The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is celebrating 60 years of turning the tide against sexual exploitation!
It is because thousands have raised their voices together, that we have seen massive victories like these:
- Google Chromebooks defaulted school devices worldwide to safety;
- Amazon removed hundreds of childlike sex dolls from their online marketplace;
- Ending the sale of pornography at U.S. Army and Air Force exchanges;
- Disney’s removal of a sex trafficking scene in its Pirates of the Caribbean rides;
This is your invitation to raise your voice for human dignity! See this list of 60 ways you can do more than just wish things were different!
- Keep the Legacy of NCOSE Going with a Gift of $60, $600, or $6,000!
Get Educated
2. Listen to a Podcast
- NCOSE’s: Ending Sexploitation
- The SafeToNet Foundation’s: A Safeguarding Podcast
- ECPAT’s: Ending the Silence on Child Sexual Exploitation
- Questioning Pornography
- Financial Times: Hot Money (Warning for Mature Themes)
- Annie’s Pink Chair Podcast
3. Watch a Film
- Childhood 2.0
- Our Kids Online. Porn, Predators & How to Keep Them Safe
- I Am Jane Doe
- Blind Eyes Opened
- The Hunting Ground
- Audrie and Daisy
- Surviving R. Kelly
- Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich
4. Read a Book
- How to Talk to Your Kids about Pornography by Dina Alexander
- Leaving Breezy Street: A Memoir by Brenda Myers-Powell
- Paid For: My Journey through Prostitution by Rachel Moran
- Protecting Your Children from Internet Pornography: Understanding the Science, Risks, and Ways to Protect Your Kids by John D. Foubert
- Hooked: The Brain Science on How Casual Sex Affects Human Development by Joe S. McIlhaney Jr., MD, and Freda McKissic Bush, MD
- Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction by Gary Wilson
- The Glass between Us by Lisa and Jason Frost
- The Pimping of Prostitution. Abolishing the Sex Work Myth by Julie Bindel
5. Read the New York Time’s exposé, The Children of Pornhub, which reveals how Pornhub profits from child sexual abuse, rape, sex-trafficking, and image-based sexual abuse.
6. Skim articles on peer-reviewed journal website, Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence
7. Review “Top Issue” pages on NCOSE website:
8. Attend the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Online Global Summit (Nov 8-10, 2022), to learn, network, and strategize with other leaders in the movement.
9. Watch these Presentations by subject-matter experts:
- An Athlete’s Silence by John-Michael Lander
- A Review of the Research on Online Pornography and Its Impact on the Brain and Sexual Offending by Mary Sharpe
- Slavery Isn’t Speech: Sex Trafficking and the Pornography Industry by Christen Price
- Male Accountability and Demand by Pansy Watson, Rev. Dr. Marian Hatcher, Jamey Caruthers, JD., Dr. Michael Shively
- Long Overdue: Attaining Legal Accountability for Sexual Exploitation on Social Media by Peter Gentala
- Preventing the Perpetration of Sexual Violence by Joan Tabachnick and Dawn Hawkins
10. Follow the NCOSE accounts on social media to stay informed and keep up with Action Alerts!
11. Sign up for the NCOSE weekly email newsletter to receive ongoing updates and action alerts for how you can help.
Activities to do with Your Family
12. Install a filter and/or turn on built-in-controls in a social media app or on a device, to keep your kids safe online.
13. Download the Protect App for bite-sized video lessons that teach you how to protect your children online. 5 minutes a day is all you need to become a tech-confident parent!
14. Bookmark the Protect Young Eyes website for safety guides on all the devices and platforms your kids use.
15. Sign up for Culture Reframed’s Parents Program or Defend Young Minds’ Brain Defense Digital Safety program, to learn how to raise porn-resilient kids.
16. Read a Picture Book with your kids
- Good Pictures, Bad Pictures or Good Pictures Bad Pictures Jr. by Kristen A. Jensen
- I Said No! A Kid-to-Kid Guide to Keeping Private Parts Private by Zack and Kimberly King
- Noah’s New Phone: A Story about Using Technology by Dina Alexander
17. Watch Fight the New Drug’s 3-part documentary Brain Heart World and talk about it as a family. This documentary explains the harmful effects of pornography on 1) The Brain, 2) Relationships, and 3) The World, in an entertaining and accessible way.
18. Initiate a conversation with your kids’ friends’ parents about their rules and challenges with online safety. Discuss how you can help support each other.
19. Do a service project with your family, such as packing toiletries for local direct service providers that assist survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation. Many such service providers have wish lists available on their website, or you can call them to inquire.
20. Start having conversations with your kids about their online experience.
- Ask them to show you how their favorite apps work
- Ask them about the creators they like to follow
- Talk to them about if they know all of their followers from in-person interactions
- Explain to them that sometimes people send sexually suggestive or graphic questions or materials. Let them know that it’s okay to tell you if that happens, and that they can block and report people for doing that.
- Check out Protect Young Eyes and Defend Young Minds for lots of other conversation starter ideas.
21. Draft a digital device use contract together for your family. Agree on when and where devices will be used, boundaries on what can be done online, consequences when rules are broken, and action plans for if your kids feel unsafe online.
22. Do the Wired Human 30 Day Digital Reset Challenge
Ways to Help Your Community
23. Invite neighbors or a couple of friends over for a discussion about child online safety, or a sexual abuse and exploitation issue of your choice.
24. Host a community watch party of Childhood 2.0 or another film and discuss it together.
25. Suggest a book for your next book club reading (Warning: these suggested books include graphic descriptions of sexual exploitation)
- Paid For: My Journey through Prostitution by Rachel Moran
- The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It by Victor Malarek
- Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines
26. Invite your friends and family to attend the free online annual Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summit!
27. Ask your public library how they ensure children aren’t able to access pornography on the computers. See the Safe Schools Safe Libraries campaign for information, resources, and ideas about what your library can do.
28. Ask your school principal what their technology safety protocols are, and what digital safety training staff, administrators, and children receive. See the Safe Schools Safe Libraries campaign for information and resources for keeping kids safe on school-issued devices.
29. Ask your local schools to include curriculum on online safety or to host a speaker. The FBI’s Safe Online Surfing program, available in English and Spanish and designed for students in grades 3–8, teaches kids how to recognize online dangers and respond appropriately.
30. Share social media posts about these issues, to help educate your network and invite them to take action.
31. Talk to a boy or man in your life about the harms of pornography use and sex-buying on their health, their relationships, and on the people they are exploiting.
32. If you hear someone make a misogynistic, sexist, objectifying “joke”, speak up. Let them know this isn’t acceptable or funny behaviour.
33. Post Freedom Stickers with the human trafficking hotline in public restrooms.
34. Host a fundraiser to support effective NGOs that address the harms of sexual exploitation.
35. If you are religious, talk to your church leadership about ways your church can address pornography. Share this video with your church leadership.
Help Support Survivors
36. Lead a drive to collect clothing, toiletries, or gift cards for direct service providers in your local area. Check with them to see what they need.
37. Help survivors find justice through civil lawsuits by supporting the NCOSE Law Center.
38. Upload photos of hotel rooms to the TraffickCam app to aid in identification of child sexual exploitation victims
39. Buy personal products or gifts made by survivors of sexual exploitation. Here are some that we love!
- Thistle Farms
- Eden Products
- Freeset USA
- Starfish Project
- Nightlight Collection
- Survivor Made
- Freeleaf
40. Patronize a coffee shop that supports anti-sex trafficking programs.
41. Host an Art Works for Freedom event in your community. ArtWorks for Freedom is a global initiative that uses artwork to raise awareness about human trafficking.
Ask Companies We Use to Stop Facilitating Sexual Exploitation
42. Check out the 2022 Dirty Dozen List, a list of twelve mainstream entities that facilitate, enable, and profit from sexual abuse and exploitation. Pick ONE target to learn about and take the simple action on the target webpage.
43. Ask Etsy to stop selling sexually exploitative products, such as childlike sex dolls, pornographic merchandise, child sexual abuse roleplay products, and image-based sexual abuse.
44. Ask Netflix to stop hosting content that glorifies sexual violence, sexualizes children, normalizes incest, and trivializes prostitution and child sex trafficking.
45. Ask Google to put survivors first and stop serving sexual abuse content in search results.
46. Set up Apple Family Sharing for your child’s iphone/iPAD and ensure all the highest safety settings are toggled on.
47. Call Visa customer service (on the back of your card) and ask why they are still facilitating payments XvideosRED (the most visited porn site on the planet), OnlyFans, and Seeking. Complete this quick action form to send an email to Visa as well.
Thank Companies That Have Taken Positive Action to Combat Sexual Exploitation
48. Thank Instagram for booting Pornhub off the platform.
49. Thank UPS for training their drivers to recognize and report signs of sex trafficking.
50. Thank Bumble for being an industry leader in the fight to end “cyberflashing” (sending sexual images without the consent of the recipient).
51. Check our Dignity Defense Award page to see other companies who have taken industry-leading steps to combat sexual abuse and exploitation.
52. Ask your local grocery store/corner store to not sell the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or to at least remove the checkout lines.
Help Pass Legislation for Systemic Change
53. The PROTECT Act will help millions of survivors of image-based sexual abuse, while also striking the biggest blow yet at the pornography industry. See various quick actions you can take to support the PROTECT Act here.
54. Ask your local elected officials to adopt policies that increase accountability for sex buyers.
55. Ask your Senator to support the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which fosters a safer and healthier environment for children online.
56. Ask your Members of Congress to support the Earn It Act, which tackles the global epidemic of child sexual abuse material (the more apt term for “child pornography”).
57. Contact your state legislators, asking them to declare pornography a public health hazard, following the example of sixteen other states that have already declared this.
58. Ensure that your community does not fully legalize prostitution, which would make sex buying, pimping, and brothel-keeping legal. Here are 10 points to share!
59. Sign up to receive state-specific updates for online child protection legislation you can help pass in your state – such as device filter bills and default-to-safety legislation.
60. Check back regularly to see NCOSE’s legislative policy actions here.