Human trafficking doesn’t always happen outside the home. Sex predators are luring people with the use of technology. Individuals from two northern Illinois organizations are giving tips that can keep your child safe.
Joyce Lo is the founder of Amazing Grace Human Trafficking Ministry. This organization raises community awareness about this crime and supports anti-trafficking organizations.
She said some people don’t think this occurs in their neighborhoods.
“It happens in all communities. It happens in the city, it happens rurally, it happens in the suburbs,” Lo added. “I think people don't know that.”
Lo said a big reason for this is because some traffickers are meeting their victims online.
“Often children, often individuals who are in you know, difficult circumstances,” she said. “Maybe they lost their job or they have a child to raise. And they groom them. So, they become friends with them.”
Lo said most children show signs when someone is targeting them.
“So, if their grades suddenly start to drop," she mentioned. “If they start acting depressed, you know, not wanting to hang out with people or only hanging out with one certain person. And sort of being secretive about it, you know, never getting to meet the guy.”
Richard Wistocki is a retired detective from the Naperville Police Department High Technology Crimes Unit and the owner of BeSure Consulting.
He shared that he spent a lot of time telling parents to inspect their children’s online relationships.
“I always found myself telling parents,” he said, “you know, no matter what your kids tell you, you have to be sure of this and be sure of that. So I called it BeSure Consulting.”
Wistocki trains students and parents on what they should do if a predator approaches them. He said rather than creating fake profiles, educating victims is more impactful.
“God put me here to protect kids and I've arrested over 300 internet predators in my career,” Wistocki explained.
Wistocki said there are many mobile applications that children use to hide things. Parents can go to their phones’ app store and search hide my pictures or hide my videos and several apps will come up.
“These are called vaults. The most popular vault is the calculator app. The calculator app looks like a calculator works like a calculator,” he said. “But if you put in the secondary calculator, a passcode, you'll see all the pictures they don't want you to see.”
He also pointed out that there is a vault within the Snapchat app that allows children to hide photos. There’s a deck of cards to the left the snap button. If the person clicks on “my eyes only” a passcode can be set up to hide photos.
Wistocki is suggesting that parents get training to learn how to monitor these things. He created the online training Cyberparenting 101.
“And what this does, it shows them step by step, what kids are doing,” he explained, “Whether it's vaping and drugs, sextortion, cyberbullying, whatever, gaming online. And so it shows a complete package of how parents need to be trained.”
There is also a monitoring software from a company calledBark – Parental Controlsthat can aid in the prevention of some of this trafficking.
Wistocki said guardians should remember two things:
They are responsible for their child’s technology if that child is under the age of 18. And there is no such thing as privacy for children, especially when it comes to protecting them.
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
