Ashton Kutcher's marriage to Demi Moore may have dissolved, but they're still on the same side fighting for justice against human trafficking thanks to a powerful program they've co-founded back in 2009.
The 40-year-old actor's non-profit organization Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, which is co-owned by his ex-wife, continues gaining momentum a decade later and proving to be an effective force in eliminating child exploitation.
The organization's software was responsible in helping law enforcers to identify 5,894 child sex trafficking victims and rescuing 103 children in situations of sexual abuse from archived reports.
While Thorn's process is a bit of a mystery, the Daily Mail said the program uses a web application called Spotlight, "which provides law enforcement with information and leads on suspected human trafficking networks, and ads which may be children, in order to identify and recover victims."
Over 5,000 law enforcers spanning all 50 states and Canada use the program and is expected to increase investigation speed by up to 65%.
"I have a hard time talking about this issue without being emotional," Kutcher told 48 Hours in an interview about his mission.
What we do at our core is we build technology to help fight sexual exploitation of children. You can roll up your sleeves and go try to be like a hero and go save one person, or you can build a tool that allows one person to save a lot of people.
Last year in February, Kutcher gave an impassioned speech at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., and said his goal was to "defend the right to pursue happiness."
But the right to pursue happiness, for so many, is stripped away. It's raped. It's abused. It's taken by force, fraud, or coercion. It is sold for the momentary happiness of another.
The rom-com actor described that the program's tools are growing more efficiently with time.
And our algorithms are getting better — we're getting smarter — we're getting the tool in more people's hands.
In regards to some of the heinous things Kutcher experienced while fighting the good fight with Thorn, he told the panel in D.C.,
"That's my day job, and I'm sticking to it."
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