The New York Post interviewed US Survivor Care Program Director Erin Williamson about how traffickers groom vulnerable youth.
“The internet has made every child online susceptible and accessible to traffickers… so a lot of youth are being recruited right from their own home,” said Williamson, who has been working on issues related to child sex exploitation for the past 20 years.
“It can be an individual who is on Facebook and is friend-requesting all of the students who say they attend a certain middle school. And then when one or two accept, they friend-request all of their friends and so on. … By the time they’re friend-requesting a vulnerable youth, they have 30 mutual friends, and they seem that they’re legitimate.”
