Actor, activist and businessman Ashton Kutcher spoke about his organization’s aim to end human sex trafficking and child pornography, at a recent talk show.
Aston Kutcher told about Thorn, the organization he began in 2008, with his ex-wife, actress Demi Moore.
Apparently, the one thing Kutcher found in common was the fact that almost all the sex trafficking victims were targeted online. He said:
“We’re building digital tools to fight human trafficking. Basically, the purchase and commerce for human trafficking is happening online, just like everything else now, and so we’re building digital tools to fight back against it.”
According to Kutcher, Thorn’s mission is “to drive tech innovation in the fight against trafficking.” On the organization’s website, itself explains how it goes about, stating:
“We partner across the tech industry, government and NGOs and leverage technology to combat predatory behavior, rescue victims, and protect vulnerable children. The site also lists 20 members of what it calls The Thorn Technology Task Force, comprised of technology companies that lend their knowledge, time and resources to the work that we do. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Adobe are listed among the names who are helping Thorn’s cause.”
Thorn, as Kutcher says, has been a quiet success. However, it has come up with some impressive, real-world numbers to back up its mission statement, as the actor explains:
“We’ve built a tool to help law enforcement prioritize their caseload and recover victims and find traffickers. And we’ve found and identified and recovered over 6,000 trafficking victims this year. And we’ve found, identified, and recovered 2,000 traffickers.”
