How the Global War Machine Fuels Child Trafficking and Abuse
I’ve spent enough time in a war zone to know that the worst crimes usually come with gunfire. Oftentimes, they come in whispers. In trucks crossing borders at night. In a backroom of a church, a school, a military base. The world’s children are being stolen – not just by men with guns, but by the very same systems we pretend are protecting them.
This is the story that’s been quietly screaming for years. And no matter where I’ve looked, whether it’s Bosnia, Gaza, Haiti, Colombia, or any other war torn country, some version of it exists within it. Some version of children being trafficked, abused, and nothing but silence around it.
This Isn’t a Fringe Issue. It’s a Global Economy.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime:
– Children make up more than a third of all trafficking victims globally.
– Nearly 8 out of 10 child victims are girls, most trafficked for sexual exploitation.
– The global trafficking economy brings in over $150 billion annually.
I think its important that we look more into this. To take a look at how it operates, and how this business creates such a huge amount of money.
Well organized trafficking operations are estimated to generate upwards of $22,000 annually in developed economies. An estimate of 50% of detected victims being used for sexual exploitation, and 23% for forced labor. According to our rescue (Operation Underground Railroad) and FATF (Financial Action Task Force).
Sexual exploitation is bringing in an estimate of $25 billion annually, while forced labor estimates $32 billion. Human trafficking is considered complex and highly profitable money laundering operations.
In the world bank economic study 2023, they explore the economic impacts of human trafficking. According to our rescue, labor trafficking depresses wages in affected industries by 10-33%. This creates an unfair advantage to illegitimate businesses. There is an estimate of 25 million trafficking victims in forced labor, which itself generates around $236 billion a year. According ILO supply chain analysis and the ILO 2021 economic impact report.
The traffickers operate with surgical precision. They take advantage of every opportunity they get. Often taking advantage of people in areas with poor economical opportunities.
They operate much like a legitimate business would, they use the same supply and demand principles, often within a market with a high demand for sex. Something which leads to some of the most horrific crimes I can imagine.
This isn’t just data, there has been research done showing that, a 1% rise in unemployment leads to a 0.5% increase in human trafficking cases. Like the IOM’s (International Organization for Migration), Economic Vulnerability Report, 2023.
This is an issue visible around the world. It’s not some underground cabal operating in secret. It’s recruiters outside refugee camps in Turkey. It’s brothels in Tijuana. It’s massage parlors in Florida. It’s church elders in Uganda. And yes, it’s tech executives in Manhattan, spiritual leaders in Jerusalem, and traffickers with military-grade logistics in Sudan.
Conflict Is the Perfect Breeding Ground
Here’s the hard and raw truth: war is a trafficker’s dream. I witnessed some of it in my own country as a child.
– In Bosnia, women and girls were sold into rape camps under the eyes of peacekeepers.
– In Gaza, there are children who had been detained, beaten, and sexually threatened by soldiers.
– In the Sahel, armed groups use children as currency—traded, indoctrinated, married off.
In every post-conflict vacuum, trafficking blooms. War breaks systems completely, and traffickers thrive on that. As an economy deteriorates, it creates financial incentives for parents to use their children to get some extra cash. Whether they know it’s into sexual slavery, or think it’s some other form of work for their children. Meanwhile teenagers, and young adults, may also go into unconventional means of making money, sometimes unknowingly selling themselves into slavery.
When the political system breaks down, there is chaos, and during chaos people disappearing often goes unnoticed and unrecognized. Records are not properly kept, and people disappear without a trace. Whether they are killed or sold off into some form of slavery, sexual or otherwise. It’s a business that thrives on the lack of system, a lack of information, and chaos.
Ritual, Religion, and the Lie of Righteousness
Some of the most devastating stories I’ve encountered don’t come from war—but from faith-based institutions. In Israel, survivors recently came forward in front of the Knesset describing ritualized sexual abuse of children (see [Knesset testimony, June 2025](https://www.knesset.gov.il/committees/eng/docs/ritual_abuse_testimony2025.pdf))
“They moved me from ceremony to ceremony. Naked men stood in a circle… Their trafficking of me happened all over the country.” — Yael Shitrit
In Uganda and Kenya, I’ve investigated so-called child sacrifice rings operating with the blessing—or silence—of local religious elites. Power protects predators, especially when cloaked in spiritual authority.
Spiritual leaders are someone people look up to, someone you go to during times of need, when you look for answers, these very same people are ritualistically abusing children.
This is not just light abuse. They are dark spiritual rituals that are designed to fracture their minds. This ritualistic abuse is designed to tear their minds apart to the point where they will not remember any of the abuse.
Many of these victims go to regular therapy for years before they even start to recall the memories of this abuse.
In addition to this it is hard to find a therapist that can fully understand the issues you are dealing with, and relate to them. Someone who fully understands the best way to work with you, and find the right path forward.
3 people from Israel, Daniel Sharon, Yael Ariel and Amanda Nitza created a website that is full of testimonies and podcasts from abuse victims. The website also features helpful recourses and tips related to the topic. The latter two being victims themselves.
These 3 people have also started and initiative to train therapists to help others that have gone through abuse, especially ritualistic abuse.
The website is in Hebrew, but can be translated. The site features dozens of testimonies from all over the world.
Here is the website:
Here is an interesting podcast with the 3 of them talking about the topic and their effort to help:
The Internet Has Supercharged the Market
The growth of internet and technology has added a whole new layer to this issue. Now, we have:
- Grooming on Instagram, TikTok, and Telegram
- Live-streamed abuse for paying viewers
- Crypto payments to anonymous handlers
- AI-generated child pornography
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 25% of recruitments now happen through the internet.
Thousands of kids disappear into digital pipelines where no one knows their name—just their file size.
For a deeper look, see Wired’s investigation here
Survivors often face prosecution rather than protection. Only 62 countries have strong anti-trafficking laws.
In Epstein’s case—hundreds of girls, thousands of flight logs—he died in a jail cell before facing justice. His network spanned the globe, but the full scope may never be known. See The Guardian’s coverage and BBC’s Epstein
More People Are Speaking up
This issue is global. It exists all over the world, and we are seeing more people speak up. We see more and more people speak up from places that makes it feel more real to us, places that are more local, and more known to us. We no longer just see it in distant countries. We no longer see it and say, this wouldn’t happen here. Its no longer “Just happening in poor countries.”
Just recently the New York Post released an article about it. It’s a case of satanic ritual abuse in Riverdale, New Jersey. 20 year old Courtney Tamagny, accused her father of ritual abuse. She said it was a local town issue. That it was a local satanic cult. She claims that she was abused this was from the age of 4 till the age of 15, 11 years.
Courtney also mentions that both of her sisters was also abused, in the same ritualistic ways as she was. She started having flashbacks, remembering memories of abuse only after she was asked by a doctor if she has been sexually abused. This came up on a doctors visit related to genital pain.
She claims they were drugged her to seduce her. They allegedly had tunnels under their houses to covertly operate their rituals. Rituals like, taking a kids blood, drum circles and burnings.
They were taken into the woods to “play games”. In these games they were hunted by the cult members. If they were caught? They would be incapacitated and assaulted.
The cult also allegedly trafficked children. She claims her father used his position of power within law enforcement to keep her silent.
In the lawsuit she started she sues not only her father, but also the Bergen county prosecutors office, the state of New Jersey, and various child protective services.
If you wanna hear more of her story, she went on the We’re all insane podcast a few months back.
So What Do We Do?
– Support survivors: legal aid, housing, therapy.
– Push for transparency: unseal records, fund investigations.
– Reform enforcement: end victim criminalization.
– Look locally: it could be the youth group, the rehab center, the neighbor.
I’ve seen war up close. And while stories of my own personal experience still keep me up at night, nothing haunts me like the stories of children who were sold, passed around, and forgotten.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s not a fringe issue. It’s the business of abuse, and it’s booming. And something has to be done about it.
We need to support the victims that speak up. If we do not do that, we risk silencing other victims. Stopping them from speaking up too, silencing the truth further. Seeing survivors speak up, often encourages others to do so as well.
Too often, victims are prosecuted, made fun of, not believed, while the offenders and perpetrators are protected instead of prosecuted. And while it is an extremely tough and dark issue to speak about, or even think about, the longer we stay silent, the bigger it will grow, and the harder it will be to fight.
If you’re wondering what you can do to help, you can
Donate to organizations that help survivors, or seek to root out the trafficking rings (organizations like our rescue)
Speak up and share the message with others
Listen to podcast with victims, or read testimonies, showing them support and listening to their stories is important
These are things you can do today to help in the fight against the global trafficking operations.
Until we treat it like the crisis it is, we are all complicit.
