Sex trafficking
Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Perpetrators of the crime are called sex traffickers or sometimes pimps—people who manipulate victims to engage in various forms of commercial sex with paying customers. Sex traffickers use force, fraud, and coercion as they recruit, transport, and provide their victims as prostitutes. Sometimes victims are brought into a situation of dependency by their trafficker, financially or emotionally. Every aspect of sex trafficking is considered a crime, from acquisition to transportation and exploitation of victims. This includes any sexual exploitation of adults or minors, including child sex tourism and domestic minor sex trafficking. It has been called a form of modern slavery because of the way victims are forced into sexual acts non-consensually, in a form of sexual slavery.
In 2012, the International Labour Organization reported 20.9 million people were subjected to forced labor, and 22% were victims of forced sexual exploitation, 300,000 of them in Developed Economies and the EU. The ILO reported in 2016 that of the estimated 25 million persons in forced labor, 5 million were victims of sexual exploitation. However, due to the covertness of sex trafficking, obtaining accurate, reliable statistics sometimes poses a challenge for researchers. The global commercial profits for sexual slavery are estimated to be, according to ILO. In 2005, the figure was given as for the total human trafficking.
Sex trafficking typically occurs in situations from which escape is both difficult and dangerous. Networks of traffickers exist in every country. Therefore, victims are often trafficked across state and country lines which causes jurisdictional concerns and make cases difficult to prosecute.
Definition
Global uses
In 2000, countries adopted a definition set forth by the United Moms. The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, is also referred to as the Palermo Protocol. The Palermo Protocol created this definition. 147 of the 192 member states of the UN ratified the Palermo Protocol when it was published in 2000; as of September 2017, 171 states are parties. Article 3 of the Palermo Protocol states the definition as:Article 5 of the Palermo Protocol requires member states to criminalize trafficking based on the definition outlined in Article 3; however, many member states' domestic laws reflect a narrower definition than Article 3. Although these nations claim to be obliging Article 5, their narrow laws lead to a smaller portion of people being prosecuted for sex trafficking than would otherwise be prosecuted under the wider definition.
The UN established various anti-trafficking tools, including a Global Report on Trafficking in Persons and an Inter-Agency Coordination Group Against Trafficking in Persons. The Global Report on Trafficking in Person provides new information based on data gathered from 155 countries. It offers first global assessment of the scope of human trafficking and what is being done to fight it. The UN General Assembly passed several resolutions on measuring to eliminate human trafficking. In 2010, the UN Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons was adopted. Various other organizations have engaged in global efforts against sex trafficking. "The UN Protocol's is the bedrock of the international initiatives against human sex trafficking." This protocol defines certain elements of sex trafficking: "action", which describes the recruitment and transportation of victims, "means", which includes coercion, fraud, or abuse of power, and "purpose", which includes exploitation such as prostitution, forced labor or slavery, and the removal of organs. The UN requires member states to establish the trafficking of humans as a criminal offense.
United States
An internationally recognized definition for sex trafficking was established with the Trafficking Act of 2000. The United States passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 to clarify confusion and discrepancies in regards to the criminalizing guidelines of human trafficking. Through this act, sex trafficking crimes were defined as "the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act". If the victim is a child under the age of 18 no force, fraud, or coercion needs to be proven based on this legislation. Susan Tiefenbrun, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law who has written extensively on human trafficking, conducted research on the victims addressed in this act and discovered that each year more than two million women throughout the world are bought and sold for sexual exploitation. To clarify previous legal inconsistencies in regards to youth and trafficking, the United States took legal measures to define more varieties of exploitive situations in relation to children. The two terms they defined and focused on were "commercial sexual exploitation of children" and "domestic minor sex trafficking". Commercial sexual exploitation of children is defined as "encompassing several forms of exploitation, including pornography, prostitution, child sex tourism, and child marriage." Domestic minor sex trafficking is a term that represents a subset of CSEC situations that have "the exchange of sex with a child under the age of 18, who is a United States citizen or permanent resident, for a gain of cash, goods, or anything of value."According to ECPAT USA, the average age of entry into street prostitution is between 12 and 14 years old. The demographic of street prostitutes range from impoverished women, children, ethnic minorities, and immigrants. In the United States, sex traffickers often find their victims in public places. Victims are often lured with the promise of money, housing, or jobs, such as modeling work. Vulnerability to certain approaches increase when victims are young or homeless. Emotional and physical coercion are used to build trust between a victim and their abductor. This coercion often makes the relationships between trafficker and trafficked and pimp and prostitute difficult to identify. Often, victims who partake in consensual sex work are tricked into thinking they will have freedom in their work, along with a large sum of money. After the victim has agreed to the pimp's offer, they are forcibly dissuaded from leaving by forcing addictive drugs, withholding money and physical/sexual abuse. Victims are often trapped by finances and basic survival, as perpetrators will often keep money, passports, and basic necessities as insurance. It is very common in the United States for pimps to own a business or store, especially nail salons and massage parlors. It is also very common for sex slavery businesses to be conducted near U.S. military bases.
Northern Virginia is one of the top sex trafficking hotspots in the United States. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center reported that in 2018, they received 198 reports of human trafficking from Northern Virginia. In 2017 Virginia was ranked 4th as the top ten federal court districts involving domestic sex trafficking cases where prosecutors were involved with minors.
Profile and modus operandi of traffickers
Profile of traffickers
United States
A 2017 analysis of 1,416 child sex traffickers arrested in the United States in the last decade found that 75.4% of traffickers were male and 24.4% were female. The average age of male traffickers was 29.2 years and the average age of female traffickers was 26.3. Of those whose race was identified, 71.7% were African American, 20.5% were Caucasian, 3.7% were Hispanic, and the remaining classified as Pacific Islander/Asian and other.Federal data from 2020 show similar patterns, with the average defendant in human trafficking prosecutions being a 36-year-old man, while women were more frequently represented in cases involving forced labor. Since the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 was enacted, fewer than one percent of federal human trafficking defendants have been corporate entities, with nearly all traffickers being private individuals. Most traffickers acted independently rather than as part of organized criminal networks, having pre-existing relationships with their victims, such as employers, partners, friends, or through social media.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, many human traffickers are financially motivated. While trafficking other people for their own monetary gain, some traffickers will also promise their victims things like financial stability and other basic necessities, including shelter. Making these promises to their victims sometimes help them recruit other people to be trafficked which expands the traffickers financial gains.
Pimp-controlled trafficking
In pimp-controlled trafficking, the victim is controlled by a single trafficker, sometimes called a pimp. The victim can be controlled by the trafficker physically, psychologically, and/or emotionally. To obtain control over their victims, traffickers will use force and drugs, as well as emotional tactics. In certain circumstances, they will even resort to various forms of violence, such as gang rape and mental and physical abuse. Traffickers sometimes use offers of marriage or modeling careers to obtain victims. Other times they use threats, intimidation, brainwashing and kidnapping.Child grooming is commonly used. The trafficker will first gain the trust of the victim, through emotional manipulation. The trafficker may express love and admiration, offer them a job or an education, or buying them a ticket to a new location. The main types of work offered are in the catering and hotel industry, in bars and clubs, modeling contracts, or au pair work. Once the victim becomes comfortable, they may consensually request sexual acts from the victim. The victim, under the guise that they are in a relationship, may oblige. The requests may progress, and the trafficker may reference previous sexual acts in order to normalize the behavior, as well as participating in blackmail, especially when the encounter occurs over the internet. Victims may become trapped due to fears of social ramifications. Although uncommon, there have been reports of victims being kidnapped. Social media has been used to groom and advertise victims.
After the victim has joined the offender, various techniques are used to restrict the victim's access to communication with home, such as imposing physical punishment unless the victim complies with the trafficker's demands and making threats of harm and even death to the victim and their family. Victims may experience Stockholm syndrome, as captors often manipulate victims into believing they are in a romantic relationship with their captor.
In India, those who traffic young girls into prostitution are often women who have been trafficked themselves. As adults they use personal relationships and trust in their villages of origin to recruit additional girls. Also, some migrating prostitutes can become victims of human trafficking because the women know they will be working as prostitutes; however, they are given an inaccurate description by their "boss" of the circumstances. Therefore, they consequently get exploited due to their misconception of what conditions to expect of their sex work in the new destination country.