Yesterday, Demi Moore was in Washington to work on behalf of ending child trafficking. It’s Demi’s big issue, it’s her big cause, and if you use the word “pimpin’” in jest on your Twitter, Demi will verbally cut you, bitch. But I get it, it’s a good cause, and Demi seems to have handled her Washington visit the right way, using her celebrity in an effective way to draw attention to her cause. The Washington Post praised her, and ABC News covered the crux of the trafficking issue, and left Demi’s quotes at the end of their reporting, which seems like a win. Demi’s big quote from the panel discussion was: “I think many Americans are more willing to accept that there are girls enslaved in Cambodia or Delhi, and really can’t imagine that it’s happening right here. As a society, we owe it to them to ensure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.” Politico also did an extensive piece on her visit, with an interview (I’m sorry it’s so long, but I thought it was interesting!)

Demi Moore was watching television one night a couple of years ago with her husband, Ashton Kutcher, when they stumbled upon an Dateline piece on MSNBC on the sex trade in Cambodia. Both Moore and Kutcher were instantly captivated.

“It has these five, six, seven year old girls who were enslaved and forced to engage in sex acts with adult men,” Moore said in a lengthy sit-down interview with POLITICO on Tuesday, as she traveled from Capitol Hill to the White House. “I think it just really took us. It hit us in a really deep place.

“As a mother of three girls, I looked at these little girls who had Barbie lunch boxes in the room with the undercover cameras and I tried to grasp the reality that they’re being forced to give oral sex to an adult man,” she continued. “It was incomprehensible. And we just thought, we can’t live in a world without doing something.”

Moore says she and her husband tried to educate themselves on the issue. As they did, “it was like opening Pandora’s box.”

The actress said they were shocked to learn just how much of a problem child sex trafficking is in the U.S.

“We had no idea the magnitude of the issue of modern day slavery and had absolutely no idea what was happening here in America,” she said. “The numbers were so overwhelming.”

On Tuesday afternoon — after traveling from New York (Kutcher remained there to be honored at Tuesday night’s Time 100 dinner) — Moore had her first big lobbying experience in Washington. She met with lawmakers in both chambers, spoke at a forum, and huddled with White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and other top White House aides to talk about the issue. (White House senior adviser David Axelrod also stopped in to say hello.)

“Demi was very impressive,” Jarrett told POLITICO after the meeting with Moore and some actual victims of sex-trafficking. “… I was very moved by the two young women who accompanied Demi,” she said. “Their willingness to share their painful and deeply personal stories helped us all understand the atrocities so many young girls face on our streets every day.”

Jarrett also said that she looked forward to continuing the conversation and visiting some of the victims in New York “so that we can better understand how we can help stop domestic human trafficking of girls.”

Moore admitted to being “a little nervous” on her maiden D.C. lobbying trip. And she knows she has “a long haul” ahead of her to raise people’s awareness.

“It’s not a popular [issue],” Moore said. “There isn’t anyone who disagrees that it’s unacceptable [but] people don’t treat it like a top priority. In general, it’s like the dirty little secret.”

At the forum, Moore sat alongside the sex trafficking survivors and talked about changing the “cultural stereotypes.”

“As a society we owe it to them to do everything we can to ensure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” she told a packed audience that included Rep. Chris Smith (who pointed out that “Ghost” was one of his favorite movies), Hill staffers and members of advocacy groups.

“We are focusing on the effect and not the cause,” Moore told the crowd. “And we’ve bought into the myths, I think, collectively as a society that the girl is choosing it, she likes it, she’s making a lot of money. And, I tell you, you go into a room of 13-year-old girls and ask them to raise their hands if they want to be a prostitute and then tell me if they’re gonna choose it, and I guarantee you that none of them will be raising their hands.”

Moore said she would like to see laws increase the penalties for sex traffickers and also secure greater funding to help rehabilitate victims. She said she has been working with the Department of Homeland Security on the issue and that she and Kutcher are currently working on a public service announcement about sex trafficking too.

The actress said she is also helping to put together a task force called the DNA (short for Demi and Ashton) Trafficking Tech Task Force which will include “some of the brightest minds of Silicon Valley” –from Google, Twitter, Facebook and Craigslist” — to help with the issue.

“Technology has enabled the problem, but technology can be used to solve the problem,” she said in the interview. “For those abusers and predators online, they better watch out. We’re looking to expose the anonymity by which they are taking comfort.”

For now, Moore said she feels good about her daytrip to Washington. But she wants to see “results not just conversation.”

“Words are cheap if they’re not backed by real action,” she said. “But that requires tenacity.”

Still, she added, “My husband and I are both committed to the long haul, and I don’t see this as a quick fix. I think, whatever it takes, whether it’s 30 days or 30 years, we’re both in it.”

[From Politico]

She had me up until “Technology has enabled the problem, but technology can be used to solve the problem.” Now I think she’s doing this to promote her Twitter account. No, I jest (kind of). I understand (from watching Law & Order: SVU) that the internet has become ground zero for child predators, and I could see how technology companies could be helpful and effective in ending child trafficking and the cyber-predating of children. However, what is needed even more is for state and federal laws to catch up with the technology, and we need fully funded cyber police units in every state. Every time I read about this issue, it’s in the context of underfunded cyber police units, and how the laws aren’t catching up to the technology.

Header & additional photos: Demi in Washington on May 4, 2010. Also, Demi and Ashton at the Time’s “Most Influential” gala on May 4, 2010. Credit: WENN.