Research Reveals: The Root Cause of Sex Trafficking is Pornography

Warning: Some content and links on this page lead to graphic descriptions and language.

Your blood would curdle if you saw some of the keywords people have typed in search engines that brought them to our own site (before we blocked them). This happens because part of our work is to rescue children from sex trafficking.

The sad reality of the modern age is that the only way to truly end sex trafficking is to cut off the supply. And that supply is fueled by the explosive and pervasive distribution and consumption of pornography, which now begins distorting the brains of boys around the world at an average age of less than 10 years old.

As Fight the New Drug puts it, “Economics 101 tells us the demand fuels the supply. And, unfortunately, the demand for younger performers is living up to that principle, simultaneously creating porn ‘stars’ and sex trafficking victims.”

Sex trafficking and pornography are inextricably linked.

Sex Trafficking Linked to Pornography, Says Research

From one study in 2012, 56% of males surveyed said their sexual preferences had become ‘increasingly extreme or deviant’ the more porn they watched.

According to the resea rch, this happens because the brains of people consuming porn become accustomed to what they’ve already seen. Thus, “many porn users find themselves getting aroused by things that used to unsettle them or that go against their personal values.”

Where does this accelerating deviancy lead?

Another study listed on the same page found that “viewing this type of dehumanizing content not only normalizes dominance and abuse, but it also connects these acts to love and intimacy, and can set the stage for eventual acceptance of violence and aggression—both in relationships and as normal and accepted behavior in society.”

Harvard professor Catherine Mackinon found that “consuming pornography is an experience of bought sex and thus it creates a hunger to continue to purchase and objectify, and act out what is seen.”

And this is why researchers of porn addicts have found an increasing frequency to visit massage parlors (hello Robert Kraft, owner of New England Patriots) and try to act out what they’ve seen. Massage parlors are simply the next logical step once the porn is no longer enough. And sex trafficking finds a new willing propagator.

The ‘Other’ Cause of Sex Trafficking

The simple truth is, pornography feeds the cravings and creates the demand that leads people to perpetuate sex trafficking.

Friends of WPC Nepal focuses on the root causes that drive women, kids, and families in Nepal to be at risk for sex trafficking. Those include extreme poverty, shattered families, abuse, and the desperation and isolation that spring from them.

But there’s a flip side to all those root causes.

If there were not a complimentary demand for sexual experiences that abuse and exploit women and children, poverty would not lead to human trafficking as it does now.

Imagine a child whose father has died, whose mother abandons her for another man, and who wanders the streets of Hetauda or another city in Nepal. We have kids in our safe home right now who have lived this.

But imagine a world where rather than view that child as a possible source of money and exploitation, everyone around them came to the aid of that child and did everything they could to help her.

What a world, right?

What’s the greater fantasy then – that world, or the one painted by pornography?

How You Can Help End Sex Trafficking

You can make that better world a reality. You can help end sex trafficking by simply refusing to participate in the production, distribution, or consumption of pornography.

You can teach your kids about the internet, about its dangers, and about the great worth we ALL have as human beings. You can refuse to partake in seemingly harmless Youtube videos where people get to laugh at someone else’s misfortune. The disconnect between one person’s humanity and ours in a video is enough to slowly persuade us that these aren’t real people and what’s being done to them isn’t that harmful (to them or to us).

Kids need adults to show them what healthy relationships and human interactions look like and what they don’t look like.

The ultimate root cause of human sex trafficking is not poverty or broken families. The ultimate root cause comes from the porn-infused, conscience-denying, non-empathic, dehumanizing actions of men (and women) who will do anything, go anywhere, and pay anything to get what they want, caring nothing about the girls (or boys) who get hurt along the way.

One child at a time, it’s up to us to show the next generation how much suffering that behavior causes, and why we should strive to prevent it.

Sex trafficking exists because otherwise ‘normal’ people choose to see other people as less than human. They are a means to an end, fueled by deviancy created in part by prolonged exposure to pornography.

Maybe this is why the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children here in the U.S. saw a 774% increase in child pornography cases between 2008 and 2011. 774%!

Child pornography is – by definition – sex trafficking: the child is being coerced in to sexual acts for commercial gain.

And where does the desire for child pornography come from? It comes from the same place that leads men to exploit trafficked children. Few men begin with children. They start with women, but grow more deviant over time.

Do You Want to End Sex Trafficking?

Do you really, really want to end sex trafficking?

Then refuse to participate in the production, distribution, or consumption of pornography. And don’t stand by while others do so. If someone claims to care about justice and equality, but thinks pornography is harmless ‘fun’, you need to educate them.

If that means you get insulted or ridiculed, just know that you’re taking a public stand against one of the root causes of child sex trafficking. By doing this, you are also supporting the work of Friends of WPC Nepal and other organizations that are fighting human sex trafficking.

Let’s put it simply: If there were no sex trafficking, Friends of WPC Nepal could close its doors tomorrow.

Poverty would still be there, but the dangers of sexual exploitation and abuse would not be.

What kind of world do you really want, and how badly are you willing to fight for it?

Still Don’t Believe Pornography Connects to Sex Trafficking?

If all the research above isn’t enough, here are some real stories of women who experienced sex trafficking in pornography. Again – some descriptions on Fight the New Drug are graphic. Please use discretion.