(Editor’s note: This story is the third of a series that focuses on sexual abuse and child sex trafficking in the local community and how to help in the fight against it.)

Social media is a popular platform for communication these days. We covered risks to teenagers and children as a result of online communication in a previous article. However, the ease of access also allows adults who mean well to share information that ends up being a detriment to the cause instead.

A story addressing trafficking truths on endsexualexploitation.org included the following concept,

“We cannot simply ignore ill-informed takes on sex trafficking because the subconscious acceptance of the narratives they create make it more difficult to address real problems and implement effective change and reform.”

Child trafficking is a reality around the nation and the world. Child abuse happens all too close to home. Raising awareness can be helpful to fight such a serious problem.

However, there are two common themes to posts on social media that are not helpful, even if they get a lot of agreement from others on the platform.

The first involves people sharing personal experiences, noting they have seen something concerning and reported it to authorities, but there was no notable result.

Officials who work within the legal system to help children who have been abused explain that, while stating “I made a report and nothing happened” seems to draw attention to an issue, it may not be the way to go.

“Posting ‘no one will do anything about it’ based on an experience they might have had is not helpful. Investigators do what they can; they have to follow laws. Law enforcement has laws. When cases make it to court, the district attorney’s office, they have laws to follow,” said Tonia Hartzell, family advocate for the CAC of McKean County. “Eventually, it makes it to a trial with a jury of that person’s peers. The more false information or negative information that is out there affects every single one of those trials. Because whether a person is chosen (for a jury), that bias is there already. They are looking for beyond a reasonable doubt, that false information online adds to that bias.”

Hartzell also noted that the phone call may well have had results, but in cases involving abuse, the results may not be easily seen from a distance.

“Maybe from that phone call, a parent went to rehab, and they stayed clean and that parent and child were reunited,” Hartzell said.

Another side of social media posts that not everyone thinks of before clicking “post” is that the reader of such a post may well be a victim, a child or teenager struggling to come forward with allegations of abuse.

This individual can read posts about nothing being done and think “There is no point” in telling anyone. However, there are another category of posts that may deter that victim from reaching out for help.

“The other thing I’m noticing a lot, especially after the #saveourchildren, a lot of memes about pedophiles, similar to ‘if they let us shoot pedophiles or they let us kill them,’ along those lines — this is also not helpful,” Hartzell said.

While many people feel strongly about the abuse of children, voicing those opinions where a victim can read them may not be the best outlet.

“Because children, 100% of the time — they know them, they might still love (the abuser), they just want the abuse to stop. Some of them don’t know it’s wrong until they are taught by some outside source, that it’s wrong,” Hartzell said.

Hartzell’s 100% statistic is a local one, as it refers to the children who received services through the McKean County Children’s Advocacy Center. In 2019, the statistic was that 100% of alleged perpetrators were known to their victims. This statistic is consistent with those of previous years as well.

In 2019, 173 children and families received services. Those children, and others Hartzell has worked with in the past, have one notable thing in common.

“Over all the kids I have worked with, which is thousands at this point, there’s not one that has ever told me that they want to see whoever was doing something to them in jail,” Hartzell said. “It’s the families, the caregivers, us (the advocates), that want to see them in jail. The kids and teenagers are ok either way, (the abuse) stopped.

“If a kid sees (posts) and something is happening to them, they are automatically going to think, is my (whatever relationship), going to die because I tell someone?”

While this is the most common scenario in our area, it is also quite prevalent nationwide. According to endsexualexploitation.org, Child sex trafficking often involves a person who knew the child or even a family member of the child. The site states that the prevalence of parents choosing to traffic their children can range from “3% – 44% among survivors, revealing that parents play a significant role in sex trafficking. Further, a Journal of Family Violence study reported that almost 60% of familial sex trafficking victims have ongoing contact with their trafficker, making it exceedingly difficult for children and youth to remove themselves from harmful situations and protect themselves—both physically and psychologically.”

Statistics also indicate that in active federal cases of sex trafficking in 2019, only 5.3% of cases involved cages, locked rooms, or barred cells. Most victims are groomed and held captive through psychological abuse, manipulation, and coercion that can be difficult to identify. Therefore, it is a challenge to break free and ask for help.