At Invisible Traffick, we work with children and young people every day – educating them on human trafficking, their rights and how to stay safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We work with a broad range of children and young people through our Junior Education Programme (for P6 and P7 pupils) and our Invisible to Visible<\/em> project (for ages 12\u201324). We see first hand how exploitation takes hold and what an appropriate response should look like when working with criminally exploited children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s why we support raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) in Northern Ireland from 10 to 16, in line with international best practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Criminalising a 10-year-old is not justice. It\u2019s a failure to protect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Reality of Exploitation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We cannot hide from the fact that child criminal exploitation is a glaring reality across Northern Ireland. At Invisible Traffick we see how children are lured in – often with gifts, money, or the promise of belonging – and pulled into cycles of crime through manipulation and coercion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This process, known as the grooming cycle – befriend, control, abuse<\/strong> – is repeated until trust is broken and fear takes over. Even though some young people may not seem \u2018innocent\u2019 when they\u2019re first targeted, that\u2019s where our empathy and understanding of the exploitation cycle must kick in. In reality, traffickers don\u2019t ask children if they want to join, they ask if they think they had a choice.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And the truth is: many children don\u2019t. They often don\u2019t even realise they\u2019re being exploited. They may not have the words, language or even the understanding to describe what\u2019s happening to them – or the confidence to speak out. Even adults struggle to recognise exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s why we need to end the system that asks children to prove their victimhood and, instead, start responding to their vulnerability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n