Victims of sex trafficking and online sexual exploitation

Commercial sexual exploitation is a complex, profitable, relatively low risk, and everchanging criminal enterprise that remains difficult to effectively address in policy and practice. Researchers throughout the last decade have begun exploring the unique role of the Internet in facilitating commercial sexual exploitation among vulnerable children and adults in the United States. This chapter will summarize current research on Internet-facilitated commercial sexual exploitation, and will discuss the ways in which cyberspace represents an increasingly anonymous market for sex buyers complicit in the victimization of children and adults. It will also critically examine the ways in which current efforts to address commercial sexual exploitation may be complicit in upholding structures that enable exploitation to flourish.