by Abby Sher
Deportation: When a person or group of people is kicked out of a country. This is a common threat used by traffickers of immigrants.
Exploitation: The use of anyone or anything in a cruel way.
Fraud: When a person makes fake promises of love, money, jobs, and a better life so that person can recruit new people into the sex industry.
Green card: An identification card shaped like a driver’s license, also known as a United States Permanent Resident Card. This card means an immigrant is allowed to live and work in America permanently. It’s known as a green card because it’s colored green. Anyone who has a green card gets immigration benefits.
Grooming: The way traffickers “break down” or prepare their victims to have sex with strangers. It often involves physical torture, isolation, confiscating the girl’s identification, and emotional abuse.
Human trafficking: A crime under federal and international law, also known as Trafficking In Persons (TIP), in which the victim is forced or coerced into doing commercial sex acts, labor, or any other service s/he doesn’t want to do. Victims do not have to be physically transported anywhere to be trafficked.
Humanitarian: A person who is dedicated to ensuring that all humans are treated justly.
INS: A nickname for United States Citizen and Naturalization Services, which is a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Previously, similar duties were performed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalizaton Service, which helped foreign-born people become U.S. citizens and get benefits like Social Security and unemployment. INS detained and/or deported anyone who was illegally living in the United States. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States reorganized its government agencies and the INS got folded into United States Citizen and Naturalization Services.
Lot lizards: Slang for girls who are forced to prostitute themselves at truck stops and welcome stations.
Meebon: A Cambodian woman who sells girls into the sex trade. Meebons are in charge of feeding, clothing, and housing the girls. They usually add up all these expenses and tell the girls they are paying off a debt. Every night the meebons rent girls out to as many clients as possible.
Modern-day slavery/Modern slavery: Another way to describe human trafficking. Free the Slaves estimates there are 27 million people being trafficked today, meaning people being recruited, transported, and forced into servitude. They may not wear shackles or be branded with their pimp’s name on their necks, but they are slaves.
Recruiter: Anyone who finds and recruits people into the trafficking network.
Pimp: Anyone who controls or coerces someone else to perform sex acts for paying customers. The pimp keeps all the profits.
Pimps up, ho’s down: Slang for the physical location of a pimp and the girl he is selling. The pimp always has to be somehow above the girl; for instance, if he’s standing on the sidewalk, she has to stand in the street. There are also rules about when and how she can make eye contact with her pimp. She can never make eye contact with another pimp, or else she’ll get in serious trouble.
Prostitute: Someone who receives money for sex, or, when used as a verb, to use someone or something disrespectfully, especially to make money. Traffickers prostitute their victims.
Quota: The dollar amount that a pimp sets for his girls each night. If a girl doesn’t earn as much as her quota, she is sent back out onto the street or she’s severely punished. Everything she earns goes to the pimp. Everything.
Re-naming: A way of erasing a victim’s true identity. When a pimp gives his girls nicknames, it may seem cute or affectionate but that’s not why he does it. It’s part of a power play to eliminate her past.
Safe harbor laws: State laws that are intended to help sexually exploited children. In 2008, California and New York State both signed Safe Harbor laws after years of advocacy to get state legislators to see that children in prostitution are not criminals or delinquents, but instead are victims of abuse who need special services like counseling, safe houses, protection, and education.
Sex trafficking: The act of forcing, coercing, or conning someone into performing any sexual act. According to U.S. law, anyone younger than eighteen years old who is selling or being sold for sex acts is a victim of sex trafficking, whether it’s done by force or not.
Square: Anyone who tries to get out of the trafficking system or people who try to help others get out.
Stockholm Syndrome: A common psychological reaction to being held captive or abused. Victims get numb from all the beatings, become scared that there is nothing else out there, and, most of all, feel incredibly loyal to their abuser. They will defend their abuser and fight off anyone who tries to help them leave. This is yet another reason why it’s so hard to get victims out of a horrible situation. They are often traumatized and psychologically dependent on their abusers.
Survivor leadership: When people who have freed themselves from trafficking choose to speak out about their stories, lead awareness and recovery efforts, or go before legislators to talk about what they’ve been through and advocate for legal changes.
Swedish model of prosecution: Convicting men who pay for sex of a crime, instead of jailing the women as prostitutes. In 1999, the Swedish government changed its laws to ensure that women are treated as victims instead of criminals. This was a revolutionary move, and many governments and activists agree it’s been a huge milestone in fighting sex trafficking.
The Track (a.k.a. the stroll): The street corners or other areas where it’s known that prostitutes can stand and get paid for sex each night.
Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA): The first U.S. government act signed into law to define human trafficking and name clear consequences for anyone accused of being a trafficker. The TVPA, adopted in 2000, defines sex trafficking as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act where such an act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained eighteen years of age.”
In other words, anyone forced or conned into the sex industry is a victim. And if that somebody is younger than eighteen, s/he doesn’t need proof of being forced—which is a hard thing to prove anyway. People found guilty of sex trafficking can be sentenced to as much as life imprisonment. The TVPA was reauthorized in 2003, 2005, and 2008.
Transition age youth: People between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. This is viewed as a significant time in people’s lives because the brain becomes fully developed.
Tricks (a.k.a. dates or johns): Anyone who buys commercial sex.
Wife in Law (a.k.a. family or folks): Each woman or girl who is being bought, sold, and controlled by the same pimp.
WHERE
…is this going on?
“We need to keep our eyes open. We need to stay vigilant, and we need to realize that this can appear in almost any industry […] there’s been a case of elder care workers in a nursing home. There’s been a case of golf course groundskeepers in a fancy golf course. There have been cases in the fishing industry and nail salons and restaurants, all these different places where we need to stay vigilant.”
~Bradley Myles,
CEO of Polaris Project, on NPR
Human trafficking means someone is forced or coerced into doing commercial sex acts, labor, or any other service s/he doesn’t want to do. It is a global and hard-to-detect epidemic. Sad but true: You can close your eyes, point to any place on a world map, and you’re going to learn that there’s some form of human trafficking there, too.
There are more people trafficked and held captive as slaves today than there were over the course of the transatlantic slave trade. Every year, between 700,000 and 4 million women and children are trafficked, most often in the sex trade. Some of the biggest hubs for human trafficking are Algeria, Central African Republic, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and Zimba
bwe, according to the Trafficking in Persons Report issued by the U.S. Department of State. The more we can do to become aware, the more we can stop trafficking from spreading.
Here are just a few more places where sex trafficking is all too common:
Minnesota Pipeline
There are some estimates that Minnesota has as many as ten thousand people being trafficked there. It’s been nicknamed the Minnesota Pipeline because of its reputation as a place where young girls can easily be lured into trafficking. In 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation declared Minneapolis the eighth worst city in the United States for trafficking of juveniles. Maybe even worse than those numbers, is that the typical age of girls being trafficked in Minnesota is between eleven and fourteen.
The French Parliament
No, people are not being exploited in the Senate, but it is where some of the biggest decisions are being made about how to end trafficking. The government of France says there are about twenty thousand people in France’s commercial sex trade, and about 75 percent are forced into it. There are also (too) many children sold into the French sex industry, mostly from Romania, West Africa, and North Africa. Now, France’s Senate is trying to decide whether to follow the Swedish model of prosecution, in which the people who buy sex are prosecuted and fined. A lot of countries in Europe are trying to decide whether or not to do the same.
The Philippines
A major storm can bring havoc to any location. The aftermath of a tornado or a hurricane not only leads to loss of life and property, but there is often a big spike in human trafficking in the affected areas. Children who lose their parents in the disaster, or adults who are desperate for work, are picked up by a “family friend” or “aid relief.” And while natural disasters can happen anywhere, when Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in 2013, the nation saw a significant increase in sex trafficking. The city of Olongapo in the Philippines, in particular, now has a bustling red light district, and there are already welfare agencies trying to find out who brought children from the site of the typhoon to this city.
Uttari Rampur Red Light Area, India
India is the country with the most people enslaved in the world. Between 13,300,000 and 14,700,000 people are currently forced into all types of slavery. The Uttari Rampur Red Light district is one area where women and girls are forced into sexual slavery. A pimp—who who could easily be the new husband a young girl was forced to marry—locks her up for five years and sells her each night to different customers. After the first five years, she’s allowed to “keep” half of what she earns. But really, the brothel takes money for rent for the bed, her makeup, her medical bills, and her food. Again, she winds up with less than nothing. Plus, she was never allowed to go to school, so how could she possibly count her money even if it was in her hands? The rest of her life is about paying off this “debt” that the pimp says she owes him.
Intercontinental Hotel, Qingdao, China
The Intercontinental Hotel in Qingdao, China, is a hotspot for sex tourists, but there are many other hotels nearby offering “special massages.” Hotels like this exist all over the world, and sometimes even the hotel owners don’t know what’s being sold because the spa is run by another management company (a.k.a. the pimp). There are between four million and six million sex workers in China. Many of them work in places that say they are barbers’ shops, massage parlors, or karaoke bars. People also are trafficked into forced marriages, especially in rural areas. In 2010, there were at least 122 cases of women being trafficked from Myanmar to China and then sold into a forced marriage.
Port Authority Bus Terminal (PABT), New York City
Port Authority is the hub for interstate buses into New York City. It’s in midtown Manhattan, just one block west of Times Square. It has about eight thousand buses and a quarter-million people going through it on an average weekday, totaling more than 65 million people a year. A lot of these are young people who don’t know where to go and who are easily persuaded by a helpful-looking older man, one who says he knows the way home, or asks if maybe she wants to join him for a drink before she gets back on the bus.
WHY
…does this happen?
“Whenever I told him I was going to leave, he’d recite the address of my little sister’s daycare.”
~Anonymous survivor
When we talk about why this happens, it’s a lot about the lack of choice. Some people have the crazy idea that victims of sex trafficking have a choice. Really? What kind of choices do you have as a ten-year-old? A fifteen-year-old? Even a twenty-year-old? Biologically, the human brain isn’t fully developed until about age twenty-five. We don’t let people drink or drive or vote before late teens, early twenties. So the answer to why this happens is because sex trafficking victims have no other choice.
If someone they trust and love says, “Hey, you’re so beautiful. I want you to dance for my friend. It’ll make you feel good,” it makes sense that they’d give it a shot.
Or if one of their parents says, “You have to help out the family or we’ll have nothing to eat.” There’s not really a choice here, is there?
And whenever physical abuse and rape is added to that, all choice is completely lost. There is only fear of it happening again. There is a big or else hanging over their every move.
According to a New York City law enforcement official, this was one trafficker’s way of scouting out who would be the next girl he pimped:
“I walk through the mall and say, ‘You’re very pretty,’ and if the girl looks me in the eye and says, ‘Thanks,’ then I know to keep walking. If she looks down and says, ‘No, I’m not’ then I know she’s the one I’m gonna get.”
Traffickers come in all shapes and sizes. The thing they all have in common is that they know how to find their victims’ most vulnerable spots, tricking them with false promises or beating them into submission.
Traffickers are also very smart and savvy. They are expert mind manipulators. Whether it’s erasing all her cell phone contacts so she’s completely isolated or telling her he will kill her family if she breathes a word about him, he has a hold on his victim’s psyche. He figures out exactly what she is scared of or feeling insecure about and digs in. There are so many ways physically and psychologically that traffickers keep their victims caught in the system. Here are just a few.
Low Self-Esteem
This one is universal. We all go through bouts of self-doubt, wondering where we fit in. Especially as teens when everything starts to change—our friends, our bodies, our hormones. Adolescence is a hugely vulnerable time. When someone points to you and says you look pretty or he believes in you, it feels only natural to be attracted to that kind of attention. This is just one way in which traffickers are mind manipulators.
Physical Abuse and Threats
It is common that victims are abused physically in some way while being held captive. Some are knocked unconscious by their beatings on a regular basis. Traffickers often promise that they will kill their victim and/or the victim’s family if s/he tries to run away or call anyone for help.
Deportation
A lot of trafficking victims are from foreign countries, so deportation is a terrifying threat for them. Traffickers steal identification and green cards, cell phones, and any other identifying objects. They also often have a mob of conspirators back in the victim’s home country ready to “greet” her if she’s sent back home. Not to mention that she may not even speak English and could be completely in the dark about where she’s located.
Constant Relocation
This is another common tactic for traffickers. They move around a country quickly and secretively. This means the victims never know exactly what city or state they’ll wake up in the next morning, law enforcement cannot track them down, and the victims cannot get familiarized or find out where safe houses are. Each new city could mean different names or identifications for victims, too. Pretty soon, the girls cannot tell who, what, or where they are, and they’r
e completely isolated from family or friends who could possibly get them out.
Criminal Charges
If you are a victim and you try to call the authorities, what will happen? Even though victims of sex trafficking have been horrifically abused, many times if they try to contact law enforcement, they can be charged with prostitution, indecent exposure, or loitering. Anyone being trafficked who’s older than eighteen has to prove “force, fraud, and coercion,” which is very hard. A lot of people (jurors, lawyers, even judges) still don’t understand that prostitutes are most often victims instead of culprits. If you’re charged with prostitution, you could be sentenced to many months in jail and required to pay fines, which vary from state to state. If you’re younger than eighteen and brought into foster care (a common “solution”), you never know what kind of family you’ll be placed in. Plus, once you turn eighteen, you’re put back on the street because you’ve “aged out,” which means the government says you’re too old to need a guardian.
Cults
It feels good to be part of a secret club, especially when the leader tells you that you’ve found your calling and are on your way to a new, carefree existence. Cults are religious groups of people who follow one leader, often isolating themselves so they can devote themselves fully. Cult leaders recruit people through all sorts of tactics, often promising psychological or spiritual miracles. And once there is a small group on board with the cult’s mission, each member starts recruiting new people to come into the fold. Not all cults are involved in sex trafficking, but there are some significant and scary cases involving child marriages, sexual servitude, and mass suicide. Victims in these situations are often lured by the leader of the cult who builds a strong, trusting relationship with them, and then asks them to prove their faith.
