Traffickers often restrict access to food, medical care, sleep, and physical comfort in order to control their victims. Victims may be tired, hungry, or lack access to appropriate clothing.
They may pose as a boyfriend and use romance to prey upon a young person's vulnerability. They may use violence or physical threats. They may offer business transactions or offers to make fast and easy money. Victims are often recruited by someone they know.
The types of physical and psychological abuse human trafficking victims experience often lead to serious mental or emotional health consequences, including feelings of severe guilt, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, substance abuse (alcohol or narcotics), and eating disorders.
Human trafficking usually consists of three stages. In the first stage, the victims are recruited; in the second, they are transported; and in the third, they are exploited. At the recruitment stage, criminals use many methods to force or trick people into being trafficked.
Traffickers employ a variety of control tactics, the most common include physical and emotional abuse and threats, isolation from friends and family, and economic abuse. They make promises aimed at addressing the needs of their target in order to impose control.
Pimps/traffickers often exhibit the following behaviors or characteristics: Jealous, controlling and violent. Significantly older than female companions. Promise things that seem too good to be true.
Someone may be experiencing labor trafficking or exploitation if they: Feel pressured by their employer to stay in a job or situation they want to leave. Owe money to an employer or recruiter or are not being paid what they were promised or are owed. Do not have control of their passport or other identity documents.
Traffickers are adept at identifying people with noticeable vulnerabilities or needs. They may scour specific locations such as bus stations, shelters, or local malls looking for someone without a safe place to stay or who they may be able to charm with their flattery and attention.
Identification documents are held by another. Person works long or excessive hours or is always available “on demand.” Overly sexual for age or situation. Multiple phones or social media accounts.
However, vulnerable populations who have little social and legal protection are the most at risk. The majority of victims are women—70 percent—and risk for women may be heightened further in areas where extreme gender discrimination prevails.
In the United States, it is most prevalent in Texas, Florida, New York and California. Human trafficking is both a domestic and global crime, with victims trafficked within their own country, to neighboring countries and between continents.
According to evidence, traffickers will use drugs, force, or emotional and financial tactics in order to lure in and control their victims. They will often try to form strong bonds with these girls by claiming that they love or need them, saying that these sex acts will allow a good future with the trafficker.
Suggested Screening Questions
Can you leave your job or situation if you want? Can you come and go as you please? Have you been threatened if you try to leave? Have you been physically harmed in any way?
Victims of human trafficking can be young children, teenagers, men and women. They can be U.S. citizens, Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) or foreign nationals, and they can be found in urban, suburban, and rural areas.
Human trafficking is the second largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world, second only to drug trafficking. Here are some important facts: Children account for half of the victims of human trafficking. In fact, the average age that a young person becomes involved in sex trafficking is 12 years old.
Mass displacement, conflict, extreme poverty, lack of access to education and job opportunities, violence and harmful social norms like child marriage are all factors that push individuals into situations of trafficking.
Organ trafficking is a broad concept that includes several illegal activities, of which the main goal is to profit from human organs and tissue, for the sole purpose of transplantation. These activities include THBOR, transplant tourism and trafficking in organs and tissues [7,8,9].
Age of victims (IOM only)
The average age for IOM registered victims of trafficking is 27, and half of all victims are aged between 19 and 33. There is a slight spike in age at 0 and 1 years of age- this is because of the number of children who are born into trafficking.
Many sex traffickers lure victims by providing basic survival needs. They systematically provide distorted versions of higher needs to manipulate victims. Using threats, force and coercion, traffickers exploit the fact that, for many victims, “the life” may be their first experience of 'family' and belonging.
Tactic 1: Dehumanization
From the viewpoint of traffickers, victims are little more than commodities. Traffickers constantly tell victims that they're worthless, insignificant and forgotten. Victims are exposed to high levels of emotional distress induced by constant threats, fear, and psychological abuse.
Some women and girls still manage to escape human trafficking on their own, finding ways to run and get help. Some ask for help when they've been arrested for sex work. Others will be able to send the occasional text message, email, or phone call.
Child trafficking is very common in Africa, particularly West Africa, where approximately 100 percent of all human trafficking victims were children.