What is Human Trafficking?
Human trafficking is modern day slavery and is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. It is the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or taking of persons by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploiting them. The United Nations estimates that 2.5 million people are trafficked annually. It deprives people of their human rights and freedoms, it is a global health risk, and it fuels organized crime.
Sex Trafficking to the US?
The United States is a destination country for international trafficking: transportation of foreign women and children into the U.S. for purposes of sexual and labor exploitation. The State Department estimates that approximately 18,000 foreign nationals are trafficked annually into the United States alone. Victims brought to the U.S. originate from Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Foreign national women and children brought to the U.S. for sex trafficking find themselves forced to work in massage parlors, hostess clubs, commercially-fronted brothels, residential brothels, escort services, and strip clubs.
Sex Trafficking Within the US?
Sex trafficking also happens to U.S. citizens and residents already residing within the U.S. borders. An estimated 300,000 American children are at risk for trafficking into the sex industry annually. Traffickers coerce women and children to enter the commercial sex industry through the use of a variety of recruitment and control mechanisms in strip clubs, street-based prostitution, escort services, and brothels. Survivor stories in US
There are more than 27 million slaves in the world today.
There are more slaves today than there ever has been at any point of history. Trafficking primarily involves exploitation which comes in many forms, including:
- Forcing victims into prostitution
- Subjecting victims to slavery or involuntary servitude
- Compelling victims to commit sex acts for the purpose of creating pornography
- Misleading victims into debt bondage
According to some estimates, approximately 80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19% involves labor exploitation.
An estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked each year.
The average cost of a slave around the world is $90.
Trafficking victims normally don't get help because they think that they or their families will be hurt by their traffickers, or that they will be deported.
Around half of trafficking victims in the world are under the age of 18.
More than 2/3 of sex trafficked children suffer additional abuse at the hands of their traffickers.
Trafficked children are significantly more likely to develop mental health problems, abuse substances, engage in prostitution as adults, and either commit or be victimized by violent crimes later in life.
Women who have been trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation experience a significantly higher rate of HIV and other STDs, tuberculosis, and permanent damage to their reproductive systems.
68% of female sex trafficking victims meet the clinical criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder.
