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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Sex-trafficking in Canada, US

This story about sex trafficking in the Edmonton Sun is not about teen social networkers, it's about adults. But I'm including it this week as an extreme example of how vulnerable young people whose brains aren't fully developed can be found online, then victimized (prefrontal cortexes, or the executive part of brains, aren't developed till we're in our early 20s - see this at the US's National Institute of Mental Health). Edmonton "city cops are investigating two suspected human-trafficking rings believed to be part of an international network that enslaves hundreds of young Albertans each year, many of whom are forced into the sex trade in Las Vegas," the Sun reports. A police officer told the Sun that, though human-trafficking groups have operated in western Canada for "at least 20 years," they're now recruiting on social-networking sites too, "choosing naïve or vulnerable victims for 'grooming' who are right around 18 years old in order to avoid detection by authorities looking for predators after underage kids." [See also "How to recognize grooming" and "Profile of a teen online victim."]

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