Everybody talks about the mainstreaming of pornography and its cousin “erotica”. Talking freely about our sexuality is a good thing. No disputing that. But what about people whose ideas about sexuality are, well, creepy, and whose sexual behavior may very well be criminal? I’m talking about rape, child rape, and human trafficking.

It’s one thing to play the victim or the perpetrator in a nonconsentual consent fantasy scene, and another issue entirely to rape another person, especially a child. A postpubescent teenager under 18 (age of consent) of either sex is considered a child under the law.

The perpepetual 24/7 365 sexual environment in the digital world has left people jaded and sceptical about any sort of criminality taking place in the real world. They couldn’t possibly be doing that, could they? Then Theodore McCarrick is exposed, next comes Richard Bransfield, allegations swirl around the late Cardinals Bernadin and Spelman. And that’s just the top tier of the Catholic Church. Meanwhile over in the secular world, the exposé has just begun with NXIVM and Jeffrey Epstein. Both of these cases have extremely wealthy, well-connected and influential people associated with them, on the periphery, at least for now. The investigative journalists who were ridiculed and discounted just a few months ago, like the Miami Herald reporters and Mike Cernovich are now being taken seriously.

And the criminality blends in quite well with amateur hedonists, the swingers, the routinely curious, and just plain old erotic fantasizers. Like Waldo in the Where’s Waldo pictures, the criminals can hide in plain sight.

It used to be the issue of missing children was written off as noncustodial parents kidnapping their own children. I’m not denying those occurrences. But there are something like 800,000 children kidnapped every year.

A porous border invites all forms of human trafficking. Organized crime gets involved in enterprises, which by their very nature are illegal and/or morally repugnant. With cannabis on the fast track to legalisation, expect to see more human sex trafficking, of both sexes, and of children in particular.