The far reaching effects of COVID go beyond the disease itself. This pandemic's secondary effects have seen many job losses in Thailand as a result of a complete government shutdown for 11 weeks in the spring time period. With increased job losses and decreased job security, many have tried to sell themselves as an opportunity for money. Furthermore, the lockdown periods created increased depression and instances of child abuse while at home often from those closest to them.
In addition the NCMEC (the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children), reported a surge of online child abuse complaints surpassing 4 million in April 2020 alone. This number continues to increase every year and has exploded in 2020, with the lockdown in many countries pushing many offenders to exchange "physical pleasure" for "online pleasure" of potentially exploited children.
Between just four months of June through September 2020, the HUG Project team assisted 40 victims from 33 different cases of sexual abuse and exploitation. These included 19 cases of blackmail/threats which remains our biggest call for support. Often, these are young kids who - because of their innocence - are lured into sharing private pictures or video online. Thereafter, the kids are exploited to share increasingly more sexual content or face their images being uploaded to sex websites all over the internet. Once uploaded, content is almost impossible to remove as images and videos are shared amongst countless users. During this period HUG additionally helped with 11 cases of rape, 9 cases of domestic violence and 1 case of human trafficking.
With a small staff of 5 Thais, 1 volunteer Thai and one foreign volunteer, The HUG Project continues to make a HUGE impact with a limited budget. Since 2014, when HUG was created more than 300 kids have been supported to help with protection, prevention and restoration. This includes helping victims walk through the prosecution process to hold offenders accountable for their actions. Won't you continue to help us as we meet these increasingly evil trends?
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