Volunteers Join LEOs To Fight Child Sex Trafficking

4. What sort of opportunities could other volunteers participate in? Do they need particular skills or certifications in order to help?

Volunteer opportunities vary widely, for people with specific experience or knowledge. Otherwise, we welcome anyone with a passion for kids, internet/computer access, and time.

What sort of specific qualifications? Licensed Private Investigators (with a state license) are needed for surveillance and other services. We also seek experienced software engineers, database programmers, data analyzers, and those who know GUI design and mobile device security.

But folks without those specialized skills or certifications are needed too! Here’s an incomplete list of tasks our volunteers make happen:

Internet Surveillance (searching sex ads for minors)

Social Media Investigations

Poster Distribution

Community Presentations

Media Relations

Copy Writing/Blogging

Graphic Design

Prayer Intercession

5. What do parents need to know about trafficking? Does 4theOne provide training or resources for them?

Law enforcement recently contacted us for help in locating a pair of sisters who have been missing for two years. We have located one of the girls, who is now in a safe place, and continue looking for her sister. Our team has put in well over 100 hours on this case, and we are still working it. Law enforcement is extremely short-handed, with 6,000 open cases of missing children in Dallas alone, as reported by the Crimes Against Children Task Force in Dallas. A detective often handles dozens of cases of various types at any given time. Thus their attention to any one missing child to locate a missing child is very limited.

Parents need to accept the fact there are real dangers their children can be drawn into and educate themselves about those dangers. Sex-trafficking is everywhere—it is not an LA thing, or just an NYC thing. It is a real thing, and it is here.

We are in the process of putting together a presentation so that parents can invite their friends into their homes and let us present the dangers their children face when they have access to internet, social media, cell phones, etc.

NCMEC has excellent information at https://www.kidsmartz.org/ that parents can tap into now.