The Demi and Ashton (DNA) Foundation recently launched a high-profile online video initiative to fight child sex trafficking. The series "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" features major celebrity appearances by names like Bruce Willis, Justin Timberlake, and even Pete Cashmore - founder of the social media news site Mashable.com.
The interactive campaign encourages users to submit their own "Real Man" video - using the slogans "I am a Real Man" or "I prefer a Real Man" - and upload them to the DNA Foundation's Facebook fanpage. In the video above, Isaiah Mustafa (commonly known as "The Old Spice Guy") and Mashable founder Pete Cashmore tip their hat to the cause.
According to the DNA Foundation, the videos - and the organization itself - aim "to raise awareness about child sex slavery, change the cultural stereotypes that facilitate this horrific problem, and rehabilitate innocent victims." Many of the videos take a quirky and often funny look on what it means to be a "Real Man" while attempting to address a serious issue.
According to the DNA Foundation's website:
- 12.3 million people are enslaved today worldwide.
- In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation eradicating slavery, yet more than one million people are enslaved in the U.S. today.
- Two million children are bought and sold in the global commercial sex trade.
- The average age of entry into commercial sex slavery in the United States is 13 years old.
- The global sex slavery market generates $32 billion in profits each year.
- Every ten minutes, a woman or child is trafficked into the United States for forced labor.
- Most “johns” are quite ordinary: 70-90 percent are married, and most are employed with no criminal record.
- 76 percent of transactions for sex with underage girls are conducted via the internet.
- The U.S. government spends 300 times more money per year to fight drug trafficking than it does to fight human trafficking.
- Approximately 55 percent of girls living on the streets in the United States engage in commercial sex slavery. Girls from middle and upper class neighborhoods are also at risk.
A Mashable article about the video series has already been shared more than 1,600 times across the social web. Mashable's esteem -along with a star-studded line up and DNA Foundations 43,000 Facebook friends - may be just the vehicle Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher needed to foster mainstream awareness.
I hope this approach will dissuade some people from participating in sex trafficking. However, many of the men who exploit girls have their own group memberships to rely on for social support. The first step to defeating child sex trafficking is to recognize that it is an organized crime activity. The owners and operators of this lurid industry have their eye on profits and personal power. Such organizations can grow through aggressive recruitment activity. They will be defeated only when and where communities demand that law enforcement identify the perpetrators and hold them accountable.