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State Department report says predators world wide took advantage of the pandemic lockdowns
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WASHINGTON — Predators worldwide took advantage of pandemic restrictions last year to draw more people into forced labor and sex trafficking, including children who spent their days online under government-imposed stay-at-home orders, according to a new State Department report.
In India and Nepal, young girls were sold into marriage to help families that otherwise had no income because they could not leave home to work or sell their crops.
In Persian Gulf countries, migrants who had no choice but to live at their workplaces were increasingly prohibited from taking time off.
In the United States, tenants who could not afford to pay rent were pressured into having sex with their landlords.
“While the number of individuals at risk of trafficking grew during the pandemic, so did the conditions under which traffickers thrive,” concluded the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report, released on Thursday.
It found that victimization grew as law enforcement and other resources were diverted to managing public health measures at the height of the pandemic.
In particular, the number of cases of online sex exploitation appeared to skyrocket as people turned to their computers during lockdowns. The report found that predators increasingly recruited and groomed children — who were spending more time online, often without supervision — for sex trafficking and sexually explicit material.
Demands for investigations into online sex trafficking in the Philippines, for example, grew by nearly 300 percent over a two-month period in spring 2020, when the country was under stringent travel restrictions.
India reported a 95 percent increase in online searches for material that sexually exploited children....
In the United States, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported a 99 percent increase in children being enticed by online predators between January and September last year. ...
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