By Nicole Mulkey, Telios Law for THE CHRISTIAN POST
The movie “Sound of Freedom” struck a chord with American audiences this summer — and not necessarily a comfortable one. The movie discusses a horrifying concept: child trafficking.
But human trafficking is only one form of child sexual abuse. Taken together with other forms of abuse, Child Protective Services reports around 60,000 cases of child sexual abuse per year — meaning that one child is abused every nine minutes. And that’s just reported abuse. In 2017, a study showed that nearly one in 10 kids are sexually abused, and nearly 1/3 of these children reported they were abused under the age of 12. Furthermore, if we cross-compare the data known about child sexual abuse with the data known about human trafficking, the Polaris Project reports there were likely 16,554 victims of human trafficking in 2021, and more than 28% of the victims were children with another 64% being “age unknown.”
But why widen the net? Why discuss human trafficking as a component of child sexual abuse? Because the same protections that can keep would-be offenders out of a school classroom can also signify which organizations are safe for children, and which are not.
For child abuse to occur, three factors must be in place: a would-be offender, a potential victim, and the lack of a capable guardian. The “Sound of Freedom” paints an excellent picture of would-be offenders and potential victims, but what about capable guardians? Intuitively, this should be…
