As our team joins the Juvenile Sex-Trafficking Conference in Orlando, Florida, hosted by Shared Hope International, Marinus Analytics is releasing new data on the Sex-Trafficking Child Welfare Nexus.
Over Summer 2025, our powerful MPWatch tool was used to systematically match 60,000 missing persons records in the United States to sexual service advertisements on Adult Service Websites (ASWs).
These are some of our key findings:
- 734 missing persons between the ages 13–25 were identified on ASWs with a high degree of confidence.
- 320 of these children and young people (43%) were visible in the data being advertised for sex online before they were reported missing
- In these cases, there was a 125-day median “incubation period” between first online appearance on an ASW and an official missing persons report being made.
- In 615 of the matched cases, around 83.8%, the identified children and young people were people of color, and only 119 (16.2%) were White. Children of color were therefore the overwhelming majority of those represented in the dataset, being at 5 times greater risk of sexual exploitation than their White counterparts.
The ability to automate the identification of these matching cases opens up new opportunities for action to safeguard those already being exploited. But it also points to the need for earlier preventive action. As our CEO, Cara Jones said:
"It is imperative for child welfare agencies in the United States to scale Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSEC) screening using AI. There is now a new opportunity to advance safeguarding of youth in care and to identify commercial sexual exploitation, before the compounding crisis of a disappearance arises. If this new approach is used on a widespread basis, our research shows that hundreds of children could be moved out of harms way every year."
