Ashton Kutcher's Nonprofit Has Helped Save Nearly 6,000 Children from Sex Trafficking
The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, granted the freedom to humans wrongfully held in slavery, sparking the start of a greater movement toward rightful citizenship and human rights.
However, slavery still exists.
Sex trafficking, modern-day slavery, plagues our world today. It is an issue that is often shoved under the rug or not recognized because it often seems like there isn’t anything we can do about it.
However, 40-year-old actor Ashton Kutcher is combating both this thought process and human trafficking through his nonprofit organization, Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children. Previously known as the DNA Foundation, Kutcher originally founded this organization with ex-wife and actress Demi Moore.
The organization now has approximately 20 full-time staff members and ever-growing partnerships.
His organization is not just raising awareness, however. In fact, his efforts are actually making a visible and statistical difference. Just this past year alone, the organization was “able to identify 5,791 child sex trafficking victims and rescue 103 children from situations where their sexual abuse was recorded and distributed,” according to the Thorn website. That combines to helping an amazing total of 5,894 child sex trafficking victims.
The primary goal of this organization is creating a technology task force that creates online tools to stop sex trafficking and find the perpetrators. Through this task force, they have partnered with over 25 companies, including Google, Amazon web services, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and many more.
Law enforcement utilizes this task force in global investigations on sex trafficking, increasing their investigation time up to 65 percent. This increases the amount of victims found and aided in their distress.
In addition to the task force, Kutcher has created a “deterrence program,” which finds individuals who are actively seeking this child sexual abuse material.
“Our child sexual abuse deterrence program has seen over 2.6 million visitors and 140,000+ instances where individuals went on to actively seek further help,” the website states. This means that instead of these individuals feeling ashamed and continuing their actions, which is what the sex trafficking industry wants to happen, they have an outlet to seek help and maintain accountability.
The final goal of the organization is to educate teens on this sextortion — when people are too ashamed to ask for help in their addiction to this abuse. Their “Stop Sextortion” campaign has taught 3.5 million teens about why people should not be ashamed to ask for help.
“What we do at our core is we build technology to help fight sexual exploitation of children,” Kutcher told 48 hours. “You can roll up your sleeves and go try to be like a hero and go save one person, or you can build a tool that allows one person to save a lot of people.”
In February of 2017, Kutcher testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to explain his perspective on the sexual exploitation that plagues our world today.
“But the right to pursue happiness for so many is stripped away — it’s raped, it’s abused, it’s taken by force, fraud, or coercion,” Kutcher said to the committee. “It is sold for the momentary happiness of another.”
Watch his full opening statement here:
In the midst of modern-day slavery, it is encouraging to see this organization making a difference. It is always uplifting to see a celebrity commit his “day job” to something that helps the course of humanity.
“We [are] the last line of defense—an actor and his foundation [are] the potential last line of defense. That’s my day job, and I’m sticking to it.”
If you are interested in getting involved with or donating to this organization to combat sex trafficking, visit the Thorn website.
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