While the internet has provided sex traffickers with sophisticated tools for recruitment and exploitation, University of Notre Dame computer science students are learning how to marshal technology-based tools to stop it.
To do this, Shreya Kumar, an associate teaching professor in computer science and engineering, partnered with international human rights lawyer Monalisa. Monalisa served as a practitioner-in-residence at the Institute for Social Concerns and the Initiative on Race and Resilience.
In Kumar’s Computer Science Service Project course, groups of senior computer science majors tackled the crisis through three tech-driven projects. One group developed an educational website designed to visualize data and raise public awareness. Another group created interactive decision-making educational tools that teach parents and children how seemingly harmless online choices can lead to dangerous situations. To uncover legal trends, a third group conducted data analysis on child abuse and trafficking conviction cases in Indiana, Michigan and New York.
Since these projects require a significant amount of research and coding, students advance their projects and then hand them off to the next semester’s students.
While an overwhelming majority of people across the globe consider human trafficking—particularly child sex trafficking—to be a grave violation of human rights and a very serious crime, the public is poorly educated about the magnitude, profitability and global nature of the problem.
“We’ve learned from our legal expert, Monalisa, that human trafficking, and child trafficking especially, is massively international,” said Kumar. “The victim could be in, say, India, and the trafficker, or one of the traffickers, could be in Germany, and the abuser could be in Canada, and the payment could be routed through Russia.”
Since crimes span multiple jurisdictions and different sets of laws, cases are difficult to litigate and securing convictions are even more challenging.
To raise public awareness, some of Kumar’s students developed an educational website that uses storytelling and imagery to help viewers emotionally connect with the staggering statistics surrounding child sex trafficking and abuse.
The student website takes a proactive approach to combating trafficking, focusing on the seemingly innocuous ways this crime can begin. It illustrates how predators manipulate their victims to gain their trust, targeting children, particularly girls, who may also show signs of instability, isolation and financial need.
Monalisa, who has over a decade of experience litigating cases and representing victims in five countries, spanning war crimes, terrorism, and human trafficking, sees the student computer science projects that collect, analyze and share data as important contributions. “With this reliable information, we can educate people about the scope of this problem and push back against stereotypes,” said Monalisa. “The problem exists here in this country and not just in some faraway, poor, under-resourced country”
Looking ahead at the many paths the students will follow after graduation, Monalisa is optomistic that they will continue to find ways to address this problem. “Many of these students will go on to influence how computer systems are built, how AI develops. They will have a voice in it. I know wherever they go, they will carry the right values, and will have had experience executing a project, which is morally valuable and serves humanity.”
Both Kumar and Monalisa are very aware that the subject matter is potentially traumatic for the students and encourage them to focus on the broader categories of the crimes rather than the disturbing details. To avoid burnout, students are also encouraged to keep their expectations measured, realistic, yet hopeful about long-term results.
When explaining the team’s objectives in building their educational website, seniors and computer science majors Jason Czaplewski and Paul Falcione said, “Our project raises awareness of what ordinary trafficking can look like, which is the first step in helping more people recognize, report, and prevent it. We also point visitors toward concrete action rather than leaving them with despair.”
—Karla Cruise, Notre Dame Engineering. Photos by Angelic Rose Hubert, Notre Dame Research.