Richard Muscio, of It’s Your Business! Podcast met with our own Joseph Travers, along with Suzi Day to discuss the work Saved in America is doing to rescue young girls from human trafficking. This interview also includes information on how parents can combat the very real danger of social media in today's digital society and the way it allows predators unprecedented access to innocent children. 

The Scary Statistics

The interview begins by looking at the very real threat that human trafficking presents for kids everywhere including within San Diego. In fact, according to numbers estimated by various volunteers, there are anywhere between 3,1000 and 8,100 victims of commercial exploitation, including human sex trafficking within San Diego every year. These numbers quantify San Diego as one of the 13 highest areas for child sex trafficking in the nation. Thankfully, Saved in America is an organization based out of San Diego that is working to counteract this epidemic and to rescue kids from this horrific experience. Sometimes these rescues are completed in as little as 12 hours, other times it takes days or even months of effort to track down a missing child, especially if they have been moved to another location within the country. 

Social Media

While the presence and popularity of social media might not immediately call to mind the danger and human trafficking, the two very much go together and are another topic covered in this podcast episode. Today’s kids are often victimized from the comfort of their own homes within what should be safe confines. However, thanks to the booming popularity of digital social platforms, kids today are being victimized at alarming rates. Most of the predators that operate the human trafficking rings today are well-versed in coercion tactics and highly skilled at manipulation. This allows them to convince a child to leave the safety of their present living situation—through online conversations and other tactics— and strike out on their own, to what they assume is a better way of life. Unfortunately, they soon realize that they have walked right into a trap, but often by that time it is too late, and they are already in too deep to simply leave. Therefore, parents today have to fight against these online evils by learning more about them and how to counteract their efforts.