The combination of poverty, sexual trafficking, and technology has given rise to a new form of slavery: cyber-sex trafficking. As CNN explains, anyone who has a computer, internet, a Web cam, and an exploited woman or child can be in business:
Andrea was 14 years old the first time a voice over the Internet told her to take off her clothes.
“I was so embarrassed because I don’t want others to see my private parts,” she said. “The customer told me to remove my blouse and to show him my breasts.”
She was in a home in Negros Oriental, a province known for its scenic beaches, tourism and diving. But she would know none of that beauty. Nor would she know the life she’d been promised.
Andrea, which is not her real name, said she had been lured away from her rural, mountain village in the Philippines by a cousin who said he would give her a well-paid job as a babysitter in the city. She thought she was leaving her impoverished life for an opportunity to earn money to finish high school. Instead, she became another victim caught up in the newest but no less sinister world of sexual exploitation — cyber-sex trafficking.
