HUMAN TRAFFICKING PREVENTION

Human trafficking is the business of stealing freedom for profit. In some cases, traffickers trick, defraud or physically force victims into selling sex. In others, victims are lied to, assaulted, threatened or manipulated into working under inhumane, illegal or otherwise unacceptable conditions. Our young people are the most vulnerable to these manipulations.
KEY POINTS ABOUT HUMAN TRAFFICKING
  • Trafficking has nothing to do with moving something or someone from one country to another. That is smuggling, which is a crime against a border, not a person; people can be trafficked in their own homes.
  • Force, fraud or coercion MUST be present for a situation to be trafficking and that force, fraud or coercion MUST be the factor that compels the person to remain in the situation. If you hire someone and promise to pay a certain amount then renege on that promise, that is fraud. If the person you cheated is free to leave and go file a complaint it is not trafficking, though it may be exploitation. This situation only becomes trafficking when the defrauded person is, for example, threatened with deportation for complaining.
  • The EXCEPTION to the force, fraud or coercion requirement is that children participating in commercial sexual activity is ALWAYS considered trafficking under federal law. There is no such thing, under federal law, as a child prostitute.
  • Not all adult commercial sex is trafficking. There are adults who choose to make a living in the sex trades, but it’s important to remember that choice exists on spectrum. For example, there are many people who choose to make a living in the sex trades because there are no other good options available to them.
  • Human trafficking can happen in any business – not just in sexually oriented businesses like escort services or strip clubs. It can also happen where no business exists in any formal sense – such as within families.
  • While human trafficking CAN happen to anyone, certain individuals and groups of people are far more vulnerable than others.
  • People being trafficked will not always or even often identify as trafficking victims. Because of how trafficking works, most people do not identify their experience as trafficking until AFTER the situation is over.