Facebook is a hub of sex trafficking recruitment in the US, report says

Enlarge (credit: Serhii Ivashchuk/Getty Images)

Facebook is the most commonly used social media platform for human sex trafficking recruitment in the US, according to a new report published by the Human Trafficking Institute.

Last year, 59 percent of victims in active cases who were recruited through social media were found through Facebook, the report states, with 41 percent of all recruitment taking place online.

The Internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites," Victor Boutros, CEO of the Human Trafficking Institute, told CBS News. Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases."

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments