Youth
Trafficking
Human trafficking doesn't always look like a stranger in a van. For youth, it often starts online, with a "friend" who seems to understand them better than anyone else. Recognizing the signs early can be the difference between a young person staying safe and years of exploitation.
What is human trafficking?
Human trafficking is the act of forcing, coercing, or deceiving someone into selling sex or labour for another person's gain. It comes down to three elements: an action (recruitment, transport, harbouring), a means (force, fraud, coercion, abuse of power), and a purpose (sexual exploitation, forced labour, servitude).
For children and youth, the "means" element doesn't need to be proven — the law recognizes that a young person can't meaningfully consent to their own exploitation. So when it comes to trafficking a minor, it's simply an action carried out for an exploitative purpose.
Globally, an estimated 25 million people are currently being trafficked.
Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE)
CSE is the actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, power, or trust for sexual purposes involving anyone under 18 — including profiting from that abuse. It's a broad umbrella that includes child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and sextortion.
It increasingly happens online
Online luring reports to Cybertip.ca jumped 815% between 2018 and 2022. A few terms worth knowing:
Grooming — building trust with a child (and sometimes the adults around them) to gain access to and control the child by normalizing certain behaviours.
Capping — recording or screenshotting a young person, often without their knowledge, while they're undressed or engaged in sexual activity over video chat.
Sextortion — blackmail where someone threatens to share a sexual image or video unless the victim provides more content, money, or compliance.
Sextortion by the numbers: Cybertip.ca receives an average of five reports a day, and roughly 2,000 reports total in recent data. Where gender is known, 85% of victims are male — typically boys are extorted for money, while girls are extorted for more images. Many demands trace back to international organized criminal networks, and 68% of incidents happen on Instagram or Snapchat.
How it happens:
The five-stage pattern
Traffickers and predators tend to follow a recognizable pattern:
Luring — identifying and targeting a potential victim
Grooming — building trust through gifts, attention, or flattery
Isolation — pulling the young person away from family and support systems
Manipulation — using guilt, threats, or emotional control
Exploitation — the trafficker profits from the harm
Risk factors
No single factor causes exploitation, but certain circumstances increase vulnerability:
Individual: Running away or being thrown out, living with disabilities, negative mental health or self-view, early exposure to substances, prior victimization
Relational: Childhood abuse or neglect, compromised caregiving, household dysfunction, lack of social network
Communal: Difficulty in school, poverty, peer or family influence, witnessed violence, survival sex
Societal: Membership in a racial or ethnic minority, child protection involvement, economic vulnerability, juvenile justice involvement.
Indigenous youth and women face compounding systemic barriers — the legacy of residential schools and the '60s Scoop, racism, and colonial violence all intersect to increase risk, which is why culturally-aware, trauma-informed supports are essential.
Protective factors
The good news: protective factors can meaningfully lower risk.
Individual: Curiosity about oneself, knowledge of "tricky" topics, correct language for body parts and boundaries, resilience.
Relational: Positive, supportive relationships; being taught self-worth and how to set boundaries.
Communal: Not sensationalizing teenage years, exploitation, or trafficking in how we talk about it.
Societal: Empathy over judgment, and ending offensive language and cultural tropes.
Consent and the law in Canada
Sexual contact with a minor under 18 is only legal within specific close-in-age exemptions, and only where there's no relationship of power, trust, authority, or dependency.
Children under 12 can never legally consent to sexual activity.
The general age of consent is 16, with close-in-age exceptions: 14–15 year olds can consent with a partner less than 5 years older; 12–13 year olds can consent with a partner less than 2 years older.
It is illegal to share an intimate image of anyone, of any age, without their consent (Criminal Code s. 162.1(1)). If the person is under 18, possessing that image can also be charged as possession of child pornography (s. 163.1).
If someone shares an intimate image of you without consent, it is not your fault — and help is available.
If you or someone you know is being sextorted:
Immediately block and stop all communication
Refuse to give in to threats
Keep the messages — they help investigators
Tell a parent, teacher, or another trusted adult
Report it anonymously through us or Cybertip.ca, or through the police
Get help removing shared images at NeedHelpNow.ca
You are not alone:
Resources to help
Crime Stoppers Alberta — call 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or p3tips.com - always anonymous, no exceptions.
Cybertip.ca — Canada's tip line for online child sexual exploitation
NeedHelpNow.ca — help removing shared sexual images or videos
KidsHelpPhone.ca — 1-800-668-6868 or text 686868 — for Canadians under 18, 24/7
Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline — 1-833-900-1010, 24/7
If you know about a young person being groomed, exploited, or trafficked in your community, report it anonymously to Alberta Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS), online at P3Tips.com, or through the P3 Tips app. Your tip could help remove a young person from harm — and you'll never have to give your name.