Patrick Bennet 
Ashton Kutcher has been pretty famous for a long time now. He is well known for starring in the popular television program “That ‘70s show”. He has also appeared in many films, including “The Butterfly Effect”, “Just Married”, and “No Strings Attached”.
Over the past several years, however, his time has largely been spent saving thousands of victims of child abuse. He is a co-founder of a nonprofit project known as Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children.
In 2009, Kutcher established an international rights organization called the DNA Foundation with Demi Moore, who was his wife at the time. He intended to address the sexual exploitation of children as well as child pornography—both of which are worldwide issues.
The organization may have changed its name to Thorn back in 2012 after Kutcher and Moore split, but the two co-founders remain on the board of directors. They worked with several partners, including Facebook and Google.
Using technology, Thorn helps the police identify abusers. The goal is to eliminate child sex exploitation.
At the Dreamforce software conference in November of last year, Kutcher revealed that the organization is not just
saving children.
According to reports, Kutcher said that the organization is not the force for good or evil. People are.
He said that the company has identified 6,000 children who are being abused. According to him, there are millions of images of child abuse material transferred every day. About 12,000 adults are also being abused, and there are about 6,000 abusers.
The question that needs to be asked is how good we as people are. He said he has articulated his purpose. The question is, he said, what the purpose of everyone else is.
The actor also explained how the organization he co-founded funds and researches a variety of tools that can be used by law enforcement and other organizations in order to tackle the enormous problem that is child abuse.
For example, back in 2013 Thorn developed a text message service—along with Twilio and the Salesforce Foundation—that can be utilized by The National Human Trafficking Hotline.
Kutcher’s organization also works on “Project Vic”; the goal there is to reduce how much time it takes for police to analyze content that has been seized.
Take a look at the inspiring work @thorn has done to fight child abuse and exploitation over the last 5 years: https://t.co/L6hvXBI6iK #OnlineSafety pic.twitter.com/n6DIW6v06d
— Safer Online by MSFT (@Safer_Online) April 5, 2018
In February of 2017, Kutcher made an emotional speech to the US’ Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He made his passion for what he is doing clearly known in that speech.
When speaking with the network ABC, Kutcher explained why he is so committed to Thorn.
Kutcher said that—through his anti-trafficking work—he has met victims in various countries, including India, Russia, and Mexico. He has also met victims in the United States, in places like New Jersey and New York.
He has claimed to have been on raids conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and seen things that no one should ever have to see.
For example, Kutcher said that he has seen video content of a child being raped by a man from America who was in Cambodia as a sex tourist. That child, Kutcher said, was conditioned by her environment to the point she thought she was actually playing. She had been abused for three years. The abuser was being watched, but the abuser could not be found. Kutcher’s foundation was asked for help.
The foundation an actor co-founded, he said, was the last line of defense.
Therefore, he said, the foundation is his day job, and he’s sticking to that day job.
Kutcher is 40 years old and is currently married to actress Mila Kunis. He has two children. In addition to being an actor and working to save children from sexual abuse, he is also a venture capitalist. He founded a venture capital firm in 2015 and has investments in more than 60 companies. He has invested in at least five startups.
According to the United Nations, there are over 2 million people in the world that are victims of human trafficking at any given point. There may be more—however, accurate and reliable statistics are difficult to come by because of the covert nature of sex trafficking. There could actually be more than 4 million victims of sex trafficking in the world.
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