Sex Trafficking Narratives and Theories

Journalists often cite statistics reported by the Polaris Project, a national nonprofit organization working to combat modern-day human trafficking, to demonstrate the prevalence of the types of sex or labor trafficking. And the numbers they report are based on the number of calls they get on their National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline (National Hotline). For example, the National Hotline received 26,727 calls last year that reported human trafficking in the United States. Of those calls, the Polaris project reported that 7,621 cases were referred to law enforcement. The National Hotline for reporting cases received more calls from California than any other state in the country in 2016. Even more, the FBI listed California as one of the largest hubs of human trafficking in the United States.

Map & Graph: Calls

Another trusted source for statistics on victims of human trafficking is by The National Center for Victims of Crime, a nonprofit organization that advocates for victims' rights that draws its information largely from two national, annual reports — the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) — which measure the scope, magnitude and impact of human trafficking in the United States.

"Because sex trafficking is considered horrific, politicians appear willing to cite the flimsiest and most poorly researched statistics — and the media is content to treat the claims as solid facts," Glenn Kessler concluded in his article for The Washington Post in June.

For example, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D–Ohio) and Rep. Ann Wagner (R–Mo.) have both stated in 2016 that "some 300,000 children are at risk each year for commercial sexual exploitation" in the United States, citing the Department of Justice (DOJ). The New York Times has also referenced this number, attributing the figure to the DOJ. Meanwhile, Fox News raised the number to 400,000 and attributed it to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

However, the numbers were based on data from a non-peer-reviewed paper published in 2001 that researchers Richard Estes and Neil Weiner of the University of Pennsylvania no longer endorses. First, the numbers were based on data collected from the 1990s, so that was one problem. Moreover, Estes and his colleagues came up with their number by speculating conditions that put juveniles at risk of potential exploitation by sex traffickers, such as whether the person lived in public housing, had been a runaway or had foreign parents. Once they determined those who were at risk of becoming exploited, they then would count up the number of minors. To make a suspicious measure even worse, anyone who fell into more than one category was counted multiple times.

However, the researchers were careful to include cautionary stipulations and caveats, explaining that there are problems with the estimated number. But the warnings were ignored, as the number was (and still is) repeatedly referenced in public discourse.

In 2008, researchers from the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire wrote a fact sheet, explaining the problems with the Estes/Weiner estimate, as well as other claims about the extent of the juvenile prostitution. The authors of the report pleaded in all caps: “PLEASE DO NOT CITE THESE NUMBERS [...] The reality is that we do not currently know how many juveniles are involved in prostitution. Scientifically credible estimates do not exist.” In addition, the National Academy of Sciences and the Justice Department concluded in a published report that “[n]o reliable national estimate exists of the incidence or prevalence of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors in the United States.”

According to International Labour Organization estimates (ILO), only 21.5 percent of all human trafficking cases are really sex trafficking cases. However, the media and many anti-trafficking organizations often suggest sex trafficking is the most widespread kind of exploitation. As a result, some people argue that similarly egregious and much more common labor trafficking cases tend to receive little to no public attention and, hence, fewer resources. Although it might be the case that sex trafficking is more prevalent than any other type of human trafficking, there are just no reliable numbers out there.

How is human trafficking defined? How do various agencies interpret and enforce their understanding of that definition – particularly about voluntary sex work?

In addition to challenging the numbers that are often used to illustrate the severity of sex trafficking, some abolitionists and activists have started to question the meaning of “human trafficking.”

Lauren, a sex worker and doctoral student at the University of Southern California researching sex worker’s rights, said that the literature on human trafficking is beset by conflicting layers of understanding, with trafficking conflated with prostitution and migration. Lauren asked not to be named because of fear of prosecution and that she is a student here at USC.) Trafficking, she said, is also defined as acts involving forced labor, forced marriages, and forced prostitution.

In recent years, a few advocacy organizations, including Amnesty International have called for the legalization or decriminalization of prostitution — a move that some advocacy groups argue is short-sighted. For example, members of the Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational, and Research Project filed a federal lawsuit in 2015 to challenge the law that makes sex work illegal in California.

On the one hand, you have pimps who would be called sex traffickers by some law enforcement agencies, victims, and advocates, but the pimps themselves wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves sex traffickers. Indeed, those who work in law enforcement and the justice system have said that many pimps and “traffickers” actually don’t believe that they are sex traffickers.


Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney Sonja Dawson said that this, and the fact that many pimps convince their women and/or men to believe that their act of sexual exploitation is consensual and mutual, makes it even more of a challenge to prosecute the real bad guys.

But not all women or men are selling sexual acts under the supervision of a pimp. The Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) USA, a social justice network of members and supporters dedicated to defending the human rights of sex workers, argue that sex work is often misconstrued to be inherently exploitative.

Lauren, who is on the council from the Los Angeles SWOP chapter, loves her job and believes most sex workers choose prostitution voluntarily. However, she and many others  often have to work in secret. According to Lauren, sex workers generally distrust journalists and the media because of the industry’s tendency to misunderstand their side.

Also, with growing interest in anti-trafficking movements and rhetoric and task forces popping up across the country, Lauren says that sex workers are in an especially precarious position. “We feel like we could be arrested every day,” Lauren said. When she was living and working in New York City, she said, a journalist from the New York Post posed as a sex worker and joined the same discreet establishment that Lauren had been working for. After six months undercover, the woman stopped working, and to Lauren and her friends’ horror, published an expose about their secret establishment, published on the first page of the Post.

There has been some hope on the part of some advocates in that sex workers could see relief from the pressure by police. Lauren said that she knows a lot of sex workers, some of whom are her friends, who have been raped or blackmailed by police officers. For these reasons, she believes that decriminalization would mean less stigma for people like her. Lauren and her community believe that decriminalization, not legalization, would allow them and their clients to approach the police in instances of pimping and sex trafficking without having to fear prosecution.

However, a growing number of anti-trafficking units — often funded by federal funds. The buzz is ultimately fueled by government money, which sends police departments and activist groups into a grant-grubbing frenzy. Michael Hudson, a researcher with the Hudson Institute, told The Las Vegas Review-Journal that the anti-trafficking movement is "just one big federal grant program."

"Any time there is a prostitution sting, it's always some article about busting a bunch of ‘bad people,’ when in reality it's usually just some prostitutes getting caught," Lauren said.

"The media loves to sensationalize human trafficking because it's click-bait, and the police to throw it around too to make it look like they're fighting it," said Lauren, a graduate student studying the rights of sex workers.

But alternatives are opaque to most law enforcement agencies, which have been trained to fight human trafficking in part because it's been understood to be the same as illegal sex work. And that's something that cops have always policed.

"So human trafficking has to have an act, a means and a purpose. OK. So the act can be recruitment," Rivas said.

<INFOGRAPHIC> HOW SEX TRAFFICKING IS DEFINED BY LA, CA, U.S., UN, etc

"[Prostitution] is not human trafficking, OK, because nobody's forcing you to be there," she said. "When you're out there on your own, that's pimping. So I'm pimping you but I'm not trafficking you [because] that's the voluntary action of the woman [...], and that's still wrong because she's still doing sex acts and giving this person money so she's in violation of prostitution."

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Is trafficking profitable?

A 2014 report by the Urban Institute reported that the sex trafficking economy is a multibillion-dollar industry, estimated at $28 billion globally. However, it's important to note that numbers will vary from state to state and that they are always hard to verify.

Most pimps think that the sex trade is low risk with extremely high profit, according to Officer Rivas. “If a pimp gets five or six  girls working at the same time, seven days a week, he can bring in anywhere from $600,000 to $800,000 a year,” she said.

Sex trafficking is a form of slavery that is as old as the nation itself.

>But sex trafficking has not, however, always been a crime. Before emancipation, sexual slavery was legal. The victims exploited in the country’s early years were (most obviously) African women and girls.  The trading of women for sex, whether it be rape, prostitution, or forced “breeding” with other slaves, was common practice.