Survivor Guide
Sex Trafficking Survivors
Sex trafficking, a pervasive part of human trafficking, often leaves a trail of devastation in its wake. After leaving such situations, support — physical, emotional, and financial — is an essential part of the healing process.
Human trafficking is rapidly becoming one of the most pervasive illegal trades globally. Over 40 million individuals are currently trapped in modern slavery, enduring sexual exploitation and forced labor for profit. This criminal industry, worth billions of dollars, devastates countless lives.
Human Trafficking Defined
Involuntary servitude and debt bondage are other names for human trafficking — the act of using force, fraud, or coercion through labor or sexual exploitation of another person. Human trafficking usually starts when a gang member, business owner, diplomat, or pimp offers a minor or similarly vulnerable adult a seemingly innocent job offer that morphs into an abusive situation.
Types of trafficking include:
- Sexual exploitation: forced situations where a person is coerced to perform sexual activities, including child sex trafficking.
- Forced marriage: non-consensual marriages that allow traffickers to abduct vulnerable people.
- Forced criminal activities: theft, drug smuggling, counterfeit sales, and fraud.
What Is Sex Trafficking?
Traffickers solicit vulnerable people and threaten them with serious physical or psychological harm, manipulating them to perform sexual acts. Sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery (22 U.S.C. § 7102).
The United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) is the government’s primary tool to combat trafficking. In 2003, the act was amended, allowing survivors to sue their abusers in civil court.
Child Sex Trafficking
Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is the basis for child sex trafficking. Young children without a familial support system, homeless or runaway youth, and children in the welfare system are often easy targets. Experienced traffickers use manipulation tactics to attract and control children, making them feel accepted and promising to look after them. Child sex trafficking is prohibited by 18 U.S.C. § 1591.
The Effects of Sex Trafficking on Survivors
Survivors often have a history of complex trauma. They may suffer from years of physical and emotional abuse and threats, isolation from friends and family, bullying, and financial manipulation. Survivors of sex trafficking may struggle with anxiety disorders, memory loss, PTSD, depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders.
Community Resources
The Center for Family Services and its 24/7 hotline and human trafficking survivor groups help ensure individuals never feel alone. United Against Human Trafficking promotes its trauma-informed Real-Talk Program to encourage healing activities, trauma processing, and self-care practices.
Online Resources
The National Human Trafficking Hotline is a 24/7 confidential resource offering safety planning, emotional support, and immediate connections to emergency services. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a proactive program that helps families, law enforcement, and social service agencies recover missing and sexually exploited children.
How To Find Human Trafficking Resources Near You
The VictimConnect Resource Map is an online search tool survivors can use to access national and local resources. The National Human Trafficking Hotline’s referral directory connects survivors with local organizations providing emergency, transitional, and long-term services.
Legal Resources and Assistance for Sex Trafficking Survivors
Civil lawsuits can help secure financial security to aid in recovery. Compensation secured in a civil lawsuit can cover pain and suffering, loss of consortium, enjoyment of life, and possible punitive damages.
Who Could Be Liable in Sex Trafficking Cases?
Survivors can pursue civil charges against perpetrators and other people or companies involved in facilitating trafficking. Hotels/motels and personnel who willfully disregard the sex trafficking of minors, ‘buyers,’ and criminal enterprises can all be held liable.
Statute of Limitations on Sex Trafficking Cases
There is no federal statute of limitations placed on human trafficking. The Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act, signed by President Biden in September 2022, eliminated the filing window for federal human trafficking cases involving minors. Before this, it was ten years after survivors turned 18 or ten years after the injury was discovered.
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