Modern-Day Trafficking of Young Children (< 13): Prevalence, Severity, Familial Offenders, Production of Child Abuse Materials, and Organized Crime Networks

On September 19, 2025, I presented at the International Human Trafficking and Social Justice Conference on:

Modern-Day Trafficking of Young Children (< 13): Prevalence, Severity, Familial Offenders, Production of Child Abuse Materials, and Organized Crime Networks.

The nature of child sexual abuse and trafficking crimes against children is rapidly evolving in the modern era.

Psychological and forensic findings on the evolving nature of child sexual abuse and trafficking in the modern era provide evidence of the following:

1. We are seeing exponential increases in production and distribution of child sexual abuse materials (CSAMs) and child torture materials, recorded, live-stream, and on-demand, on the open/surface, publicly-accessible internet, and dark web/net.
2. Familial sex trafficking and production of CSAMs is prevalent and under-reported.
3. An abundance of CSAM is produced on U.S. soil.
4. There is a trend toward increasingly brutal, sadistic, and torture-level abuse of children in CSAM and other child trafficking.
5. There is a trend toward victimization of younger children, including infants and toddlers.
6. Child abuse perpetrators are more regularly coercing children to harm other children.
7. There is increased evidence of organized criminal child abuse and trafficking networks.
8. Child abuse by ritualistic abuse networks has been further substantiated.
9. Offenders have a startling technological advantage in concealing production/distribution of CSAMs and child torture materials, far exceeding law enforcement’s investigative capacities.
10. Child sexual abuse offenders, including CSAM producers and consumers, are increasingly networking on dark web forums, chat rooms, etc., to encourage and normalize child sexual abuse and child torture, and conceal their crimes from law enforcement.
11. We are seeing very recent extreme increases in online sexual extortion of children apart from any physical contact between perpetrators and victims.
12. Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is being used to generate or alter CSAMs and to extort victims.
13. There is greater evidence of abuse in daycare and schools.
14. There is greater evidence of clergy abuse.
15. There are indications of increased use of drugs to abuse and control victims.
16. There is greater evidence of child abuse within children’s recreational organizations.
17. We are seeing increased abuse and neglect secondary to increased poverty and homelessness.

In addition to the video presentation I provided at this conference, I provided to attendees a lengthy handout that covered my content in depth.

I have made some updates to this handout, and I am now publishing it on my website here, Modern-Day-Crimes-Against-Children-December-2-2025.

The content of this handout is highly disturbing. Nonetheless, I believe that we all need to increase our knowledge of modern-day sex trafficking of pre-adolescent children, including its prevalence, severity, production of child sexual abuse materials, the role of familial traffickers, and the role of organized crime networks in the perpetration of child abuse and child sex trafficking.

This knowledge is necessary in order to recognize, identify, and protect victims. Our institutions need to get up to speed: law enforcement, child protection, the judiciary, medical and mental health professionals and professional organizations, educators, researchers, the media, and society at large. Even protective parents have no way to recognize that their children have been abused in these ways unless awareness of these forms of abuse is raised in society on a large scale.

My own work is psychotherapy. Even in the field of psychology, even in the sub-fields of trauma and dissociation, we have a long way to go in educating ourselves about the current trends in the abuse of children. When a therapist is uneducated about the evolving nature of child abuse and the forms of abuse that a client has experienced, and perhaps even expresses incredulity directly or indirectly, this can irreparably damage the ability of the client to get help. Clients, and their trauma-bearing dissociated self-states, are usually only able to disclose abuse content that they believe their therapists will find believable. Survivors are very sensitive to the risk of being disbelieved, dismissed, judged to be delusional, schizophrenic, etc.

When psychologists are aware of the severe, sophisticated, and evolving nature of extreme and organized forms of child abuse, this creates a therapeutic space for clients to process and disclose this content in therapy. Survivors can sense how deep we run, how much knowledge and sorrow we hold, and will open up or shut down accordingly.

It is essential that all organizations that address child abuse, including psychotherapy organizations that address child abuse and trauma, educate their membership and the public on these emerging trends. It is my hope that professional societies such as the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and others, will include in their conferences, trainings, and treatment guidelines content on the necessity of psychotherapists staying current on the evolving nature of crimes against children.