Report: Facebook, Not Adult Biz, a Hotbed of Human Trafficking

In its 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report, HTI does state that the internet “was the most common location for recruitment (of trafficking victims) as has been the case every year since 2013.” But when it comes to detailing where on the internet such recruitment has been taking place, adult sites are conspicuously absent.

So, where does this online victim recruitment take place, by and large? Mainstream social media platforms.

“In 2020, 59% of online victim recruitment in active sex trafficking cases occurred on Facebook, making it by far the most frequently referenced website or app in public sources connected with these prosecutions, which was also true in 2019,” HTI states in the report.

“Surprisingly,” HTI adds, “despite Facebook’s reputation as a less popular platform among teenagers, it was a more common platform for recruiting child victims than adult victims in 2020 active sex trafficking cases. In fact, 65% of child victims recruited on social media were recruited through Facebook compared to just 36% of adults.”

After Facebook, “Instagram and Snapchat were the most frequently cited social media platforms for recruiting child victims, accounting for 14% and 8% of child recruitment, respectively,” HTI notes. Among adult victims, the other online platforms where online recruitment took place were WeChat (43%) and Instagram (7%).

What? No Pornhub or XVideos on the list? Shocking.

If you read the report, what you will not see is many references to the adult entertainment industry. In fact, you’ll find one – in a section that notes there are 12 “adult film” companies which are currently named as defendants in civil lawsuits alleging human trafficking.

(It’s unclear to me whether this number includes any of the adult film company defendants who have been voluntarily dismissed from cases filed in late 2020, or whether 12 is the total now that those defendants have been dismissed. Since the report involved cases that were “active” in 2020, my assumption is the adult film companies dismissed from those lawsuits are still included in the report’s numbers, since most of those voluntary dismissals came after the turn of the year.)

Meanwhile, the word “pornography” appears in the HTI’s report exactly three times – each time with the word “child” directly preceding it. Spoiler alert: None of those cases are connected to the adult entertainment industry, either.

The report is filled with other data and observations which run counter to many of the common misconceptions about human trafficking and sex trafficking, something the report highlights repeatedly. For example, the report notes that “Despite common misconceptions that human trafficking necessarily involves cross-border movement, fewer than half (40%) of active sex trafficking cases involved schemes spanning more than one state.” It also notes that a significant number of victims are trafficked by people with whom they have a pre-existing relationship, sometimes including their spouse. Unless some of those people met their spouses through porn sites, I think it’s safe to say the adult industry is in the clear in those cases, too.

While there were no active criminal prosecutions for human trafficking involving adult industry defendants in 2020, the hospitality industry was another story. In fact, a single hotel chain, Motel 6, is involved in 21 active criminal sex trafficking cases. The hospitality industry is well-represented among civil case defendants as well, accounting for nearly half the defendants – 48% — of such cases that were active in 2020.

What? No Nicholas Kristof panic-piece about Motel 6 and its involvement in human trafficking? We’ll leave the light on for you, Nick!

It’s important to note that while the HTI’s report is extensive and detailed in its accounting of cases prosecuted at the federal level, it does not amount to a full accounting of human trafficking in the U.S., nor is it intended to provide any estimate of the amount of human trafficking that goes unpunished or uninvestigated in the country.

As the report’s authors put it, the report merely “provides a snapshot of how traffickers operate domestically, the findings and trends throughout the Report reflect the U.S. government’s priorities and practices in prosecuting human trafficking crimes. Accordingly, the data are not intended–and should not be used–to convey a complete picture of the scope of human trafficking in the United States.”

Fair enough. But what the snapshot does show is that despite a strong recent focus on prosecuting sex trafficking crimes, the federal government has not roped the adult industry into any of those criminal prosecutions – something you might expect them to have done by now, if the adult industry is neck-deep in trafficked persons the way some of our critics assert.

The report, by the way, leaves no doubt about the government’s focus on sex trafficking as a subset of human trafficking cases.

“The 2020 Report found that 94% of federal human trafficking prosecutions active in 2020 were sex trafficking cases,” the HTI states. “This percentage is a reflection of the U.S. government prioritizing the prosecution of sex traffickers—not an indication that 94% of human trafficking conduct in the United States involves commercial sexual exploitation.”

Sadly, I suspect the fact that 0% of those prosecutions involve adult industry defendants will not slow the pace of accusations and insinuations directed at the industry – or lead Nicholas Kristof to shift his focus to Motel 6.

Crime scene tape photo by kat wilcox from Pexels