Ashton Kutcher helps save 6,000 child victims of sex trafficking

With the help of an organization that Ashton Kutcher co-founded, almost 6,000 child victims of human trafficking were identified last year.

Called Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, the non-profit organization reported that law enforcers and investigators identified 5,791 child sex trafficking victims with the help of its software, Spotlight.

Authorities were also able to rescue 103 children whose abuse had been recorded and distributed.

'We're building tools to stand up the toughest environments and empowering the frontlines to stop abuse before it happens,' the organization states on its website.

Kutcher, 40, put up the organization in 2009, together with his ex-wife Demi Moore, to help combat sexual exploitation of children.

With the help of tools developed by Thorn, law enforcers and investigators were also able to disrupt perpetrators. The organization states that it is helping speed up investigation time by as much as 65 percent, allowing authorities to rescue more child victims of sexual exploitation.

Spotlight, a web application, helps provide law enforcement agencies with information and leads on suspected human trafficking networks, and ads which may be children. Through the app, authorities are able to identify and recover victims.

Apart from identifying victims and perpetrators, Thorn also aims to help change the behavior of people searching for child sexual abuse materials.

It claims that its child sexual abuse deterrence program has seen over 2.6 million visitors and more than 140,000 instances where individuals went on to actively seek further help.

Thorn also launched the Stop Sextortion campaign to raise awareness on sextortion. About 3.5 million teens have learned about sextortion with the help of the organization.

About 5,000 law enforcers have been using the app across the United States and Canada.

Kutcher publicly expressed his commitment to fighting human trafficking and child sexual exploitation when he delivered a speech during a hearing at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 2017.

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