TAMPA, Fla. — A Tampa Bay law enforcement expert who survived years of trafficking is warning parents about a dangerous reality: online predators are targeting younger victims than ever before, and the COVID-19 pandemic made the problem exponentially worse.
Kim Figueroa, who now works with law enforcement agencies across the region, said her own traumatic childhood made her the perfect target for a trafficker she met when she was barely 18 years old.
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"I came from a single-parent home where there was just a lack of love, attention, and affection. Mom was never home, and so I found myself being raised alone or dumped off with other caregivers, which in turn, those caregivers started sexually abusing me," Figueroa said.
The abuse escalated throughout her childhood. By her preteen years, Figueroa had experienced what she calls "such a level of trauma that no kid should ever have to endure." When she was removed from her home and placed in foster care, she hoped for a better situation.
"I went into foster care thinking that maybe I just might get a better home, and that just wasn't the case for me," Figueroa said. "Going through foster care, I went through a lot more trauma and trials and tribulations, exposed to a whole lot more from peer-to-peer recruitment. And so I began being trafficked as a little girl. I can remember as early as 11 years old being trafficked."
The trauma continued to build. Figueroa said she started acting out and catching criminal cases, which led to her being placed in residential facilities "where I'm locked down like a complete prisoner, like an animal, and there was no psychological treatment there for me."
When she aged out of the system into homelessness, Figueroa said all of her previous trauma "literally set me up for the perfect vulnerable victim of human trafficking."
The Romeo pimp's tactics
At 18, Figueroa met her trafficker - what experts call a "Romeo pimp" who uses love and affection rather than violence to control victims.
"That's the whole purpose of a Romeo pimp. He has that dialog tuned in. They wine and dine you. They play like the boyfriend," Figueroa explained. "The difference between the gorilla pimp and the Romeo pimp is exactly just as it sounds. The Romeo pimp is very boyfriend, very spoiling you with gifts and just making you feel seen and loved and heard."
Figueroa said she was immediately drawn in because "for the first time in my life, somebody wanted to know everything about me, and I was smitten that he loved me."
"Fresh, 18 years old, going through all of this trauma, I was absolutely over the moon that this man said he loved me, and he was showing me all the things that I had never seen in life before," Figueroa said.
Figueroa was trafficked for six years into her adulthood before she escaped. Now, she uses her experience to help law enforcement understand how predators operate and how to better serve victims.
Online grooming explodes during pandemic
Figueroa has been working in the anti-trafficking field for roughly eight years, and she said the landscape has changed dramatically.
"Let me tell you something, I never seen online grooming the way that I see it today. And really, I want to tell you where it took off at was COVID, 2020, everything locked down. Everything shut down. And so what happened? Everybody went online. Everybody went home, they went on the computer. And so what do predators do? They follow," Figueroa said.
"It really became the platform of grooming. And unfortunately, you see kiddos as young as three and four and seven and 10 with devices in their hands, unmonitored, unleashed with millions of predators all over the internet."
Figueroa said most of her current cases, "if not all of my cases are happening from online grooming, from social media apps and dating apps and gaming apps, anything with a chat feature."
The access children now have to technology has created unprecedented vulnerability, she explained.
"We're seeing parents just hand them a device that's completely unlocked, no gates around it. It's not being monitored," Figueroa said. "And then on top of that, you have a predator, predatorial world that we live in, where sickos are literally just sitting there waiting like a crouching tiger for that vulnerable victim."
Younger victims than ever before
The combination of easy access to devices and online predators has led to victims getting younger and younger. Figueroa said she now sees cases involving children as young as 2 years old.
"I would love to sit here and tell you that I don't see cases of two-year-olds. And you might say, 'Yeah, but why a two-year-old? Why a baby?' That's that predatory, predatorial world that we live in right now," Figueroa said.
While very young children don't have their own devices, Figueroa explained there are adults who will exploit them. "You have someone that is addicted, and unfortunately, they will sell their baby for the next $20 crack rock. And so there are people online, the younger you are, the more they'll pay."
For older children with devices, the vulnerability comes from a different source: emotional neglect and the basic human need for connection.
"When I say vulnerable victim, it only takes a child that can be from any culture, any race, any socioeconomic background. It doesn't matter. It's a child that could be in a two-parent home, mother and father work. They're trying to pay the bills. They're trying to do what they think is right by providing for their child, but the lack of love, attention, and affection, and monitoring that device slips them right into the hands of someone that's on the other side, saying, 'I love you, and you want to meet me at the park. I would love to spend time with you," Figueroa said.
"That's all I wanted as a little kid. Isn't that what any child wants? They just want to spend time with someone that loves them and cares for them. And then you throw in all the other components of buying the nice gifts, and the grooming process, and that just escalates the matter even worse," said Figueroa.
Law enforcement fights back
Figueroa works with law enforcement agencies in multiple capacities to combat the growing problem. She said agencies have responded by strengthening their specialized units.
"What law enforcement agencies have done nationally, state and locally, they've beefed up their ICAC teams. Those are specific teams of detectives that sit there and literally monitor all these different apps. They know that predators are out there trying to harm our children," Figueroa said.
"They have dedicated teams that will sit there and go through all of these black market sites, they will scan all the ads, we are trying to identify who is a child and who is an adult that is being sold for sex on these websites. So law enforcement is doing everything that they absolutely can to protect our community and to bring our young ones home that are out there being groomed and exploited for someone else's gain."
Figueroa assists these efforts through training, advocacy work, and bringing her lived experience to operations.
"I work with them in several different capacities, whether it's from facilitating trainings, whether it is being boots on the ground with them for advocacy work, whether it is building multi-disciplinary teams for sting or missing children's operations, and really bringing all the components to victim services to that sting operation," Figueroa said.
Her role includes ensuring "that the child is having a victim-centered approach, trauma-informed approach, to ensure that there's not some re-victimization going on, to ensure there's no criminalization going on. But also being able to bring my lived experience and be able to show them how to move and navigate those waters, because book knowledge just can't teach you something that a lived experience knowledge can."
The pornography connection
While Figueroa focuses on the law enforcement response, Amber Johansen, a board-certified behavioral health coach, addresses another critical piece of the puzzle: how pornography consumption creates pathways to trafficking.
Johansen works with teens who are consuming pornography or have developed addictions to it. She said there's a significant gap in public understanding about how pornography and trafficking intersect.
"In my experience of working with teens who are consuming pornography or have a porn addiction, there is definitely a breakdown in understanding how they overlap and how pornography is not only an entry point but a grooming tool for trafficking. It's also the third most common way that people are trafficked through pornography," Johansen said.
"I think that often the general public, most people, don't realize the linkage, which I think is unfortunate because pornography is such a commonly consumed medium. And I think it's unfortunate because we've normalized it, and we think that it's okay, and more and more teens are consuming it, young children, and the damage that's being done is pretty significant."
The digital age has amplified both access and risk, Johansen explained.
"I think it's had a huge piece in not just pornography consumption, but in the trafficking because of access. And I think we can all agree, there's a lot of benefits to the internet, AI. There's lots of benefits, but there's also a lot of downsides and darkness to it," she said.
"Unfortunately, children especially do not have the brain development to have self-control, to be able to make good, logical decisions, to understand consequences of decisions, and then you have predators on the other line who are preying on that underdeveloped mindset and using it against them as a weapon."
Building trust in cyberspace
Johansen said the online environment makes it easier for predators to build trust with potential victims because children can't see who's really on the other side of the screen.
"Of course, the child, the young adult, doesn't know who's on the other side of that. And in a young mind, they haven't developed that ability to be suspicious or to see red flags. They don't have that ability yet. And so that's where the grooming process comes in, and the predator is using the vulnerability and the young mind against them," she said.
"They're building trust in ways that the child doesn't even realize, and so the predator can build that trust pretty quickly. And of course, they're targeting children who are, in most cases, vulnerable and or neglected. And when I say neglect, that's probably the most common abuse that we're seeing now, neglect emotionally from parents who aren't - they may be in the home, but they're not there emotionally, and that's what predators are preying on."
The predators fill an emotional void that already exists, Johansen explained.
"They're connecting with these kids online and becoming a source of friendship, validation, all of this, where the child isn't already getting that. And of course, at a young age, children want that anyway. So these predators are well adapted to meeting a need that's already wired into us biologically as children and young adults."
When images become trafficking
Many people don't understand the legal definition of trafficking as it relates to digital images, Johansen said. Child sexual abuse material, also known as CSAM, automatically constitutes trafficking when it involves anyone under 18.
"The US is the biggest consumer and producer of child sexual abuse material in the world, and the demand is only growing. And when a person under the age of 18 is in Child Sexual Abuse material, again, whether it's a picture or a video, it is, by definition, trafficking," Johansen said.
"I think we forget about that and how that's happening online, because these predators are asking for pictures, videos of the victim. They want the child, the young adult, to send that to the predator, and then that becomes material that the predator can spread online and monetize it, but just by accepting the picture or the video that itself is trafficking, and the predator is considered a trafficker in that instance, and I think that most people aren't aware of that."
The casual nature of sharing images among young people has made this particularly dangerous, Johansen said.
"I don't think that children and teens are understanding the significance of it, because, again, we're talking about underdeveloped brains, and for them to really understand, when I send this picture to a friend at school, a picture, a nude or whatever, they're not thinking through the long term impact of that, or the person on the side of the gaming system who's a grown adult asking for a picture, they don't have the ability yet in their brain to understand, 'Oh, this is going out into cyberspace and could be sold or used and be out there forever,'" Johansen said.
"I do think, yes, we're bringing awareness to it, but I don't necessarily know that we're doing as good a job as we should be doing in preparing youth and parents, because it's coming so rapidly. And I think most parents and young adults think, 'it's not going to be me.' The numbers are telling us, it probably will be you, not that you're going to be trafficked, but you will have, at some point, if you're a youth, a predator trying to communicate with you."
Normalization creates danger
Johansen said the widespread acceptance of pornography in society has created additional risks for children. She regularly hears about middle schoolers discussing pornography openly at lunch tables.
"We have normalized pornography to the point where we have middle schoolers sitting in the cafeteria in school talking openly about pornography with each other. They're looking at it together. And data backs me up on this. It's become so normalized that we don't think, as a society, that pornography is dangerous, and I think that that's unfortunate, because what it's doing is sexualizing children, and that's why Child Sexual Abuse material is ramping up and is in so much demand," Johansen said.
The addictive nature of pornography compounds the problem, Johansen explained.
"We also know that pornography is for a lot of people's brains, it's like being addicted to crack cocaine or heroin. It is addicting, and we know this now. So the more that you consume, the more that you want, and it also becomes - it's desensitized your brain. So what may start out is you're just looking at one type of pornography. It rapidly, rapidly changes into dangerous or really perverted pornography. And this is the category where children are going to fall into, as well," Johansen said.
"They may unknowingly stumble onto pornography on their laptop or their phone or whatever, and they're curious. It's normal. Next thing you know, we're six, seven months into it. They are consuming really dangerous, unhealthy pornography, and they're just desensitized to it. And then what we know from the data is they start acting that out, that may be with friends, or they may be more of a victim for a predator, because it's normalization and desensitization."
Johansen said this creates a cultural problem that extends beyond individual cases.
"We have a culture that is sexualizing all aspects, children included, and so it is a form of grooming, just as a culture, it's preparing people to accept what is not healthy or good for us. And if you get enough of it, it's like heroin. You may start taking heroin and think, 'Oh, I don't want to do this anymore.' Six months in, you can't live without it. Pornography has that same impact. And so the more of it you see, the more you want. And that's part of the grooming process as well, is preparing a child, a youth, to see it, be desensitized from it, and understand, 'Well, this is normal, and this is what's expected of me.'"
What parents can do
Despite the frightening realities both experts describe, they emphasize that parents can take concrete steps to protect their children. Johansen said the key is education and communication, not fear.
"I don't want that to be the goal here. We're not trying to scare anybody. We're trying to educate people. We want people to understand the risks and the dangers of pornography and how that is leveraged as a mechanism to traffic people. That doesn't mean that your child is ever going to have that experience, but it is for us to understand and prepare ourselves and our children to not be vulnerable," Johansen said.
Johansen recommends two primary strategies for parents.
"Number one is educate yourself and prepare yourself to speak in language with your child that's age appropriate about their body and about them understanding the dignity and the value of their body and helping them to understand that their body is sacred and it doesn't need to just be given away. That's the starting point, and we should be doing that with all of our children, and helping our children to understand the names of their body parts in real names. We don't give them nicknames, and also having just clear communication so that the child understands you can always come to me," Johansen said.
"The second piece is teaching your child to trust their instincts. We live in a society that says, 'Oh, you just have to be accepting and loving of everyone.' And while there's some goodness in that, it also teaches children to override instinct when they get a bad feeling about somebody, to go, 'Oh, I should just be nice and like them.' We really want to guard against that. Your body knows a threat before your mind does. So we need to teach our children to trust that and to turn away from it and to come to us and talk to us about it and not shame them."
Johansen also emphasized the importance of teaching children about the freeze response that often occurs during threatening situations.
"A big piece of that is also helping them to understand the freeze response. Because when people say, 'How can children - why didn't they scream? Why didn't they do anything, or why didn't the teenage girl leave?' It's because, for especially youth, their first instinct is going to freeze up. It is survival mode. You just freeze your body, and then you disconnect. We want to help our children to move past that response and understand what that feels like when you freeze, and then how to respond and not freeze," Johansen said.
"So it's also helping our children understand this is not okay. If somebody says or does this to you, they shouldn't be touching your body, and if they do, you can respond with, 'No, I don't like that. I want you to stop,' and then you come and tell me, and we will handle it, but also - it's empowering the child is probably the best way to say it, and we can start that at a very, very young age and just adjust as they get older and having more and more authentic dialog."
Johansen stressed that these conversations should happen regardless of trafficking concerns.
"Again, these are things we should be doing anyway. It doesn't even have to be because we're preparing them not to be victims of trafficking. It's because we want to prepare them to be empowered and to say no and to have dignity over their bodies and to not give their bodies away, freely or without having consent."
Gaming platforms require special attention
For popular gaming platforms like Roblox that children love, Johansen recommends removing communication features entirely.
"I think Roblox actually has a lot of benefits to it, particularly for children who have ADD, so we don't want to just say everything's awful. We want to understand there are dangers. And again, it comes back to education, understanding what are the risks with Roblox or any other gaming system, knowing what the risks are, because your child's not going to know that," Johansen said.
"I would not allow my children, especially young children, to be communicating with others. And there are parts of the games where you can shut that down, so they're basically playing with it offline. For most people who are working and trying to run a home, they don't have time to be monitoring every single conversation. Predators know this. So I would just remove that piece. The child really only needs to be able to interact with the game. They don't need to be talking even with friends, because it can be a peer that's also being inappropriate, so it's super hard to monitor."
Johansen also recommends keeping all devices in common areas of the home.
"I would also make any type of media; it has to be in a social space. So they don't have TVs in their bedrooms. They don't take their phones into their bedrooms at night. And not because we're saying we don't trust you. It's because we don't trust other people to be communicating with them. And again, they don't have the brain development yet to understand the risk and to also have the self-control to not respond. So we need to remove the risk."
Johansen emphasized that parents need to model the same behavior they expect from their children.
"As a parent, you don't keep your TV on in your room, you don't keep your phone by your bed. We want to model the behavior, and if we're being hypocritical about it, it's going to be hard for the child to follow. But I would remove any of that ability to communicate, and then you fill it with some other way that they're interacting with people in person. So we're not removing the community. We're just making it an in-person community. And the earlier you can start that, the better, because then that becomes normalized."
The personal cost of fighting back
For Figueroa, the work of fighting trafficking comes with a personal cost. When asked if her advocacy work is healing, she gave a raw answer.
"I think my raw dog honest answer is no, it's not healing to get back into the fire. It's messy, and it can cause more trauma. That's that secondary trauma, but I'm grounded in my faith, and so I know that it's a mission field for me. And so healing, no, but I serve the one who does bring healing. And so it's my battleground," Figueroa said.
Figueroa said her faith is what sustains her through the difficult work.
"My faith is my rock, and I wouldn't truly be where I'm at or be able to do what I'm doing without Jesus Christ. That's my rock."
Both experts emphasized that while the problem is serious and growing, parents shouldn't feel helpless. Through education, communication, and appropriate safeguards, families can significantly reduce their children's vulnerability to online predators and trafficking.
"Children who are raised in homes where they have loving parents and they're communicating openly and the parents are helping them to value their body, they're going to be fine," Johansen said.
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