The Global Report on Human Trafficking prepared in 2018 by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) places Ecuador as the only country in South America with human trafficking for pornography (a crime punishable by 16 years in prison if the victim is a child or 26 years if she or he dies).
Ecuador is one of the main exporters of pedopornographic material in Latin America. A 2019 report carried out by several organizations refers to centers dedicated to trafficking, sexual exploitation and trafficking of children and adolescents that operate from six cities in the country: Cuenca, Santo Domingo, Quito , Portoviejo and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.
These epicenters were discovered as a result of the case of Emilia Benavides, in 2017, murdered in Loja in the middle of a plot of sexual exploitation. An investigation by the New York Times found that, in 2018, there were 45 million images online of child sexual abuse. In 2015, an Ecuadorian was the number one distributor in the region. The man transmitted, through Facebook, rapes to two girls of 7 and 2 years. He was arrested at his home in San Rafael, on the outskirts of Quito.