The ladies of TikTok are telling “sex trafficking near miss” stories again.

In all reported cases of sex trafficking, how many times has a victim been taken while shopping at Target, as an adult or as a child accompanying an adult? ZERO.

This isn’t a real thing, & it’s harmful.

I’m not saying women who tell stories about what they think were sex trafficking attempts are lying.

I am saying they aren’t telling the actual truth, not out of malice, because they don’t know better.

I 100% believe something happened in each story in which a dude was creepy.

Creepy dudes aren’t okay.

Absolutely not.

Some are criminals.

But they aren’t sex traffickers.

For sex traffickers to do what they do, they want to go unnoticed.

Grabbing someone from Target (or IKEA or whatever place the next story will come from) makes people notice.

If that’s how sex trafficking worked, it would be easy to end.

Sex traffickers seek to victimize the people who our society already treats as invisible.

Immigrants. Refugees. Black girls. Foster children. Poor people. LGBTQIA+ youth who have been kicked out of their homes. People addicted to various substances.

The vast majority of sex trafficking victims knew their trafficker before crimes began.

For me, it was my father.

In other cases, it’s a family member or neighbor or dealer or boyfriend or older guy who dotes on kids to groom them or a woman victim forced to find new victims.

When we focus on someone creepy at Target, we keep not seeing the actual victims around us.

We center people who would never become sex trafficking victims as the would-be targets when anyone who has done anti-trafficking work will tell you they aren’t.

Abused kids. Runaways. Anyone whose absence might not be missed.

Those are the people who are trafficked.

Very few victims are from kidnappings, and none from your local Target.

Urban myths about sex trafficking don’t raise awareness.

They just lead to games of where’s Waldo in places where we already know Waldo isn’t.

What can all of us do to counter sex trafficking?

Know people.

See people.

Invest in children so they know what it is to be loved rather than groomed.

Notice who is too often unseen & marginalized in your community. Find out who is already doing good work there, & join them.

More often than not, sex trafficking victims are those who don’t belong in the larger community, so they aren’t missed if they disappear.

So, build belonging.

And not just new places of belonging for those who already belong.

(And since this is taking off, I’m gonna drop a link to my book right here...) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062959271/