Sex trafficking is a growing problem

A report shows that about a quarter of all sex trafficking happens in Texas.

Click to see the Texas Department of Public Safety's State Intelligence Estimate report findings. A report shows that about a quarter of all sex trafficking happens in Texas.

Click to see the Texas Department of Public Safety's State Intelligence Estimate report findings. Photo: Robert Nickelsberg, Getty Images Photo: Robert Nickelsberg, Getty Images Image 1 of / 29 Caption Close Sex trafficking is a growing problem 1 / 29 Back to Gallery

A recent Houston Chronicle report takes a harrowing look at sex trafficking in the suburbs, and what Fort Bend County is doing to address this problem.

Fort Bend's Human Trafficking Task Force is acting on an issue that has long been neglected in Houston's outskirts.

That's because most of the sex trade dealings are done online instead of on the street, and only recently have education efforts helped to unveil the problem in these areas. The Internet facilitates dealings, and affluent counties — such as Fort Bend and other Houston suburbs — are high in sex trafficking. Houston sees this problem more than many other cities in the nation. That's partly because of the city's proximity to the I-10 corridor, between El Paso and Houston, which is the country's most used trafficking path.

The problem with properly assessing sex trafficking data is due to under-reporting of incidents, as well as confusion surrounding exact definitions — human trafficking is different from human smuggling, exploitation, forced labor and other crimes. Often, criminals are charged under an umbrella term which doesn't specify the roles of the participants or their individual crimes.

The Texas Department of Public Safety collaborated with other law enforcement and homeland security agencies to produce the State Intelligence Estimate report in April 2014.

See the findings and statistics of that report, among other data, in the slides above.