Today, with the instant reach of social media and the explosion in cyber-porn, a child sex slave can be purchased online and delivered to a customer more quickly than a pizza. Stopping Traffic investigates the international crisis of human sex trafficking, particularly of minors, from a deeply personal point of view. It is anchored by frank interviews with child sexual abuse and sex trafficking survivors and veteran activists, with additional commentary from social service agents, academics, and young activists.

Our story traces the links among child sexual abuse, child-focused cyber-porn, prostitution, and the enormously lucrative market for cyber and in-person sex trafficking. We illustrate how children are primed early to experience extreme, habitual exploitation and abuse, which then may define the only experience of physical intimacy and the only life that they know.

An estimated 27 million people are trafficked worldwide every year, delivering an easy $150 billion a year to their enslavers. Our story journeys to the Philippines, Mexico, Thailand, Iraq, and major U.S. cities to provide raw images and first-hand documentation of a crime that prevails across every culture and at all socioeconomic strata. We explore the practices among families, in the streets, and behind closed doors to explain how a child or young adult is groomed to be trafficked, at an average cost to a trafficker of $90, but with a potential to yield thousands.

We establish how and why the U.S., with its relative affluence, technological sophistication, and solid tourist industry, has become the greatest source of sex traffickers’ customers. Our most popular event for scoring a trafficking arrangement is the Super Bowl.

The film is a call to action, intending to inspire the viewer to join in the movement to seek an end to human trafficking, helping to break the isolation of millions of voiceless victims. We are particularly reaching out to young people, hoping to enlist the next generation of activists.