Want to keep a kid safe online? Experts offer tips at Vanguard University

Kids are vulnerable; not just troubled or insecure kids, all kids.

Maybe your kid.

That’s one of the messages human trafficking experts are likely to deliver during “Ensure Justice 2024,” a two-day public conference that starts Friday, March 1, at Vanguard University.

The Costa Mesa school’s Global Center for Women and Justice and the Orange County Department of Education are co-sponsors of the conference, which is the latest edition of an annual event that focuses on some element of human trafficking.

This year, the focus is on keeping children safe online.

Though human trafficking encompasses all manner of forced or coerced labor, the topic that generates the most interest is forced sex work.

Last year, the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force issued a report that found about 90% of 420 people identified as local human trafficking victims were being exploited sexually. About 85% of those victims were recruited from within the United States, not overseas, and 4 of 10 sex-trafficking victims were minors, according to the report.

And though data on how people are recruited isn’t clear, experts believe traffickers typically make their first contact with victims via the internet.

A 2022 report from the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, found that online recruitment is an “increasingly important” tool for traffickers. Traffickers, the report said, eventually meet their targets face-to-face. But initially, they often use webcams, text-based chats and other online tools because they like “the lack of physical contact between them and the individuals they recruit.”

Speakers at the conference in Costa Mesa will range from Ezequiel Escobar Bellshaw, executive director of Fiet Gratia, an organization from Madrid that specializes in human trafficking intervention, and Corrine St. Thomas Stowers, supervising tactical intelligence analyst assigned to the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center, to a social media influencer who works under the name “Miss Katie.”

As many as 300 people are expected to attend. Cost is $140. For information, call Vanguard at 714-556-3610 or go online to the website for Ensure Justice 2024

Source: Orange County Register