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Movies like ‘Taken’ – and its many sequels – present an unlikely sex-trafficking scenario in which an American teen abroad is snatched and sold into sexual slavery.
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A study from Covenant House New York, a nonprofit focused on homeless youth, found that 36% of the 22 trafficking survivors in their survey were trafficked by an immediate family member, like a parent. Only four reported “being kidnapped and held against his or her will.”
Often, trafficking victims are younger transgender people or teens experiencing homelessness who exchange sex with others to meet their basic needs: shelter, economic stability, food and health care. Trafficking frequently looks like vulnerable people struggling to survive in a violent, exploitative world.
“They are creating sexual solutions to nonsexual problems,” says San Francisco-based researcher Alexandra Lutnick.
Under U.S. law, these youth are trafficking victims, because of their age. But they may reject the label, preferring terms like “survival sex work” or “prostitution” to describe their experiences.
Trafficking victims engaged in survival sex may well be arrested rather than offered help like housing or health care. If they cannot prove “force, fraud, or coercion,” or if they refuse to comply in a criminal investigation, they risk shifting from victim to criminal in the eyes of law enforcement. That can mean prostitution charges, felony offenses or deportation.
Such punishments are most commonly used against Black, Indigenous, queer, trans and undocumented sex-trafficking survivors. Black youth are disproportionately arrested for prostitution offenses, for example, even though legally any underage commercial sex is sex trafficking.
What is the difference between sex work and sex trafficking?
Legally and in other meaningful ways, sex work and sex trafficking are different.
Sex work is consenting adults engaging in transactional sex. In almost all U.S. states, it is a criminal offense, punishable with fines and even jail sentences.
Sex trafficking is nonconsensual, and it is generally treated as a more severe crime.
Most sex workers’ groups acknowledge that sex work is not inherently sex trafficking but that sex workers can face force, fraud and coercion because they work in a criminalized, stigmatized profession. Sex workers whose experiences meet the legal standards of trafficking may nonetheless fear disclosing that to police and risking arrest for prostitution.
Conversely, sex workers can be mistakenly labeled by police and advocates as “trafficked” and find themselves in the custody of law enforcement or social service agencies.
What can be done?
Based on my research, reducing sex trafficking requires changes that might prevent it from occurring in the first place. That means rebuilding a stronger, supportive U.S. social safety net to buffer against poverty and housing insecurity.
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In the meantime, trafficking victims would benefit from efforts by frontline workers to combat the racism, sexism and transphobia that stigmatizes and criminalizes victims who don’t look as people expect – and are struggling to survive.
Corinne Schwarz, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, Oklahoma State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.