In 2015, a police officer found Kanyi at a local bar and demanded that he buy him a beer. Kanyi refused and two weeks later the perpetrator broke into Kanyi’s house and brutally murdered him.
Nate King, IJM’s Director of Congressional Affairs wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post urging Congress to pass legislations that will ensure tech companies are actively acting to protect vulnerable children around the world from being sexually exploited online.
The Senate held a hearing with the CEOs of Meta, X, TikTok, Discord and Snap to address the online sexual exploitation of children. This fast-growing, global crisis remains underreported and largely undetected across digital platforms and legislative action is immediately needed to address this crime.
In their response to the Senate Hearing, Ruby* and Joy*, survivors of online child sexual abuse shared that “The most important thing for you to know is that when people pay for children to be sexually abused online, including in live-streamed videos, the experience is virtual for them, but it is very real for the young girls and boys posed in front of cameras. It hurts us physically and mentally. While we have healed from our trauma, it is a wound we will live with forever.”
Last month explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift exploded across the internet. Tech platforms rightfully rushed to respond yet, industry actions to address the rampant creation of images, recorded and live-stream of real children being sexually abused pales in comparison.
With intervention by IJM Kenya, authorities and the brave testimony of 14-year-old Jedi* and her 11-year-old brother Kevin*, the man, who is suspected of having abused several other children was found guilty and sentenced for his crime against the two children.
On February 13, the House of Representatives passed the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Act of 2023 to reauthorize the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and build on existing efforts to eliminate human trafficking around the world for good.
