Tim Rosner tells CNN how one petition and 14,000 signatures prompted change from one large hotel chain.
There are many faces of human trafficking. There are the victims, there are the traffickers and there are those who try to destroy the connection between them - the investigators.
As part of our Freedom Project Undercover series, Martin Savidge takes a look at how human trafficking is fought in Orange County, California.
In a series this week, CNN shows the struggle against human trafficking through the eyes of the investigators at Mossos d'Esquadra, the police agency for the Catalonia region of Spain.
Barcelona is one of the most popular tourist destinations in southern Europe and the largest city in Spain's Catalonia region.
The location's beauty and mild weather draw tourists, but traffickers like the region, too: Vacationers can become clients for prostitution and traffickers also use tourist visas to bring people into the country.
The human trafficking unit for the region's police agency, Mossos d'Esquadra, stays busy. FULL POST
CNN's Barbara Starr investigates human trafficking in Washington, D.C.
Each day, a woman we'll call Jessica, spent hours on the internet posting provocative photos of herself and fishing for clients who would pay her to have sex.
Jessica worked as a prostitute in the booming internet sex trade. But she didn't work for herself. She says she had a pimp who set a quota of $1,000 a day – money that took about 10 dates to earn.
Jessica told me she was afraid of her pimp who is a gang member. If she didn't work, she didn't eat, saying she once went 5 days without food. FULL POST
CNN's Thelma Gutierrez reports on a human trafficking scheme the government calls the largest in U.S. history.
The staff at a major hospital in Atlanta is getting lessons on how to recognize which patients are sex slaves. When the class was asked if they thought back and recognized the signs and behaviors in women they had treated, a roomful of hands went up.
According to a United Nations report, the recruiter in 54 percent of human trafficking cases was a stranger to the victim. In 46 percent of the cases, the recruiter was known to the victim. The U.N. report said that the “majority of suspects involved in the trafficking process are nationals of the country where the trafficking process is occurring.”
A couple of months ago, The CNN Freedom Project brought you the harrowing tale of a sex slave ring run by a Romanian father and son, with reporting from CNN's Jonathan Wald and Dan Rivers.
Now, explore the story further with these excerpts from the documentary, "Sex slavery: A family business," which examines the flourishing sex trade in Romania and provides an inside look at the authorities' struggle to bring it under control. FULL POST
Working across international borders to clamp down on sex abuse is no easy task, especially when it involves young children. But as a U.S. official told CNN's Richard Quest, it's a task that's made easier with the help of the public.
In the past eight years, the United States has prosecuted 90 pedophiles who went overseas to abuse children. John Morton, the director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says discovering these criminals is hard work because it involves tracking people who are doing everything they can to keep a secret and also means working with a local police force in a foreign nation.
He said that most of the tips in these cases come from the public.
"We don't generate the vast majority of the leads in these cases," he told CNN. "We get them from non-governmental organizations, from people who are paying attention on an airplane and notice that a child is traveling with someone that they really shouldn't be traveling with, who see something amiss and report it to authorities or to a group that specializes ... in this kind of work. And then we get involved."
The children are too scared or too young to report the crime, so it is vital that if someone suspects something suspicious, they need to report it.
"We are not talking about some ordinary crime. We are talking about the assault and abuse of small children, as young as three or four years of age, usually in circumstances of grinding poverty, very difficult cultural conditions," he said. "And if they don't speak up, chances are the crime is going to go uncovered and that child's life is ruined. They need to say something. They need to allow us to get in there and investigate and put these people away.
"We all have to stand up and vindicate those children, because they can't stand up for themselves," he added.
A man in Denmark has opened up his home to more than just trafficked women. The man, who identifies himself only as Christian, also faces constant criticism for his methods and his fatherly attitude.
"I get a lot of enemies in my work," he told CNN.
But Christian is undeterred and says we need to fight for everyone who doesn't have their freedom.
Ben Sherman, a nine-year-old from Dallas, Texas, says he hopes his book will help save the lives of Cambodian women.
He also talks about his plans for the future.
For this Freedom Project challenge, we invite you to create a dish using fair trade chocolate. Get started! Fair-trade chocolate challenge
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