Ashton Kutcher, actor and cofounder of Thorn, testified at a Senate hearing on modern slavery in 2017, providing figures showing that 6,000 trafficking victims—a third of who were children—had been rescued, thanks to Thorn technology.
Kutcher and his first wife, Demi Moore, founded an organization called DNA in 2009 after watching a Dateline special about sex trafficking in Cambodia. (DNA, rebranded to Thorn after the couple split in 2012.) “Those Cambodian kids were 7, 8, 9 years old,” Kutcher said in a 2017 interview with W.
Kutcher, who rose to fame in the early 2000s with a series of hit film and television roles, is co-founder of Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, an organization that combats human trafficking and the conditions that enable it. Trafficking in humans takes many forms but includes forced labor and sex slavery.
Every day, our tools help those on the frontlines identify victims and remove them from harm as quickly as possible. Thorn's tools have led to the identification of more than 27,000 children and counting.
Ashton Kutcher has saved over 6,000 children from sex trafficking – he’s a real-life hero
Who is the biggest victim of human trafficking?
More than 27 million people are trafficked worldwide at any given time, according to the United States Department of State. While boys and men are victims as well, most individuals identified as trafficked for both labor and commercial sex are women and girls.
Thorn published Kutcher's letter to the board announcing his resignation. He cited the backlash he received after it was revealed he and Kunis wrote letters of support on behalf of Danny Masterson ahead of his sentencing for rape.
We build technology to defend children from sexual abuse.
Thorn was born in 2012. Our co-founders Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore had learned about the issue of child sex trafficking from a documentary highlighting what was happening to children in Cambodia.
Kutcher has a net worth of $200 million according to Celebrity Net Worth. The actor was an early investor in successful startups like Uber, Airbnb, and Spotify. Kutcher's Sound Ventures LLC manages over $1 billion in assets.
But little do fans of That '70s Show and Dude, Where's My Car know that Kutcher bears no similarities to some of his former on-screen characters. The-now 44-year-old has an estimated IQ of 160, evident in his humanitarian work (he's assisted with the plight of child trafficking) and investment work.
Kutcher grew up as a Roman Catholic. As an adult, he practices Kabbalah, and has visited Israel and studied the Torah; his wife Mila Kunis stated that he "taught [me] everything I never knew" about her religion, Judaism, though as of 2018, he has not converted.
“Like, two years ago, I had this weird, super rare form of vasculitis, that knocked out my vision, it knocked out my hearing, it knocked out, like, all my equilibrium,” he revealed to Grylls. Kutcher said it took about a year for him to recover and rebuild.
Ashton Kutcher, actor and cofounder of Thorn, testified at a Senate hearing on modern slavery in 2017, providing figures showing that 6,000 trafficking victims—a third of who were children—had been rescued, thanks to Thorn technology.
Ashton Kutcher has stepped down as chairman of Thorn, the anti-child-sex-abuse organization he cofounded. His resignation comes days after he and his wife, Mila Kunis, publicly addressed the letters they wrote in support of their That '70s Show castmate and convicted rapist, Danny Masterson.
Spotlight is a victim identification tool used by law enforcement to aid in juvenile sex trafficking investigations and is currently used by over 10,000 investigators.
Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher are navigating the challenges of parenthood together. The That '70s Show alums, who have been married since 2015, share two children: daughter Wyatt Isabelle, 9, and son Dimitri Portwood, 6.
Actor Ashton Kutcher's rare autoimmune condition, vasculitis, is a disorder characterized by inflammation of the blood vessels that can be life-threatening.
By age three, Michael was battling significant developmental delays. He was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy before he entered kindergarten and also had a life-saving heart transplant as a teenager as a result of heart failure brought on by a virus.
Kutcher and his then-wife Demi Moore started the non-profit under the name DNA Foundation after the actor couple watched a documentary film on human trafficking of children in Cambodia. After he split up with Moore, Kutcher renamed the organisation Thorn.
California has consistently had the highest number of human trafficking cases. 1,334 cases were reported in 2021, while 1,507 cases were recorded in the previous.
"Some of the things we're seeing are pictures — maybe a lion's head or it may be the street name of the pimp who's running a street track," said Wilkett. "It could be numbers. Using certain numbers, like 16 because 'P' is the 16th letter of the alphabet — it means I'm being pimped."
Most commonly, victims are promised a good job, education, or citizenship in a foreign country or offered a false marriage proposal that is turned into bondage. Many victims are sold into the sex trade by parents, husbands, and significant others, whereas others are unwillingly and forcibly kidnapped by traffickers.
Traffickers often look for people who are desperate and in need of money. They might also target lonely individuals who are more likely to trust strangers and be influenced by them. They often approach their victims at bus stops, train stations, or the street. In exchange for work, they may offer food or shelter.
