THE SEX TRAFFICKING PROCESS
The scale of operation varies from two persons operating between two limited areas to an organized network of several transnational crime syndicates operating all over the world.
Regardless of scale, trafficking usually involves the following steps:
- Sourcing. This involves laying the groundwork for eventual recruitment or abduction of the child. Some perpetrators opt to take time to obtain useful information by monitoring a prospective victim’s daily routine. Many recruiters give a sense of familiarity and safety by basing themselves in the child’s community, with some actively establishing rapport with the child or with the child’s family. Some build the parents’ trust through flattery, gifts, affection and promises; others establish themselves as moneylenders as preparation for debt bondage.
- The next step depends on whether the victim will be taken by force or by deception:
- Recruitment.In most cases, a victim is deceived by a recruiter’s ploy. The parent or guardian consents to release the child and may be compensated by the recruiter. Travel documents are then prepared by fixers of the sex trafficking ring. Some child victims depart from home against their will, while others look forward to a better future in the big city or in a distant land.
- Abduction. The child is shocked, terrorized and may attempt to resist. There may be one kidnapper or a whole gang of kidnappers and look-outs. To carry out a child’s abduction, some form of control will be needed. This may involve threats, the actual application of force, the use of a weapon, physical restraints or narcotic substances to subdue a child. Child prisoners of armed conflicts experience this as the first brutal step to being trafficked.
- Transit. This involves the actual physical displacement of child victims by land, sea or air. Many cases involve children crammed into trucks and boats, hidden from travel inspectors / authorities. Other times, travel is done in groups of two or three to avoid rousing the suspicion of authorities. Any travel document is usually confiscated by the trafficker to restrict the movement of the child. Control over the victim may continue to be carried out, with the addition of sexual violence for some, as a means of physical restraint. Other traffickers keep up pretenses of future employment until they reach their final destination.
- Harboring. While some child victims are taken straight to their final destinations, many are held in secret holding areas. There they wait to be sold, to be turned over to the pimp or to be transported further to their final destination. Many are often held captive in sex dens where they are physically beaten, drugged and sexually abused by the traffickers.
- Destination. The child may be brought to a brothel to engage in actual prostitution or to a cybersex den to engage in pornography. Some children are made to peddle sexual services on the street. In instances of armed conflict, children are forcibly taken to an enemy’s base to serve as sex slaves of soldiers.
There are many cases of trafficked children rescued and deported as illegal aliens, or sent back to their places of origin without the benefit of any other form of intervention, debriefing or rehabilitation. Because their vulnerabilities continue to make them attractive to traffickers, they are recruited again and sent to a different place. This starts another cycle of sex trafficking. For as long as there are customers, vulnerable children will be made to service them wherever they may be.
Central to the trafficking process is the issue of DEMAND. In a paper presented by Donna Hughes in 2004, she stressed the factor of demand as the primary stimulus that fuels the trafficking process.
“The Trafficking Process: The Dynamics of Supply and Demand
The transnational sex trafficking of women and children is based on a balance between the supply of victims from sending countries and the demand for victims in receiving countries.
Sending countries are those from which victims can be relatively easily recruited, usually with false promises of jobs. Receiving or destination countries are those with sex industries that create the demand for victims. Where prostitution is flourishing, pimps cannot recruit enough local women to fill up the brothels, so they have to bring in victims from other places.
Until recently, the supply side of trafficking and the conditions in sending countries have received most of the attention of researchers, NGOs, and policy makers, and little attention was paid to the demand side of trafficking.
The trafficking process begins with the demand for women to be used in prostitution. It begins when pimps place orders for women. Interviews I have done with pimps and police from organized crime units say that when pimps need new women and girls, they contact someone who can deliver them. This is what initiates the chain of events of sex trafficking.
The crucial factor in determining where trafficking will occur is the presence and activity of traffickers, pimps, and collaborating officials running criminal operations. Poverty, unemployment, and lack of opportunities are compelling factors that facilitate the ease with which traffickers recruit women, but they are not the cause of trafficking. Many regions of the world are poor and chaotic, but not every region becomes a center for the recruitment or exploitation of women and children. Trafficking occurs because criminals take advantage of poverty, unemployment, and a desire for better opportunities.”
For the full article, go to URL:
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/demand_rome_june04.pdf