So You Want to End Child Sex Trafficking? Here’s How to Find Organizations That Are Truly Doing That
By: Kelsey Bourgeois
Tags: Human Trafficking, Sex Work, Sex Trafficking, Nonprofit, Decrimnow

How to find an organization that is really helping end child sex trafficking

Alright alright alright. You may be wondering “when is she gonna get to the chained up children in basements that need us?!?!”. I’ll do that now. Yes, there are literal children who have been forced into sex work. No, it doesn’t happen how you think it does. And in fact, the myths about kids stolen from parking lots and smuggled through airports that you learned about from “awareness” campaigns are just that: myths. And they are actively harming actual victims while scaring you into giving them money that will not help anyone but the organization.

The narrative that organizations use to scare you: that your children could be kidnapped and sold into sex slavery is actually *extremely* rare. The majority of people being sex trafficked are coerced by people they know (and may trust) because they were vulnerable already. Also, they rely on emotional manipulation and isolation much more than physical shackling or blocking movements, for the most part.

So what would help? The good news is, we actually know a lot about what would help and I’ll describe that in my list of criteria I use when evaluating an organization that claims to be anti-trafficking. I should say up front that a lot of the organizations doing harm here may actually believe they are helping. I’m not making assertions as to their motives. I am making assertions as to their impact, which matters much more than their intent. It doesn’t matter if they want to do good if they actively harm people instead.

Here are the ten criteria I use.

1. Who runs it? Do they have any lived experience in the sex industry?

The reason this one matters is the people who know best the difference between a consensual worker and a trafficking victim and all that middle ground we discussed, are people who have been or are currently a part of one of those groups. Sex workers also don’t want anyone to be in the industry that doesn’t want to be there! And they know the fact I said above: many people will exist at different places on that sex work spectrum throughout their lives. Some people who did sex work because they had no other choice may end up sticking with it when they do have other choices. Some people who start out in full control can get caught up with a bad actor and be manipulated, coerced or trafficked. Lastly, I know this is hard for some to understand: but some people who are literal survivors of child sex trafficking choose to do sex work later, even though they don’t have to. You don’t have to understand this, but you do have to respect it and allow people to speak for themselves about their experience, needs and beliefs.

A lot of “anti-trafficking” orgs are little more than savior organizations. If, for example, an organization has a cult of personality around the leader and views him or her as a hero, but that leader has no lived experience in the industry, that’s a good indication this is a self serving project and that they’re gonna do some damage. Or, if the leader’s lived experience comes from their work in law enforcement. Since we know that trafficking victims often face violence from the state, you should be extremely skeptical of anyone moving from any type of law enforcement into “saving” trafficking victims. These are the people who actually do not know the difference between consenting workers and coerced workers and they have a proven track record of not knowing and not caring to learn. So ex-law enforcement run groups will either say everyone doing sex work is a trafficking victim or *only* be interested in helping the “perfect” victims, severely limiting their ability to help and perpetuating stigma and violence.

The exception to the rule about lived experience is if the org is run by someone without experience, but they have people with that experience on their boards or their staff. They listen to people who actually know. So look for that information.

Another thing that happens here is SWERFs jump on board and cause a bunch of problems. SWERFs (Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists) also have a very misleading name. They are neither radical, nor feminist because their ideology is quite literally built on *excluding* a marginalized group. What’s fascinating is that a lot of SWERFs take their ideas and create “anti-trafficking” orgs that are actually just anti-sex work orgs, which is why I’m usually using quotations when referring to these groups and these types of people. They do nothing to help people who are trafficked and only perpetuate stigma and violence. This group are some of the worst victim-blamers. Ashley Judd is maybe the most outspoken celebrity in this category, she has compared sex work to rape again and again, while not listening to workers telling her otherwise. Other ways to spot SWERFs since they won’t always identify with that acronym is if they say all forms of sex work are inherently exploitative, including porn, stripping and camming. They will also always speak over actual sex workers or cherry pick a survivor of trafficking that agrees with them while ignoring the vast majority of survivors and current workers. I don’t know about you, but my feminism is based on believing people when they tell you their truth.

It’s really tragic because often, SWERFs are survivors of sexual violence themselves and that’s the ground they stand on to say they know that sex work is inherently violent. In a better world, survivors of sexual violence would all support sex worker rights so that sex workers didn’t have to suffer sexual violence. This group of people will say things like “selling your body is wrong.” But sex workers aren’t selling their bodies anymore than a physical therapist, coal miner or NBA player is selling theirs. Sex workers are selling a service, and when someone doesn’t know the difference, they expose that they know nothing about the industry. They think all sex workers offer every type of sexual service and there are no bounds. Not so. Ideally, each sex worker sets their own limits on what they do and do not offer as well as the price of those offerings. Clients who violate those terms are perpetrators of violence. Workers who don’t get a say in what they do and do not offer are a group that needs some resources to either exit the industry or work in a different way where they can set their terms. Remember, we can’t end sex work. But we can make it safer and help people who want to exit be able to do so. This begins with decriminalizing sex work.

So, if the organization you’re considering supporting is run by someone centering themselves as the hero but has no lived experience (or is ex-law enforcement) or is run by SWERFs, that’s not an effective organization to support.

2. Do they support decriminalizing sex work?

One of the strongest arguments for decriminalizing sex work is to help victims of sex trafficking. There are lots of reasons for this, but I’ll share two:

When consenting sex workers don’t fear criminalization, they can work with organizations to identify who is being trafficked or coerced and who is choosing to be there. These are the people who know the difference. This may surprise you if you’re new here: but people who have been trafficked often have criminal records for doing sex work. Seriously. Law enforcement and our system do not take the time or have the nuanced understanding to differentiate, so literal survivors of trafficking are often left with criminal records that make re-entering society SO MUCH more difficult. Again, just take a look at Survived and Punished for proof that even survivors of sex trafficking are not safe from the state.

A solid organization supports decriminalization for these two reasons, even if they don’t like or approve of consenting sex work. They, and you, don’t have to be pro-consenting sex work to understand that decriminalizing it would help the most vulnerable among the community. Because if an org’s true goal is to help people get out of dangerous situations, they will want every advantage they can get to accomplish this, including working with current and former sex workers. But I’m hopeful that if you’re someone who supports people’s bodily autonomy, you will support those who choose to do sex work.

Here is Human Rights Watch’s page on decriminalization.

Here is the ACLU’s.

Here is Amnesty International’s.

3. Where do your dollars go? Is there transparency and accountability for the work they do?

This one is crucial. Lots of the worst kinds of these orgs actually pay their top staff ludicrously high salaries and spend an exorbitant amount of money on propaganda, advertising (“awareness campaigns”) and “civilian training” (which is actually just horrifying vigilantism and causes a ton of harm — see number 5 for more on this). Where you actually want your dollars to go is towards helping victims. Any org worth its salt spends the most money on *actually helping* victims. Their tact for this varies from org to org, but take a good look at the financials, which are publicly available if they are a nonprofit. If they are not a nonprofit, run the other way. If they are, see how they spend their money and decide if that’s how you want your dollars spent.

Here’s one good aggregator of this data and here is another (this spreadsheet tracks Trafficking/Rescue Organizations with some of this data too for easy comparison). In general, looking at the pay of execs compared to other staff and services rendered is a good way to see what a nonprofit is about. It’s not always possible to find salaries for everyone at an org, one trick is to search job listings as the ethical nonprofits list salary ranges, usually. I also want to see that most of the money is going towards the cause I’m actually supporting. I also see if they are spending more on advertising to get more donations than they are on using the donations to help the cause. I don’t have a lot of money to give so I want to be sure the money I do give goes as far as possible towards the real issues. But again, it’s totally up to you to decide if those salaries and spending patterns seem reasonable and if you’re comfortable with your dollars paying them.

Some anti-trafficking orgs especially will offer total transparency into how many victims they’ve helped and what that help has looked like, these are some of the best to support usually. Every org can say whatever they want, but you want to look at what they are actually doing. If their tactics are opaque and they offer no public information or proof of their work, that’s a big problem.

4. How do they talk about sex work? Specifically, do they acknowledge the existence of people who do consensual sex work?

This question kind of dovetails with whether or not an org is for decriminalization. However, a lot of the more religious orgs just can’t bring themselves to that point. If you’re religious or have some other reason you can’t get there either, even though evidence says that would protect the most people, then you’re at least looking for an acknowledgement that consensual sex work is a thing. What I mean is that if an org literally says that all sex workers are trafficking victims, then that exposes that the org doesn’t know anything about the trade and are more interested in forcing their beliefs onto people than actually helping them have the freedom to make their own choices. I find this category of org especially fascinating because they talk about “saving” people, but then attempt to put those same people under a new set of guidelines and control. A few clues are if they’re using the pejorative and outdated terms “prostitute”, “hooker” and “whore.” (Note that actual sex workers are increasingly reclaiming those words, but that’s for them and not for anyone else to do.)

More generally, does the org seem to see the group of people they are aiming to “rescue” as people? Do they allot them any autonomy or say they allow the survivor to control what their “rescue” looks like? Even if they don’t think consenting sex work could possibly be a thing, they should *at a minimum* be focused on a tailored approach, led by a survivor. Not a one size fits all method of “saving” them that comes with more rules and regulations “for their own good.”

This is important because many of these orgs claim to want to “save” people from the sex trade using the argument that all sex workers are being forced into the trade. But if they can’t acknowledge that there are people who *want* to be there, then what they are ultimately doing is also trying to force people into something. In this way, anti-trafficking orgs actually act like traffickers. The arguments around this usually revolve around the claim that those in the sex industry don’t know better. If you see this level of condescension and “we know best,” this is not an org to support.

5. What kind of narratives do they use to convince you this is a problem?

Another reason there is a resurgence of discussion about this is that nonprofits who work on this will grab any news moment about trafficking as a chance to gain new donors. This isn’t a necessarily nefarious practice, all nonprofits do it. The important thing here is *how* they do it. Broadly, human trafficking (including sex trafficking) is a complicated issue. Anyone presenting it as a cut and dry issue through a narrative of good guys versus bad guys and then presenting themselves as the only people who can stop it, is not an organization who understands the problem well enough. These groups are very likely to do more harm than good.

For example, a bunch of orgs took this recent Wayfair conspiracy as a chance to push a compelling narrative about children chained in dark basements even though the data does not support this as even a significant minority of sex trafficking. This is an example of using fear-mongering to get money.

This use of fear-mongering is especially prevalent when orgs that are based in the U.S. fixate on foreign countries. These orgs are usually promoting the narrative that there are bunch of chained-up, enslaved children in other, less “civilized” and less “evolved” societies serving as sex slaves and that the savior, the American (very often white American) is the only person or group who can help! This is harmful because these groups literally show up in countries where they have no cultural competency and do something called “Raid and Rescue,” basically plucking people (oftentimes children) out of a situation with no plan for how to help them re-enter society. Or a vague plan of “working with other orgs” to provide aftercare services. Again, they should be able to always tell you exactly which orgs they work with and how they have been vetted. Even worse: some of these orgs actually will “rescue” kids and then bring them back to the U.S. to be adopted by parents who may or may not have the cultural competency and knowledge of trauma to appropriately support the children.

If you are genuinely worried about this issue in another country: find an organization in that country to give money to, or an established, proven global network like UNICEF. The people on the ground will know how best to support victims in their community, not random white people from the U.S. who fly home without any accountability or follow-up.

Another common scare tactic are the awareness signs and posters you see in public spaces like airports and bus stations that cite the most bizarre things as “signs of trafficking.” They will also cite some of the debunked stats I’ll mention in number 10. Sometimes this awareness campaign includes something some orgs call “civilian training.” Basically this just means “training” regular people to call law enforcement on others. This is ALWAYS a bad idea and I’ll show you why. Here are a few things I’ve seen actual organizations claim are signs of trafficking and train random people to look for:

Anxiety

Tattoos

Tiredness

Depression

Lack of friends

Women traveling alone

Women dining alone

Women with a small suitcase

Disheveled hair

Drug or alcohol use

Women dressing sexually

Women dating older men

Someone dressed inappropriately for the weather

I wish I was joking about this list, because if you’re like me, you’ve fit many of these descriptions at various times. Were you trafficked? In reality, you can’t tell whether someone is being trafficked by using these lists. You actually can’t tell whether someone is being trafficked by looking at them at all. Trafficking victims often blend right into society. They may attend school, have friends, even participate in extracurricular activities. This is one of the reasons the issue is so complicated.

Unfortunately, it’s not only anti-trafficking orgs that have this list. Many businesses have started “training” their employees to spot “trafficked” people using these kinds of lists. Marriott is just one glaring example. What these lists do is give law enforcement cause for harassing someone. It also makes folks suffering from mental illness or experiencing homelessness a target.

So, if your org has lists like this or trains citizen vigilantes, they are exposing they do not understand the problem well enough to be working on it. Also, those tend to be structured like MLMs, which should warn you off them. Take your money elsewhere.

6. What does their actual work entail? Is it preventing the problem or claiming to solve an existing problem?

So, combatting child sex trafficking can look a lot of different ways and there is nothing wrong with a multi-pronged approach. But remember there are more and less useful ways and if you’re trying to be the most effective advocate possible, you need to know some of the most common methods and whether or not they are evidenced-based.

Some orgs focus on digital security and keeping kids safe on the internet. Others work to identify victims and then provide them with significant resources and support to exit the industry. Some focus on alleviating the underlying issues that may make children vulnerable to trafficking like poverty, lack of healthcare, homophobic policies and ideas, racism, issues in the foster care system, etc. These tactics, depending on how they are deployed, can be really effective ways to help children. Especially if they are able to provide significant resources and support for quite a while after someone exits the industry.

Now let’s talk about another class of “anti-trafficking” org: the savior kind, which unfortunately is more common. Their focus might be on going to foreign countries to do expensive and flashy rescue missions, but without any cultural competency or network of support and resources for people after they are “rescued.” Or going into the poorer neighborhoods where more BIPOC live to do the same type of thing. These groups are often led by privileged white people. They tend to see themselves as white saviors. This is a clear indication this is not a group to support as they are inherently racist and uninformed, and therefore more likely to do more damage than good. If the term white savior is new to you, I’d recommend spending some time learning about it. Another clue here can be what they name themselves. Do they co-opt savior language or maybe even use well known phrases associated with other movements?

This one is really important: do they say they are the only ones capable of doing this work? Do they say if they don’t save these victims, no one will? This exposes an extreme god complex and betrays a gap in their knowledge about this issue. This is also Abuser 101: I’m the only one who can help you/love you/save you, whatever. People with an understanding of the issue and a true desire to help will want to work with others with the same goal, not place themselves above all other efforts or present themselves as *the only* people who care.

Another clue they are more interested in painting themselves as heroes more than helping people is whether or not they care about the privacy of those they are “saving.” Ethical orgs will never use photos or videos of actual children they’ve worked with; they will use stock photos and be sure to tell you so. Any group using a child as a prop should not be supported. Imagine having one of the most traumatic experiences of your life painted all over the internet to earn someone money. Some orgs even use actual footage of raids in their marketing material. Some may even live stream their raids. This is horrifying given that not only can the victim not consent to their image being used beforehand, but no child can consent after. If your argument is that children can’t consent to the sex trade, they also can’t consent to give you license to use their image to get donations. These are not safe or effective places to put your money or support.

Another thing some orgs will do is pressure a survivor into “telling their story”, aka create marketing material for them with their personal trauma. Ideally, if a survivor does decide to endorse an organization, they do so with their own free will and have not been asked to. They should retain all legal rights to their own story and images that can be revoked anytime they feel the org is misusing them. Additionally, these stories are often procured right after “rescue”, when someone is most vulnerable and reliant on an org and so they may not feel they have a choice. In this way, orgs are essentially forcing newly “rescued” people into recruiting others to be “saved” using painfully similar tactics they may have been trained to use to recruit other trafficking victims. It’s really tough to know with these stories from the outside, which is why number 9 is so important to follow through on.

Another approach these orgs often use is “raising awareness.” They may literally spend all their time and money on glossy signs at airports and campaigns featuring kids locked in a basement somewhere. However, awareness of a fake problem doesn’t help anyone, and lots of the awareness based orgs present a false narrative of what’s happening. These are the groups who come up with the lists of signs of trafficking that don’t make any sense. These orgs are a huge waste of your money.

7. If they claim they are “saving” victims, do they offer victim services or work with orgs who do? If not, why not? Are there strings attached to the victim services?

In terms of what we know works and doesn’t work, the best place to put your money and support is either with preventative organizations working to make children less vulnerable or with an organization that helps extradite and rehabilitate people leaving abusive situations. What does the latter actually look like? Ideally a survivor gets to dictate what their exit looks like and a org offers access to as many of the following as possible for as long as possible.

Free housing and basic needs like clothes, food and hygiene products

Job training

Free and accessible healthcare

Access to education

Free mental health care by culturally competent therapists that will not re-traumatize them or try to force them into doing one thing or the other.

Access to substance abuse treatment

A network of peers to plug into for support

Legal resources. Some victims may want to pursue criminal charges or law enforcement may try to force them to. This should always be survivor led and *any* interaction with law enforcement should be mediated by a victim advocate and a lawyer, both of whom are not trying to sway the survivor, only inform them of the pros and cons of cooperating with law enforcement.

Unfortunately, some of the orgs that offer this kind of support will only do so if certain conditions are met. For example, a lot of religious orgs will only provide services if the survivor participates in their religion or at least adheres to its rules, especially around drugs or alcohol. Or they will only help if the person doesn’t do sex work again, even if they are now a consenting adult participating. If an org requires rule following and adherence to certain behaviors before they will help someone, they aren’t going to be very effective. The reality of leaving a situation where you have been coerced and manipulated, maybe for years, is actually extremely messy and traumatic in and of itself. It can take years for someone to sift through that process and heal. Conditional assistance severely limits the scope and effectiveness of that help and most commonly results in someone going right back into the abusive situation they were “rescued” from.

Sometimes an org says they offer aftercare but what they mean is they will yank a person from, say, a massage parlor, hand them a bag with flip flops, toothpaste, granola bars and religious pamphlets and that’s it. Now you’ve set that person up to fail in transitioning and made it potentially more dangerous for them to go back to their abusive situation as they may be punished for working with authorities. If an org says that they collaborate with others orgs for aftercare, they should be able to show receipts. As in, they should list exactly who they work with and how those organizations have been vetted. If there are only vague statements about working with other groups but no proof, that’s a red flag.

So, be wary of orgs who either do not offer victim services, offer barely anything, can’t show receipts or offer them with extreme strings or pressure attached. Reminder: all of this should be survivor-led.

Moreover, the most effective orgs live where they work, as they understand the specific needs and challenges within their community. If you want to support global efforts to end human trafficking, at least find a reputable and well-established org to support, such as UNICEF. However, your highest yield bet is going to be by supporting an org in your town, state or country that knows the unique challenges faced by those they are serving.

*A note on sexual abuse generally. When someone has suffered from sexual abuse, their choices were taken from them. The number one thing you can do in supporting a survivor of any type of sexual violence, including trafficking, is to respect their choices and autonomy. They need to learn to trust again that their wishes will be respected. That includes not forcing them to tell you what happened to them, which can be retraumatizing in and of itself. You may not like their choices, but you have to respect them anyway. Remember the main goal here is to give people choices, resources and support, not control them.

8. What is their stance on immigration policy? What are their political leanings generally?

Unfortunately, we know that one of the biggest risk factors in becoming a trafficking victim is immigration status or recent relocation. That means that any group who doesn’t care about immigration, supports a border wall or closed borders or has general animus towards immigrants but works on the issues of trafficking is a savior and doesn’t deserve your money or support. Plain and simple. If an org genuinely wants to help victims of trafficking, they will support immigration reform that allows this group of people to move freely to safety and access services without fear of deportation. Remember earlier when I mentioned there is actually human trafficking happening right now at the U.S. Mexico border? If an org claims to want to end trafficking, but supports the U.S. policies that created those conditions, they are not what they seem.

The reason general political leanings matter is that it doesn’t make sense to advocate for victims of trafficking while also advocating for diminished social services that help make children less vulnerable to being trafficked. This isn’t to say an org must have any specific political leaning, but this will tell you whether they are more interested in *preventing* trafficking or in being a savior to trafficking victims. If they generally want to cut social services, they don’t have an understanding of this issue at all and do not deserve your dollars. Whether or not they work directly on prevention in addition to extradition, they should support both if they truly care about victims.

9. What do other reputable people and organizations in the space think of them? Are there credible accusations of abuse within an org?

Sadly, it’s not uncommon for abusers to start or join these kinds of organizations as a way to shield themselves. Additionally, if your attitude is that you know best and are everyone’s savior, it’s a good bet that you don’t allot anyone their autonomy and cross boundaries often. This is one theory for why we actually see extremely high rates of violence, including sexual violence, from law enforcement. In fact, it’s estimated that law enforcement officers are perpetrators of domestic violence at a rate two to four times higher than the general public, with one study citing 40% of cops as domestic abusers. While there isn’t data available, the attitudes of law enforcement tend to be similar to savior organizations who see themselves as the people who know best for everyone around them.

Additionally, if you ask around the sex worker rights community in the area an anti-trafficking org works (or where they have a lot of supporters), they will usually know whether it’s ethical or not. Remember that sex workers of all stripes, including child sex trafficking victims, can’t really safely report abuse to authorities. But they may feel safe telling their peers. So peer run groups will have the dirt on whether local groups have credible allegations of abuse against those they claim to help.

10. Do they use accurate stats and cite their sources?

If an org has great graphic design and pithy infographics, but doesn’t cite their sources, you should be skeptical. Is this someone’s opinion? If so, whose opinion? Where did these numbers come from? This is just part of being a savvy social media user.

If their stats seem unbelievable or shocking, dig a little deeper. The data may be faulty and placed there to scare you into donating. Organizations who manipulate numbers or use numbers that are very obviously fake will likely be doing this in other places in their org. In other words, you can’t trust they do what they say they do. An org should always tell you where they are pulling those numbers from and a little Googling can usually tell you whether or not those numbers can be disproven (or if the data even exists anywhere else besides that org’s website).

Some of the most common stats that get thrown around by a lot by orgs in this industry have been debunked. Just remember that factual data from the human trafficking industry is extremely hard to accurately obtain, given the nature of the crime. If an org is using any of stats that have been credibly debunked, it is an indication that they either a) do not know how to evaluate data and information or b) they are willfully misleading you to hype you up, elicit an emotional response, and get your donation dollars. An important caveat before even digging into the numbers on any org’s site: you need to understand what definition of sex trafficking is being used to support their numbers. What is actually defined as “sex trafficking” varies between different organizations, law enforcement and actual laws.

Any number from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children should not be taken at face value. Their numbers come from people who call their tip line. Fewer than 1% of those calls are about stranger abductions. About 80% are from state agencies. But get this: they don’t track actual cases. Meaning that if a parent or foster system calls about a kid who ran away, they tally that as a trafficked child. They don’t follow up to see if the kid got home and they count each of these calls as individual cases, even if it’s a call about the same child.

Any number from the Human Trafficking Hotline can also not be taken at face value. They reported 10,949 reports of human trafficking in 2018. But they are also counting based on anonymous callers that are not verified or followed up with at all. Many of these calls, by their own admission, are vague claims like “there is a massage parlor that I think sells hand jobs” or “I saw a suspicious family at the mall.” The thing is, “suspicious” could literally mean a child was of a different race than the family they were with.

In reality, the Department of Homeland Security reported 428 victims of trafficking in 2019 in the U.S. That number represents ALL trafficking, not just child sex trafficking. Given this relatively small number, there is no reasonable explanation for the numbers in the hundreds of thousands or millions. A few other numbers that are commonly cited and have been debunked are that 800,000 children are brought into the U.S. as sex slaves every year. That 800,000 number seems to be a relic from an organization in 1999 that also had no proof behind it and may just be numbers of kids who ran away. Also that 100,000 children are in the sex trade in the U.S. — definitely not accurate. This is not an exhaustive list of misleading data commonly used by “anti-trafficking” orgs, but hopefully it will help you spot obvious misleading information. Oh, and I can’t finish this piece without telling you that the Super Bowl is not the biggest sex trafficking event of the year.

I really recommend listening to this podcast about Human Trafficking. They do the work to figure out where a lot of these numbers came from and show which are bogus and which are real. Update (Aug 11): they did an update debunking more of the myths floating around on Instagram graphics, find it here.

I hope this has been helpful for you in becoming a more effective ally and advocate. Here is a partial list of organizations and resources related to sex work, including trafficking that I personally trust as well as hashtags to peruse to learn more about the sex trade and how we can make it safer for those who want to stay in and easier for those who don’t to leave.

O.U.R.

I’m purposefully putting this at the end because while they are getting a lot of focus right now, they don’t meet a single one of my criteria are one of the worst I’ve seen of their kind. I’m really hopeful that if you truly care about ending child sex trafficking, you will use my tips to find more effective orgs and not let this information discrediting one nonprofit turn you off from an entire issue. If you find yourself loyal to this organization, even after learning that their methods are damaging, that may be an opportunity to question what this is really about for you. The answer might be uncomfortable: that you want to *look* like you care without putting in the work to vet organizations, or that you are loyal to a hero character more than the victims that person is claiming to help. Remember it’s never too late to change your mind, and I’ve seen many anti-trafficking folks who used to support O.U.R. do just that upon learning this information.

Here is more info on the problem with O.U.R specifically.

There is more, but honestly I wasn’t interesting in spending any more time on this because a much better use of yours and my time would be finding organizations who are really doing this work and advocating for causes that would make children in our communities and around the world less vulnerable.