A child dreams of using her artistic talents to rise out of poverty and help her family. She is approached by someone who has achieved just that – a woman offering to help her acquire the same success. Stories of being “discovered” and launched into a life of fame and fortune have always captured the imagination, and now it is happening to her.
A different girl feels unattractive at school. She is an outcast with few friends, seeking solace online when a strange man contacts her – insisting on her overlooked beauty, wittiness, and desirability.
Another kid lives with her grandmother, who is struggling to pay the bills. The girl has nowhere else to go, few opportunities to earn money, and knows she is expensive to keep. Her grandmother gives her a choice: do as I say to help pay the bills or leave.
The first scenario may set the scene for the box office hit Sound of Freedom; but it can (and does) happen everywhere, including Louisiana, with equally tragic consequences. The second happens every day across our country, with children groomed online – often for the purpose of generating sexually-explicit content, if not prostitution and trafficking. And the third scenario is from an actual case investigated by agents with my Louisiana Bureau of Investigation (LBI), in which a Gretna woman sold her own granddaughter for sex in their home to pay their electric bill.
As pointed out in Sound of Freedom, trafficking cartels and pedophiles have created a $150 billion industry that includes tens of millions of new images of child pornography uploaded online each year. Unfortunately for the victims, social media platforms and other tech companies are not required to search their servers for these images. Instead, they are merely required to report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children should they become aware of this illegal content.
Those cybertips are then sorted via location with cases relevant to Louisiana sent to our Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) unit. From there, my LBI agents (similar to Tim Ballard) investigate the case alongside our law enforcement partners. In the cases of human trafficking, that would be Louisiana State Police.
Crimes against children are on the rise, following the COVID pandemic boom. In 2009, our ICAC unit received 172 tips; but in the first quarter of 2023 alone, they received over 2,500. These can include everything from adults engaging in sexual conversations with minors to predators distributing sexual abuse images or videos of juveniles. According to NCMEC data, 60% of these children know their abuser; the rest are strangers online.
That means stories similar to those told in Sound of Freedom are not limited to the children of South America, or young women being trafficked across Europe as portrayed in the film Taken. Instead, a child may be trafficked within your Parish or even a home in your neighborhood. Thanks to cellphones and the Internet, child pornography can be produced anywhere and by anyone – including your own child who may have been targeted or blackmailed by an abuser online, perhaps connecting on a video game platform only to move to an encrypted and more secretive digital space.
These despicable crimes are what the LBI and other law enforcement agencies fight each and every day, as the problem grows exponentially with each passing year, affecting children of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds. It is believed that those who investigate child sex crimes burn out after three years; but our investigative team has been fighting child exploitation for more than ten – with each member responsible for 1,000 annual cybertips each.
That is why awareness of this issue is vital. Sound of Freedom has made great strides in accomplishing that. Yet we must not assume that God’s children are only being sold in Columbia. Unfortunately, they are being bought, sold, and abused everywhere. However, by knowing this and by having greater social awareness of the complex and expansive nature of these crimes, you can make a difference.
If you see something, say something. The brave men and women in law enforcement rely upon the public’s help. And with your support, we can protect and save our children.
Jeff Landry
Louisiana Attorney General
