Human Trafficking
WARNING
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There are an estimated 20.9 million victims of human trafficking worldwide. It is considered one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time. This involves a trafficker using “force, fraud, or coercion to control victims for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex acts or labor services against their will”. While it is common for trafficking to include multiple perpetrators, it is also common for the trafficker to be someone the victim trusts and loved.
Human trafficking and domestic violence play together and overlap in the pattern of behaviors that both abusers and traffickers use to exert power and control over a victim.
Intimate partner trafficking occurs when an abuser compels their partner to engage in commercial sex, forced labor, or involuntary servitude. Sometimes victims may live with their trafficker and are subjected to physical abuse, emotional manipulation, and control. Both abusers and traffickers use isolation to redefine a victim’s reality and make them feel as though there’s no one to turn to and no means of escape. Victims who lack legal documentation are often threatened with deportation if they refuse to comply with their abuser’s demands, and frequently, victims are denied access to money and lack the resources needed to leave the perpetrator.
One case found that a perpetrator forced his girlfriend, a young woman, into prostitution. The defendant used physical force to coerce her into doing this. Although prosecutors initially viewed this as a domestic violence case, interviews revealed that the defendant had forced the victim into commercial sex, thus leading to a guilty plea on sex trafficking charges. Some may routinely recruit women and girls by pretending to fall in love with them. In some cases, traffickers impregnated them purposefully and held their children hostage in order to coerce them into prostitution.
Traffickers have also used the promise of a relationship or marriage to obtain forced labor. In one instance, a trafficker married a Moroccan citizen in Egypt and brought her back to the United States where he was already married. The trafficker and his wife then forced the victim to work as a domestic servant in their home and as a janitor in their limousine business, using physical violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse, and threats against the victim’s family as a means of coercion.
Human trafficking can also occur alongside domestic violence, particularly when other family members are involved. A trafficker may use the victim’s fear of retaliation by her community or extended family as a form of coercion. Family-controlled human trafficking may also include identity theft, tax fraud, and the filing of false tax returns.