Hope for Children Foundation

False Assumption Child Sex Trafficking

November 10, 2018 by patricia

False Assumption Made By Many

Across the globe, child sex trafficking is a $99 billion enterprise, making it the second largest illegal trade. Illegal Drug trade is the number one largest. Child sex trafficking reaches every corner of the United States of America, but is largely ignored and has become a hidden epidemic that is destroying lives and endangering many charities including Hope for Children Foundation’s mission to protect children.

multi colored_damage_child trafficking unlawful — Child Sex Trafficking and False Assumptions

False Assumption Child Sex Trafficking

False Assumption #1:

Sex trafficking is not a problem in my community – sex trafficking is only a problem in foreign countries or large, highly-populated cities.
The unfortunate reality is that there is a growing demand for sex with youth here in the United States. It happens in every community and affects youth of every age, all genders, races and from all income levels. Additionally, research shows, while those perverted individuals who fuel the demand for illegal acts of sex with children come from all socioeconomic backgrounds, the typical buyer is a Caucasian male, 35-45 years old, married with two children and making between $70,000 and $100,000 a year.

False Assumption #2:

Sex trafficking is a crime involving some form of travel, transportation or movement across state or national borders.
Although transportation may be involved as a control mechanism to keep victims in unfamiliar places, sex trafficking does not always involve movement. There are often subtler forms of coercion being used, including victims being physically and socially isolated from their family and friends, or withholding basic necessities like food, water and healthcare.

False Assumption #3:

Youth who are involved in sex trafficking, it must be their choice or they would run away and seek help.
Victims of trafficking often do not immediately seek help or self-identify as victims. Pimps use a variety of grooming techniques to prey on a victim’s vulnerabilities and leverage them for control, including cultivating drug dependency. Over weeks and months of physical and psychological manipulation, the victim experiences “trauma bonding” and develops an unhealthy loyalty to their pimp. When someone tries to remove a victim from a dangerous trafficking situation, many times the victim will go back to their pimp because that bond is so strong.

False Assumption #4:

If families were more vigilant, youth would not get caught up in sex trafficking.
Traffickers are expert manipulators and well-aware of the risk factors that make it easier to coax certain youth into trafficking. Traffickers target vulnerable youth on social media, dating apps or in online gaming chat rooms. Some young people are even lured into trafficking by other kids their age, especially those living at treatment centers or group homes. In some cases, there are parents or caregivers who traffic their own children for financial gain. These situations can be difficult to identify because of the complex cycle of abuse and control that has been unaddressed throughout the adults’ lifetime.

False Assumption #5:

Law enforcement and child protective services are the ones responsible for protecting our youth and putting an end to sex trafficking.
We all have a role to play in protecting our youth. Within our communities, it is essential that parents, neighbors and family friends look out for each other and offer support when it is needed. We must be careful not to judge or shame other parents, but rather, take the time to engage each other in important conversations. We must also educate ourselves about what trafficking really looks like and speak up when we notice any red flags. The conversation around child sex trafficking has been hidden for too long, and it is our job to bring it to the forefront.

Child sex trafficking is one of many threats to the healthy development of America’s children, and to children around throughout world. We challenge you to help shine a light on these issues and become a partner as a community to end the cycle of abuse and positively impact child development.

Thank you for reading this information.

Hope for Children Foundation

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Accountability is the Key

October 3, 2018 by patricia

Accountability is the Key Together With Education to Help Stop Child Abuse

The fact children are adversely impacted by domestic violence is now well documented and intellectually understood. Yet, attorney and court practices in some jurisdictions throughout the United States continue to reflect the out-dated notion that if the children have not been physically battered, evidence of domestic violence will be of little importance in issuing orders and agreements.

Tragically, such denial places both the abused parent and children at greater risk for further harm, and all but ensures that the abuser will have further involvement with the criminal justice system. We offer ten practical recommendations for improving our interventions in domestic violence legal matters regarding children. We invite you to visit our Web site https://hopeforchildrenfoundation.org and view our free movies and videos to learn more steps to reduce crimes of domestic violence in your community.

How Domestic Violence impacts victims

Domestic violence impacts the clients of most advocates, probation officers and attorneys, but family and criminal law practitioners, in particular, are positioned to dramatically improve victim (child and adult) safety and offender accountability if they have learned how to intervene effectively. We must improve practices to change the current truth that it is a toss of the dice whether abuse victims and their children can access a lawyer or court that take their safety seriously. It is this chilling reality that informs the challenge to judges, lawyers and other professionals to move beyond dialogue to action, beyond victim-blaming to offender accountability. Promising practices exist and will be highlighted, evidencing the many lawyers, judges and courts embracing the notion that justice is best served when all parties are safe. We must protect the children and those attempting to protect them.

I cannot thank you enough,

Patricia L. Hope Kirby

Executive Director

Hope For Children Foundation

also known as

Hope For Children

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Tech Support Fraud Be Careful

June 28, 2018 by patricia

Hope for Children Foundation has dealt with many unlawful attacks on this child abuse organization, our business, through corporate data breaches by criminals who have wrongfully crashed our Website, stolen and intercepted our Google AdWords Ad Grant account,Tech Support Fraud, and other criminal activities. Hope for Children Foundation warns all people and business who use electronic technology to be very careful. We are one of many child abuse charities where individuals can seek support in many areas such as child abuse help and its prevention. Child abuse are horrible acts and should be stopped. Hope for Children Foundation provides free education to the general public with instruction of ways to prevent child abuse. We hope you read this carefully and find ways to better protect your electronic technology from thieves. Most of this information was copied from the Website of the FBI. Please go to www.fbi.gov for additional information.

Tech Support Fraud

Tech Support Fraud is a widespread scam in which criminals claim to provide customer, security, or technical support in an effort to defraud unwitting individuals and gain access to the individuals’ devices. There are many variations of this scam, and criminals are constantly changing their tactics to continue the fraud. For example, in addition to telephone calls, popup and locked screens, search engine advertising, and URL hijacking/typosquatting, criminals now use phishing emails with malicious links or fraudulent account charges to lure their victims.

Criminals

Criminals also pose as a variety of different security, customer, or technical support representatives and offer to resolve any number of issues, including compromised email, bank accounts, computer viruses, or offer to assist with software license renewal. Some recent complaints involve criminals posing as technical support representatives for income tax assistance, GPS, printer, or cable companies, or support for virtual currency exchanges. In some variations, criminals pose as government agents, who offer to recover losses related to tech support fraud schemes or request financial assistance with “apprehending” criminals.

Fraudulent Schemes

The “fake refund” variation of tech support fraud is increasing in reports and losses. In this scheme, the criminal contacts the victim offering a refund for tech support services previously rendered. The criminal pretends to refund too much money to the victim’s account and requests the victim return the difference. The “refund and return” process can occur multiple times, resulting in the victim potentially losing thousands of dollars.
During this scheme, if the criminal can connect to the victim’s devices, the criminal will download the victim’s personal files containing financial accounts, passwords, and personal data, like health records, social security numbers, and tax information. The information is used to request bank transfers or open new accounts to accept and process unauthorized payments. Criminals will also send phishing emails to the victim’s personal contacts from the victim’s computer.

FBI IC3 Website

Additional information, explanations, and suggestions for protection regarding tech support fraud is available in a recently published Tech Support Fraud Public Service Announcement7 on the IC3 website.
In 2017, the IC3 received 10,949 complaints related to tech support fraud. The claimed losses amounted to nearly $15 million, which represented a 90% increase in losses from 2016. While a majority of tech support fraud involves victims in the U.S., IC3 has received complaints from victims in 85 different countries.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. Internet Crime Complaint Center www.fbi.gov

Please do all you can and depend on the FBI and other federal and state law enforcement entities to help you.

Thank you,

Hope for Children Foundation

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Cyberbullying Through Electronic Technology

June 25, 2018 by patricia

Most of the following information was provided with materials on the Website of the FBI. Please go to their site www.fbi.gov for additional information.

Cyberbullying happens when kids bully each other through electronic technology. Find out why cyberbullying is different from traditional bullying, what you can do to prevent it, and how you can report it when it happens.

Cyberbullying Through Electronic Technology

Visit the federal government’s cyberbullying webpage for more information.

Social Networking Sites: Online Friendships Can Mean Offline Peril
Social networking sites are websites that encourage people to post profiles of themselves—complete with pictures, interests, and even journals—so they can meet like-minded friends. Most also offer chat rooms. Most sites are free; some restrict membership by age.

Child Sexual Preditors and Cyberbullying

These sites can be appealing to child sexual predators, too: all that easy and immediate access to information on potential victims. Even worse, kids want to look cool, so they sometimes post suggestive photos of themselves on the sites.

Dangers of Social Networking

How pervasive is the problem? Even with all the media attention on the dangers of social networking, we still receive hundreds of complaints per year about children who have been victims of criminal incidents on social networks. These incidents include but are not limited to:

Adults posing as children who are about the same age as the victim who later travel to abuse the child; and Adults posing as children who convince the child to expose themselves and/or perform sexual acts over webcam and later extort the child to perform additional acts.

According to an Internet safety pamphlet recently published by NCMEC, a survey of 12 to 17 year olds revealed that 38 percent had posted self-created content such as photos, videos, artwork, or stories. Another survey of 10 to 17 year olds revealed 46 percent admit to having given out their personal information to someone they did not know. The likelihood that kids will give out personal information over the Internet increases with age, with 56 percent of 16 to 17 year olds most likely sharing personal information.

Social Networking Websites

Social networking websites often ask users to post a profile with their age, gender, hobbies, and interests. While these profiles help kids connect and share common interests, individuals who want to victimize kids can use those online profiles to search for potential victims. Kids sometimes compete to see who has the greatest number of contacts and will add new people to their lists even if they do not know them in real life.

Children often don’t realize that they cannot “take back” the online text and images they post. They may not know that individuals with access to this information can save and forward these postings to an unlimited number of users. This is a form of cyberbullying. Kids also may not realize the potential ramifications of their online activities. They can face consequences for posting harmful, explicit, dangerous, or demeaning information online, including being humiliated in front of their families and peers, suspended from school, charged criminally, and denied employment or entry into schools.

What can you do to keep your children safe, especially if they are visiting networking sites?

Most importantly, be aware and involved:

Monitor your children’s use of the Internet; keep your Internet computer in an open, common room of the house.
Tell your kids why it’s so important not to disclose personal information online.
Check your kids’ profiles and what they post online.
Read and follow the safety tips provided on the sites.
Report inappropriate activity to the website or law enforcement immediately.
Explain to your kids that once images are posted online they lose control of them and can never get them back.

Only allow your kids to post photos or any type of personally identifying information on websites with your knowledge and consent.
Instruct your kids to use privacy settings to restrict access to profiles so only the individuals on their contact lists are able to view their profiles.
Remind kids to only add people they know in real life to their contact lists.
Encourage kids to choose appropriate screen names or nicknames.
Talk to your kids about creating strong passwords.
Visit social networking websites with your kids, and exchange ideas about acceptable versus potentially risky websites.

Ask your kids about the people they are communicating with online.
Make it a rule with your kids that they can never give out personal information or meet anyone in person without your prior knowledge and consent. If you agree to a meeting between your child and someone they met online, talk to the parents/guardians of the other individual first and accompany your kids to the meeting in a public place.

Encourage your kids to consider whether a message is harmful, dangerous, hurtful, or rude before posting or sending it online, and teach your kids not to respond to any rude or harassing remarks or messages that make them feel scared, uncomfortable, or confused and to show you the messages instead. Educate yourself on the websites, software, and apps that your child uses. Don’t forget cell phones! They often have almost all the functionality of a computer.

Gangs

Learn to recognize the warning signs of gang involvement and get advice on bullying and other issues through the U.S. Department of Justice Gang Toolkit. Visit the FBI’s Violent Gangs website for more information on the gang threat and anti-gang resources.

Thank you for reading this information to better protect children while they are using electronic technology. We hope this helps you with ways to prevent child abuse. We are one of many child abuse charities providing information with child abuse help for prevention of child abuse.

Thank you,

Hope for Children Foundation

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