Listen Live
97.9 The Box Featured Video
CLOSE
The Urban Zen Stephan Weiss Apple Awards

Source: Stephen Lovekin / Getty

Actor Ashton Kutcher is more known for his role in the TV series, “That 70’s Show”, but today Ashton Kutcher, the investor who co-founded “Thorn” testified at the Senate Foreign Relation Hearing for ending modern slavery.
Kutcher tells us that part of his day job is as the chairman and along with his ex-wife, Demi Moore co-founded the Thorn technology company that is used for fighting against child sex exploitation.

And his other part of his day job are the father of two, 2 years old and another that is 2 months old children.

“It’s part of that job that I take very seriously. I believe that it is my effort to defend their right to pursue happiness and to ensure a society and a government that defends it as well.”

He says that during his work for anti-trafficking, he’s met victims from Russia, India, Mexico, NY, NJ and across the country.
Kutcher obviously is choked up discussing a few of the real life cases such as:

“I’ve been on FBI raids where I’ve seen things that no person should ever see,” he said. “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.”

Before he told his story about a 15-year old girl he calls “Amy,” he said that the software will help cut down the time it would take the law enforcement to track down the sex victims and the offenders.
“‘Amy’ met a man online, started talking to him and a short while later they met in person,” he said. “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 — they only usual thing is that ‘Amy’ was found and returned to her family within three days using the software we created, a tool called Spotlight.”
And from ‘Amy’s’ story, Kutcher spoke about a time he was called upon by the Department of Homeland Security before they had that told Spotlight… it was about footage that was circulating, the “dark web” for three years of a 7-year old girl who was getting sexually abused. He said, “We were the last line of defense, an actor and his foundation were the potential last line of defense.”
“When the Department of Homeland Security called us and asked if we had a tool, I had to say no,” he said. “And it devoted 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.”
You can catch the full testimony on C-SPAN.
And their foundation’s website “We are Thorn” too.