process, by the system. And nobody quite understood what it meant to a victim or the ways you could help victims through the system. Only when we started focusing on victims, not just as potential witnesses but as survivors, human beings entitled to respect and dignity, that’s when we started to provide people with a greater measure of justice. And that’s when we were able to give people a better chance at rebuilding the future.

Today those are the same values that guide us in this effort: justice, dignity, and the rights of all people. They should guide our work in fighting against human trafficking. These are probably quintessentially American values. They’re not unique to us, though; they are also universal values. And American leadership, I believe, is required so that we protect those values and advance them, not just here at home but all around the world.

When we help countries to prosecute traffickers, we are strengthening the rule of law. When we bring victims out of exploitation, we are helping to create more stable and productive communities. When we stop this crime from happening in the first place, we are preventing the abuse of those who are victimized as well as the ripple effect that caused damage throughout communities into our broader environment and which corrupt our global supply chains. We all have an interest in stopping this crime.

That’s why President Obama is so focused on this issue. And that’s why, as Secretary of State, I will continue to make the fight against modern-day slavery a priority for this Department and for the country. (Applause.) We are going to keep working with our partners across government and across the world in order to improve our response at home, and we’re doing this not just to pass judgment on other people but because we know that we can advance this cause. We can make a difference. We’re going to keep working with those partners around the world in order to develop new approaches and new practices. And we’re going to keep engaging with governments on this issue because modern-day slavery affects every country in the world, including the United States. And every government is responsible for dealing with it, and no government is yet doing enough.

So a major part of this engagement is this annual report. Now, obviously this report pulls no punches. And it’s not because the United States is better than anybody else, or because the United States thinks it has an automatic right to make this judgment, or because we want to point our finger at another country, because we know that that can make things difficult, because we all know the history that we have to overcome to overcome slavery ourselves. Slavery was written into our Constitution before we built up the support to write it out. We remember that. So we don’t do this because we think we have all the answers, because we don’t. And when you pick up the paper and read about police dismantling a sex-trafficking ring that operated from Boston to Sacramento, we are reminded that even with our tough laws in this country, tough abuses of those laws still arise.

So this report is tough, because this is a tough issue, and it demands serious attention. And that’s precisely what we intend to provide. It’s tough because in the last year roughly 46,000 victims of trafficking were brought to light worldwide, compared to the 27 million that we know are enslaved. It’s tough because when the world faces with honesty the thoroughness of this report, it hopefully initiates a more productive dialogue. A recent study tells us that countries are twice as likely to take some kind of action to respond to this crime once they are listed in this report on Tier 3 or on the Tier 3 Watch List.

So, my friends, we have to be tough. We have to be tough to keep faith with everything that this institution and our country stands for. We have to keep – be tough in order to keep faith with our own standards and sense of morality and right and wrong. We have to be tough to galvanize the commitment of all of us in this room to bolster the political will that exists all over the world. From heads of state and justice ministers to police officers and labor inspectors, we have to be tough in order to at last end modern slavery once and for all.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

DSS Rescues 17 Pregnant Girls In Aba

SIXTEEN pregnant girls have been rescued from a ‘Baby Factory’ in Aba, the commercial city of Abia state by the Abia state Command of Directorate of State Service,DSS.

Aba and its environs have of recent become notorious for illegal charity homes where babies are delivered and sold to buyers who are always available to patronize the business.

According to the state Director of DSS, Mr. Matthew Obodoechi, who paraded the young girls yesterday at the Command’s state Headquarters, Umuahia, the girls whose ages range between 17 and 37 years, were rescued on Monday from a ‘charity home’.

Obodoechi said that they were rescued from a charity home, named Cross Foundation International, located along Anyamele Street in Umungasi area of Aba.

He gave the name of the proprietor of the baby factory home as Dr. Hyginus Ndudim Orikara, who also has been arrested.

The DSS Director has also vowed that the medical practitioner, Orikara, would be prosecuted.

The Medical Doctor is said to be an employee of Abia state Government, that has been actively involved in the fight against this menace in the state.

Obodoechi expressed great concern, affirming that the issue of baby factory has emerged as a new trend of crime in Abia state and other parts of the South East.

His words: “It is another kind of kidnapping where babies are snatched at point of birth and sold. It is a big shame, a big problem and it all boils down to the kind of values we have in the society today, life is not valued”, Obodoechi lamented.

However, the proprietor of the home, Dr. Orikara denied running a baby factory. He claimed that his Cross Foundation was legitimately registered as a charity home.

According to him, babies were not sold in home after delivery, but were usually released to their mothers to go home and nurse them.

He defended the large number of pregnant girls at the charity home, saying that it was because “we are running operation nurse your own baby”.

Dr. Orikara also claimed that girls with unwanted pregnancy brought to the home were usually encouraged and assisted to cope with their pregnancies, deliver them and nurse the babies.

However, Obodoechi dismissed Dr. Orikara’s claim saying that confessional statements made by the pregnant ladies have revealed that the doctor was indeed operating a full-time baby factory business.

He disclosed that the ladies “upon delivery are given a paltry sum of N50, 000 and sent away, while their babies are sold to people from different parts of the country”.

The DSS Director regretted that some people have chosen to hide under the cover of non-governmental organizations,NGOs “to perpetrate various forms of illegal activities, including baby factories”.

According to him, “those hiding under the cover of NGOs to perpetrate modern form of slave trade are warned to abstain from such illegalities as security agencies will stop at nothing but to ensure that they are apprehended and made to face the law”.

Obodoechi advised the public “to desist from encouraging pregnant ladies to go to ‘baby factories’ for whatever reason, whether financial or otherwise”.

----------Daily Post Nigeria, June 19, 2013

Nigeria Police Raid Stops 32 Pregnant Teens From Selling Their Babies

By Uri Friedman, The Atlantic Wire
Image: Reuters
Nigerian police are informing journalists that they've raided a "baby farm" in the southern city of Aba, rescuing four babies and arresting a doctor who authorities believe buys babies for $160 to $190 (males command higher prices) and illegally sells them to childless couples for up to $6,400, according to the AP. Reuters adds that the babies may also be sold to witch doctors who use the body parts of infants in rituals or sent to Europe--especially the U.K.--where they are used in welfare fraud schemes. The doctor claims he was simply placing unwanted babies in orphanages.

The news outlets reporting the raid aren't in agreement about the role played by the 32 pregnant teenage girls--some as young as 15--who were at the Heda clinic when police arrived. The AP, for example, notes that the girls were "arrested" and may face charges for "planning to sell their babies," and Reuters adds that some girls said they were directed to the clinic by friends who had been there before. But the BBC (and other outlets), citing a Nigerian police chief, claims the girls were "rescued" after being locked up at the clinic and forced to produce babies, noting that "desperate teenagers with unplanned pregnancies are sometimes lured to clinics." The BBC also provides some context for the raid. In Nigeria, where UNICEF estimates at least 10 children are sold daily, baby-trafficking is illegal, but it's very rare for traffickers to be caught and prosecuted.