From the girl forced into prostitution at a school or shopping mall, to the man discovered in a restaurant kitchen, stripped of his passport and held against his will, all trafficking victims share one essential experience: the loss of freedom. Human trafficking impacts us from micro to macro contexts. It is about our individual relations and the society within which we live – the customs, the laws, and culture.

• Microsystem - Family, friends, interrelations, your relationship with your wife/husband/lover, best friend, boss, co-worker
• Mesosystem - Relationship between two systems (family and system of law; family system and work; family and school, etc)
• Macrosystem - Culture, customs, and laws within where you live

The Law

California Law defines human trafficking as: “...all acts involved in the recruitment, abduction, transport, harboring, transfer, sale or receipt of persons, within national or across international borders, through force, coercion, fraud or deception, to place persons in slavery or slavery-like conditions, forced labor or services, such as forced prostitution or sexual services, domestic servitude, bonded sweatshop labor, or other debt bondage.” There are two forms of trafficking: sex and labor. We’re interested in sex trafficking. Sex trafficking must meet one of the two following conditions:

• Recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act which is obtained by force, fraud, or coercion.
• Any commercial sex act with an individual under 18 years of age
  

Sex Trafficking

We’re talking about sex trafficking because it is one of the principal means through which children and adults are recruited into commercial sex. Have you heard about this sort of thing, read about it, seen it on TV?

• International Trafficking involves children and adults recruited, purchased, or stolen overseas, transported across international boundaries and sold to internet sex brokers, or forced to work in massage parlors, strip clubs, brothels, escort services, and night clubs. They may be documented or undocumented.
• Domestic Trafficking involves children and adults recruited in the United States. According to the Polaris Project in Washington DC, the majority of domestic human trafficking victims are recruited in our local communities.

Pimps and traffickers identify vulnerable children and adults (some of whom they know) and use lies, gifts, and false promises of love to manipulate them and win their trust. There is a common thread among trafficking victims: they are vulnerable. Recruitment is often very subtle, and the casual observer might look like a conversation between two acquaintances. Keep in mind, these children and adults are someone’s family.

Commercial Sexual Exploitation

What do you think this term refers to? Exploitation involves any transaction in which the parties do not equal in terms of power, resources, or social standing. Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE) differs from trafficking in two ways:

• It involves a voluntary exchange or promise of sex for money, shelter, clothing, food, or other consideration.
• It does not necessarily involve force, fraud, or coercion.
  

CSE is often facilitated by third parties (pimps, traffickers, handlers) who sell access to other human beings in order to make a profit. The term “sex worker” is applied to both exploited people and those who “voluntarily” exchange sex for money or other material benefits. In the last decade, apps and social media platforms have become the primary venues for the promotion of commercial sex. What do you think the reasons for this are?

Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

There is no such thing as a child prostitute. Commercial sex with a minor is both human trafficking and child sexual abuse. Anyone arrested for purchasing sex from a minor faces prison and fines. There is no excuse or defense. “She told me she was 18," or “She looked like she was 18," are not legally acceptable. If a person can’t be sure of a prostitute’s age, what should they do?

Survival Sex

What does this sound like to you? What is called “survival sex” involves the exchange of sex for food, shelter, clothing, other necessities, or drugs. “Survival sex” has been viewed by many, including youth advocates, as a normalized means of survival for young people living on the streets. What do you think?

Human Traffickers

Traffickers come from all backgrounds. They often share their victims’ cultural, ethnic, or national background which allows them to understand and manipulate their victims. They can be individuals or members of criminal networks, pimps, gang members, even family members. There are three basic types of traffickers: Gorilla pimps, Boyfriend pimps, Businessman pimps. Gorilla pimps beat and rape their victims to control them. Boyfriend pimps pretend to love their victims as a means to get them to prostitute. Businessmen pimps take a cut of what their victims make prostituting while providing management services.

Techniques Pimps Use

Pimps lure victims using lies, threats, or psychological coercion. They offer friendship, promise high-paying jobs, new and exciting opportunities, even love. They identify, and then “befriend” and/or “rescue” their victims. It can happen literally anywhere: through family networks, friends, schools (middle, high, college, university), in malls, at bus stops, on street corners, at fast food establishments, parties, group homes, or clubs. They understand their victim’s needs and vulnerabilities and act to create and strengthen the victim’s dependency on them. They use a variety of control tactics: physical and emotional abuse: sexual assault; drugs and alcohol; confiscating their identification and money; isolating them from friends and family; even renaming them. The common thread among pimps is their willingness to exploit other human beings for profit.

Who’s Most at Risk?

• Young women, from middle school age to college, are potentially at risk of trafficking or sexual exploitation
• Runaways, adolescents in group homes or foster care, LGBQ are at the highest risk
  
• Children who grow up in families where there is child abuse and/or domestic violence, where there is substance abuse, and/or an absent father figure
• Children who grow up in homes in which adults themselves have unaddressed complex trauma, and lack the educational and/or vocational resources to prepare them for adulthood

Some of you may know someone or have family members who are vulnerable. They might be at risk of trafficking or exploitation. In fact, you may know someone who had been trafficked.

Controlling Victims

What do you think would keep someone in this lifestyle? Victims feel trapped and afraid of leaving for many reasons: psychological trauma, shame, emotional attachment to their traffickers/pimps, or physical threats to their families.

Methods of Power and Control

Labor Trafficking (businesses, farms, domestic work, begging/peddling, stripping), and Sex Trafficking (street/online prostitution, residential/commercial-front brothels, truck stops) have many methods of power and control:

• Coercion and Threats - Threatens to harm victim or family; Threatens to expose or shame victim; Threatens to report to police or immigration
  
• Intimidation - Harms other victims, children or pets; Displays or uses weapons; Destroys property; Lies about police involvement in a trafficking situation
  
• Emotional Abuse - Humiliates in front of others; Name-calling; Plays mind games; Makes victim feel guilt/blame for the situation; Convinces victim that the abuser is the only one that cares about them
  
• Isolation - Keeps confined; Accompanies to public places; Creates distrust of the police/others; Moves victims to different locations; Doesn’t allow the victim to learn English, or to go to school; Denies access to children, family, and friends
  
• Denying, Blaming, Minimizing - Makes light of abuse or exploitation; Denies anything illegal or exploitative is occurring; Places blame on the victim for trafficking situation
  
• Sexual Abuse - Uses sexual assault as a means of control; Forces victims to have sex multiple times a day with strangers; Treats victim as an object for monetary gain; Normalizes sexual violence and selling sex
  
• Physical Abuse - Shoves, slaps, hits, punches, kicks, strangles; Burns, brands, tattoo’s; Denies food/water; Exposes to harmful chemicals; Forces pregnancy termination; Induces drug addiction as means of control
  
• Using Privilege - Treats victim like a servant; Uses gender, age, or nationality to suggest superiority; Hides or destroys important documents
  
• Economic Abuse – Creates debt that can never be repaid; Takes money earned; Prohibits access to finances; Limits resources to a small allowance
  

Why are we talking about Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation?

• It’s a multi-billion dollar worldwide industry reaching, in one form or another, into virtually every country in the world (source: International Labor Organization)
  
• The San Francisco Bay Area is a major hub for human trafficking in the United States (source: FBI)
  
• A significant number of girls and women being prostituted in San Francisco have been trafficked
  
• The San Francisco Police Department’s Special Victims Unit has made trafficking and prostitution top enforcement priorities.
  
• Finally, sex buying, directly and indirectly, supports human trafficking
  

Human Trafficking in San Francisco

The San Francisco Department on the Status of Woman’s 2016 Human Trafficking Report identified 499 human trafficking survivors in San Francisco.

• 70% were survivors of sex trafficking; 26% labor trafficking; 4% both sex and labor
  
• 79% were females, including female-identified transgender individuals
  
• 24% were minors
  
• 76% were people of color
  

Unfortunately, this is an incomplete count since it only includes individuals reported by participating in human service agencies. There are countless others who are not being identified. Do you have any idea why? Well, on any given day or night there are hundreds of advertisements on internet sex sites offering sexual services. Some of these involve trafficked girls and women who are being forced into sex work in hotels, brothels, massage parlors, and strip clubs in San Francisco.

In Summary

Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation take place in a number of forms and venues: internet sex brokers, street prostitution, massage parlors, strip clubs, brothels, escort services, night clubs, on the streets, truck stops, schools, and college campuses. Whether you meet your “date” on an internet site or another venue there’s no way to know if they are being trafficked. Do you have any thoughts or questions about this?

Common Misconceptions About Women Who Exchange Sex for Money

• They want to be with you, be your friend, lover, companion. In reality, they want your money to give to their pimp or they need it to survive (food, shelter, support of a child, drugs, usually a combination of needs)
  
• You are their “work," you’re providing their income. In many cases, the money goes to pimp or traffickers. Much of the time they are prostituting for nothing, or for what their pimp or handlers decide to give them.
  
• You can save her. You can’t. She’s not Julia Roberts, you’re not Richard Gere, and this isn’t a movie. She has heard it all before and has no reason to trust you.
  
• Sex workers sell sex because they love sex. Some sex workers may enjoy sex; others may convince themselves of this in order to survive, and some dislike sex and use drugs or dissociate during sexual activity.
  
• Sex workers are people who choose to sell sex. Some do, but we have to think about the path that leads to this choice: childhood sexual abuse; betrayal by parents and other trusted adults; foster care placement; juvenile justice system involvement. At some point, “choice’ becomes a necessity. The bottom line for many is that it’s about survival.
  
• Sex workers are to blame for commercial sex. Without them, there would be no prostitution. WRONG! Without sex buyers there wouldn’t be prostitution.