The sex trade industry within the borders of the United States doesn’t look like you would likely imagine. It isn’t brazen or over the top or even that obvious at first glance. Instead, it is shady, shadowy, and manipulative, seeing formerly innocent kids becoming victims of these vicious predators. It also happens to be one of the fastest-growing industries in the nation, ensnaring tens of thousands of minors each and every year. It is this world in which private eyes or investigators are stepping into and standing in the gap for these kids. They are dutifully completing the arduous tasks of tracking down runaways before they become victims of the sex trade industry, known as modern-day slavery.  

The Problem as it Exists Today

According to FBI estimations, there are around 460,000 active missing children reports at any given time. There are around 8,000 in the San Diego region alone.  Therefore, this problem presents an issue for overworked law enforcement officials to solve. They simply don’t have the manpower or the resources necessary to find every one of these 460,000, especially when the danger level to each runaway is unclear. Thankfully, the gap in resources has been filled increasingly in recent years by non-profit agencies and private investigators. It is services like those we provide at Saved in America that are helping to find, rescue and then provide the necessary social services to kids caught in sex trafficking or to prevent them from falling victim to them if they are merely runaways. 

The Delay in Action Can Have Dire Consequences

The problem with runaway kids and the sex industry is that there is a limited time frame to find kids unharmed before they fall victim to human trafficking. Unfortunately, police departments are often unable to commit the resources needed to find these kids. Parents obviously want their kids searched for immediately and often turn to outside sources to get the job done. Joseph Travers, co-founder of Saved in America said the following about the importance of finding kids sooner rather than later:

“If we can stop the girls at the runaway part, we’ll put a big dent in the sex trafficking part. Every sexually exploited child was first a runaway. Not every runaway necessarily becomes sexually exploited.”