The former 'Two and a Half Men' star speaks at Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC to help eradicate child sex exploitation.
- Feb 16, 2017
AceShowbiz - Ashton Kutcher gave a testimony during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Ending Modern Slavery: Building on Success at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Wednesday, February 15 in Washington, DC. The actor couldn't contain his emotions as he talked about his experience running Thorn, a tech company that he founded with his ex-wife Demi Moore to eradicate child sex exploitation.
Having a daughter and a son of his own with his wife Mila Kunis, he said, "I've seen things that no person should ever see. I've seen video content of a child that's the same age as mine being raped by an American man that was a sex tourist in Cambodia, and this child was so conditioned by her environment that she thought she was engaging in play."
The actor then told the story of a 15-year-old girl who became a victim of human sex trafficking, " 'Amy' met a man online, started talking to him and a short while later they met in person. Within hours, 'Amy' was raped and forced into trafficking. She was sold for sex, and this isn't an isolated incident. There's not much that's unusual about it -- the only unusual thing is that 'Amy' was found and returned to her family within three days using the software we created, a tool called Spotlight."
The father of two also told the story of another victim, a 7-year-old girl. "When the Department of Homeland Security called us and asked if we had a tool, I had to say no," he said. "And it devastated me and haunted me because for the next three months I had to go to sleep every night and think about the girl who was being abused and if we had built the right thing, we could save her. So that's what we did, and now if I got that phone call, the answer would be 'yes.' We've taken the investigation time from three years to three weeks."
