What is Sex Trafficking?

Dressember Reading Day #9

Every day during the month of December, we’re answering common questions and breaking down different aspects of human trafficking on our blog and Instagram. Join us in raising awareness about the injustice of human trafficking by sharing, donating, or joining the Dressember campaign (it’s not too late!).

Sex trafficking is a form of modern slavery that uses violence, threats, lies, debt bondage, and other forms of coercion to compel adults and children to engage in commercial sex acts against their will.

The commercial sex trade is driven by alarmingly high profits.

Human trafficking is a $150 billion dollar industry. More than half of this income is made by sex trafficking. Approximately 4.5 million people worldwide are forced into the commercial sex trade. While most of the victims are women and children, 1% of sex trafficking victims are men and boys.

Here are the three basic phases of sex trafficking:

Phase One: Traffickers target vulnerable people and communities.

Traffickers position themselves to find people suffering tremendous hardships. Numerous survivors report being poor, abused, afraid, homeless, or otherwise desperate for a new life. Traffickers take to the streets, bars, transportation stations, and make connections with troubled communities to find their “products.” While sex trafficking occurs worldwide and in every U.S. state, the highest number of sex trafficking reports in the U.S. were filed in California, Texas, and Florida. Approximately 50,000 women and children trafficked from other countries into the United States entered through Los Angeles.

Phase Two: Traffickers rely on deception to lure in their workers.

The trust that vulnerable people place in sharing their story with a trafficker is ultimately used against them. Victims receive the promise of a good-paying job or safety from domestic violence. In some cases, a romantic relationship is started and gradually used as a method of manipulation into commercial sex work. The knowledge of a vulnerable person’s pain operates as both the lure into sex trafficking as well as the method for retaining a worker and securing secrecy. Confiding in a trafficker reveals enough to perpetually convince a victim of non-truths: they are told they have nowhere else to go or a tarnished reputation beyond repair. Impoverished people in need of money see very little, if any, of their promised income.

Phase Three: Threats and fear hold millions of men, women, and children captive.

The psychological and physical harm victims experience may seem like motivation to try to escape. However, a staggering number of victims are children who require the basic care of food and shelter. The need to survive can be enough to convince children to remain with their traffickers. The nature of the work gradually breaks the victim’s ability to hope for a better life. In some places, the laws are insufficient to protect these victims. Only 1% of trafficked workers are rescued.

What can I do to help?

Dressember partners with many wonderful organizations that combat child trafficking hands on. When you advocate and raise money for Dressember, you are helping to fund some amazing organizations who focus on rescuing children around the world!

Dressember raises awareness and funding to change the statistics.

By funding the work of Dressember partners, Dressember fundraisers support rescue missions, prevention services, and support programs to help individuals escape slavery. Beyond escape and placing their traffickers behind bars, victims need the ability to find work, to feel safe again, to regain dignity. Dressember strives to end sex trafficking by supporting each of these critical components of victim recovery.