Excellent observations, William - especially the reality of how numbers are grossly exaggerated without reliable studies.  To see how the numbers regarding sex trafficking have been repeatedly overstated by multiple orders of magnitude, Google Christina Hoff Sommers' debunking of 6 popular feminist myths. The U of Penn authors of one study estimated up to 300,000  young women forced into sexual slavery in North America. When pressed by reporters from The Village Voice, they conceded  that the figure actually represented women at risk - not true victims. The figure for actual victims was probably in the hundreds. 

But for the absolutist relativism of social justice warriors, statements of fact can only be judged in the context of the cause they serve to advance. Thus, washed in the roiling passions of social justice, erroneous facts and spin rise to new life as Truth.