SEX TRADE FEARED TO BE EVEN ‘WORSE THAN IT ONCE WAS’

Advocates say issue goes beyond convictions; prevention and substance abuse help needed

The state’s underground sex trade has mutated into a “complex” monster that’s creeped into all corners of society and largely out of public view, according to advocates and law-enforcement officials leading the multi-front battle against the growing crisis.

“This whole issue of the use of technology — websites, smartphones — has put the problem underground. For a lot of people, they don’t see it, they don’t believe it exists,” said Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. “But we’re here to amplify the fact not only does it exist, it may even be worse than it once was.”

Conley, Attorney General Maura Healey and more than a dozen advocates and survivors gathered at the Boston Herald’s Seaport offices yesterday to discuss the challenges — and potential solutions — to combat sex trafficking.

Healey, who moderated the roundtable — and whose office has charged 34 suspects since a 2012 law went into effect — acknowledged that the increased penalties, including for those buying sex, still has not tamped down demand.

“I’ve continued to remain blown away by the volume of interest on websites, the number of hits, the number of people who are out there looking to buy sex. It’s staggering,” the attorney general said. “It’s so easy with a click of a button to be able to access that.”

The roundtable followed a Herald series shedding new light on the changing dynamics of the drug-fueled sex trade, which is largely conducted online and then behind closed doors in hotels, apartments and buyers’ homes.

Armed with beefed-up penalties from the 2012 human trafficking statute, Suffolk pros-