Our next initiative is to eliminate all child pornography on the Internet: Ashton Kutcher

How ‘That 70s Show’ start went from acting to fighting child sex abuse


Entertainment Desk May 29, 2017
PHOTO: FILE

Ashton Kutcher’s journey to fame is one that many would find hard to believe.

In the last decade, the model and star of That ’70s Show – as well as a succession of romantic comedies – has somehow emerged as a daring angel investor to such brands as Skype, Uber and Airbnb. Kutcher also has a full-fledged part-time career managing people’s money through his investment fund Sound Ventures. And as if that weren’t enough, three years ago he cofounded the digital media company A Plus to promote positive journalism.

But none of these are as pure a passion project as Thorn, the nonprofit he founded eight years ago with his then wife, Demi Moore, to help fight the sexual exploitation of children, reported W magazine.

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“Once I started to gain some fame, I was constantly being asked to lend my name to this or that,” Kutcher said recently, while on the sets of his Netflix show The Ranch. “And I was wondering, ‘Is there a single cause that I can really get behind?’”

Then one night, while watching a special about sex trafficking in Cambodia, it finally hit him. “Those Cambodian kids were seven to nine years old. I started asking around and people said to me, ‘Oh, no, it’s happening right here in Los Angeles’.”

Kutcher thereby began investigating himself and sought out the Clinton Global Initiative. He came to recognise that poverty was invariably a link in the chain, though poverty itself was too big a problem to try solving. He learned that, in the US alone, approximately 70% of child trafficking occurs online. “This was a medium I had a lot of experience with,” he explained, “Where I knew a lot of folks who could help.”

And so, the No Strings Attached star harnessed his contacts at the likes of Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, Twitter and Amazon, creating corporate alliances among what he calls “archenemies.” Thorn, essentially, fights tech with tech, building software and online instruments that help identify criminals in cyberspace.

If you’ve never heard of the project, it’s largely by design. “There are some black-ops aspects to what we do,” Kutcher added. “Revealing our tactics would get in the way of our goals.”

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Kutcher is the chairman of the board at Thorn but realises that his day job is vital to financing the organisation. The second season of The Ranch, wherein he plays a faded football hero, premieres on June 16.

“It’s about a conservative family living in the middle of this country, experiencing the real struggles brought by globalisation and a digital universe,” shared the actor. “We started on this show before Donald Trump ever threw his hat into the ring, but with an understanding that the divide in this country is real. This season we’re unpacking some hot issues: immigration, abortion, class. But this is a comedy. When you can begin to laugh at some of this stuff, it has a healing effect.”

Meanwhile, Thorn has apparently identified some 6,000 trafficking victims and 2,000 traffickers. It operates domestically for now but is in talks with international partners. “We have some research that suggests people exposed to images of child sex abuse are more likely to commit hands-on offense,” Kutcher revealed. “So our next big initiative is to eliminate all child pornography on the Internet. It’s a pretty ambitious goal, but I think we can do it."

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