SYNTHESIS PAPER
Sex Trafficking
Alexis Vick
Liberty University
CJUS 500: Criminal Justice Integration
Dr. Abraham
3/3/2024
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SYNTHESIS PAPER
Abstract
One international problem that is continuously growing is sex trafficking. These individuals will
persuade and kidnap their victims. Every year, about 800,000 individuals are transported across
the borders. We can educate, make the community aware, take proactive actions, increase law
enforcement support, and pray to fight against sex trafficking. Raising awareness and educating
individuals about sex trafficking is the purpose of this article. Another purpose is hopefully to
eliminate sex trafficking. People need to understand how important the effects on victims and the
economy are.
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SYNTHESIS PAPER
Sex Trafficking
Introduction
For thousands of years, sex trafficking and misuse have existed across the world. From
the antiquated Greeks and Romans to the medieval times, and up until nowadays, people have
been subject to different shapes of physical and sexual subjugation. Sex trafficking is very
similar to slavery. Sex trafficking is a broad term for multiple types of sexual and physical
slavery. Mexico, East Asia, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America
are where most victims are being trafficked from. The main destination for sex trafficking is the
United States. Industrialized nations are receiving children from the United States being
trafficked.
Illegal trading of individuals where they will endure sexual acts that are not limited to
prostitution. Sexual acts and forced labor are the primary purposes of human trafficking.
Traffickers utilize viciousness, dangers, lies, obligation subjugation, and other shapes of restraint
to constrain grown-ups and children to lock in commercial sexual acts against their will.=The
individuals who are sex trafficked experience prostitution, pornography, sex shows, dancing, and
brides.
Background
Human trafficking is defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) as enlisting, transporting, exchanging, harboring, or accepting an individual by risk or
utilizing constrain, impelling, snatching, extortion, or misdirection (Deshpande and Nour, 2013).
Crime prevention, criminal justice, and law reform within the United Nations are UNODC's
responsibility. Global leaders fight illegal drugs and international crime. UNODC assists
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governments in reacting to the uncertainty and insecurity resulting from wrongdoings just as the
sneaking of unlawful drugs, weapons, normal assets, fake merchandise, and human creatures
between nations and landmasses.=
Individuals who persuade a minor to engage in sex acts to receive payments in monetary
form, food, and housing this is called commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC)
(Kaplan and Kemp, 2015). CSEC is a type of child abuse. DMST is known as Domestic minor
sex trafficking. DMST refers to children within the United States who are sexually exploited
(Kaplan and Kemp, 2015). Long-term physical and mental problems can occur from DMST.
Along with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and physical and substance abuse.
Internationally femicide occurs which is a sexual hate crime. The murder of women is a
broad definition. Femicides occur in high percentages in Juarez, Mexico, and Guatemala City,
Guatemala. Maquiladoras is a Spanish factory where many poor girls are drawn in Juarez,
Mexico. The largest drug cartels are in Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, Mexico has 1.5 million
individuals and a 500,000 transient population. Within the past decade, it has been reported that
400 women have been raped, mutilated, and brutally murdered. Four thousand women in
Guatemala women were murdered in 2005. Only thirty percent of the cases have been
investigated and many of the cases do not have arrests made.
Guatemala created victim assistance offices and departments within the national police in
the mid-1990s. Survivor's Establishment is devoted particularly in the back of helping and
securing the casualties from femicide. On the off chance that a casualty has been killed, an
advocate will help the survivors, who are often family individuals and companions.
Coercion Tactics Used in Human Trafficking
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Within the sex trafficking industry, there are multiple ways victims are manipulated.
Education, good jobs, marriage, and foreign country citizenship are promised. Many victims are
women and juvenile girls but they’re eligible to be any age or sex. Their parents, family, and
significant others are the ones who mainly sell them into the sex trade. Victims are also
kidnapped and forced to be placed in sex trafficking.
The most common tactic is debt bondage. Personal services are performed to pay debt
back is the definition of debt bondage. Traveling to a foreign country and personal bills are
examples of debt. The trafficker controls what personal services the victim provides along with
when enough time has been served to pay the debt off. It can take weeks, months, or years to
repay the debt.
Another tactic is traumatic bondage. If a victim is full of fear and the trafficker makes
them feel that they should not be alive this is traumatic bondage. Guerilla and finesse pimping is
what usually hires the victims. Violence, coercion, bullying, or hostility is used towards the
victims in guerrilla pimping. Compassion, kindness, and psychological games are used in finesse
pimping. There are five psychological games, and they are cash, clothing, food, shelter, and
drugs. The victims feel thankful for the pimp due to the gifts.
It is hard to remove females from this industry once they are involved. Legacy
prostitution is another strategy. This strategy affects the future of females. This strategy gets to
be an anticipated societal standard in numerous parts of the world and traffickers will reallocate
all legitimate documentation of their casualties so they cannot take off. A few obstructions that
casualties confront are the need for cash, constrained information, and not being able to talk in
dialects other than their local tongue.=
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Targeted Victims
Citizens of the United States, foreign nationals, females, males, children, and LGBTQ
individuals are included in the types of victims of sex trafficking. The high vulnerability of sex
trafficking is created by family issues, domestic violence, unawareness of exploitation,
corruption of the government, political or economic instability, unemployment, and poverty
(Orme and Ross-Sheriff, 2015). Families that live in poverty are approached by traffickers to
purchase females of any age stating they will receive a better life in a better area. Women who
are already engaged in prostitution are targeted as well and moved across the nations. Families
will force their children to go into prostitution.
Individuals that are vulnerable economically and socially are selected as potential victims
by pimps and traffickers. Children who have been malnourished, sexually abused, or have been
abandoned are at higher risk of DSMT but all children are susceptible. Typical locations for sex
trafficking may occur in fake massage businesses, online advertisements, escort services,
brothels, on the streets, at truck stops, or in hotels, and motels (Polaris, 2016).
Awareness
To assist federal crime victims the United States Office for Victims of Crime (OVC)
developed the Federal Crime Assistance Fund in 1988. The attorney’s office and the Federal
Bureau of Investigations (FBI) are funded by the OVC every year. The attorney’s office and the
FBI work closely with victim-witness experts to properly assist federal crime victims. “In the
United States, victim witness specialists work with the OVC, which is responsible for monitoring
federal agency compliance with the guidelines set by the United States attorney general for
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victim and witness assistance; these standards aim to ensure that federal victims and witnesses
are treated fairly and that their statutory rights are met” (Masters et al, 2013).
The 3P’s are used to lower the increasing problems. Protection, prevention, and
prosecution are the 3P’s. Although most laws focus on law enforcement, more attention is paid to
preventing human trafficking and protecting victims and survivors. In 2000 the anti-trafficking
movement started, and it focused on females and children. LGBTQ communities are more likely
to be trafficked, so progress has been made to be recognized. Children within the LGBTQ
community were forced into prostitution the data showed 20-40% within the United States
(Orme and Ross-Sheriff, 2015).
Results of Sex Trafficking
Victims suffer from emotional, physical, psychological, and social damage due to sex
trafficking. Thirteen years old is the average age that individuals enter the sex industry.
Approximately 800,000 people are abducted across borders each year, of whom 80 percent are
women and girls and 50 % are minors (Deshpande and Nour, 2013). 150,000 to 300,000 children
are endangered of being coerced into sexual exploitation within the United States every year.
“Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline, operated by Polaris, has
received reports of 14,588 sex trafficking cases inside the United States” (Polaris, 2016). “The
International Organization estimated that there are 4.5 million victims of sex trafficking
worldwide, ninety eighty percent being women and children” (Orme and Ross-Sheriff, 2015).
Every minute there is a woman or child who is coerced into sexual exploitation and about
500,000 to 600,000 new victims are sex trafficked every year. Destitute living conditions and the
need for medical care=administrations, utilization of unlawful drugs, and diligent physical and
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mental issues (from abuse, violence, and unsafe sexual exploitation) (Chung and English, 2015).
Limited options and resources are given to women who have been coerced into sexual
exploitation. These women are more likely to suffer from abuse and violence than women who
have not.
Solution through a Christian Worldview
Law enforcement should not be the only ones attempting to eliminate sex trafficking, we
as Christians should be contributing as well. A crucial role is played by law enforcement within
the sex industry. House visits, traffic stops, crisis calls, or investigations are ways law
enforcement may encounter the victims. Protecting and assisting victims is part of law
enforcement's job along with arresting traffickers. Praying, education, and awareness can help
encourage support from law enforcement.
Christians must be intense to implore for the opportunity of each casualty. Supplicate for
the physical, otherworldly, and enthusiastic wholeness of each sex trafficking survivor, and for
their proceeded security and conceivable reintegration into their family or community. Most
critically Christians must implore for the trafficker. Supplicate that he or she comes to salvation
and atones for his or her sins. Supplicate that they discover the Master and acknowledge Him
into their heart as Master and Savior. At that point, there will be alter within the world.
Teaching yourself and your peers on the issue of sex trafficking is critical. Many
people don't know the truth approximately what casualties go through on a day-by-day premise.
Most are so overpowered by the repulsions of the case that they have trouble accepting it is
genuine. There are many books distributed approximately sex trafficking within the United
States and globally will give a few knowledge. Raising mindfulness can be done by including the
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media, setting blurbs throughout the community, and making nearby back groups. The Polaris
Extend may be a government-supported protection hotline that's accessible 24 hours a day. Not
as it is a protection line for casualties of trafficking but also a resource for those hoping to be
included in the battle against human trafficking in their neighborhood communities.
“Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put
to death” (Exodus 21:16). Individuals who do wrong need to be forgiven by Christians. We have
been taught to love the sinner but hate the sin itself. We are God’s soldiers due to us being
Christians. We as Christians are supposed to not commit sins and spread the gospel, that is the
reason we are placed on this Earth. We can win the fight against human trafficking by educating,
increasing community awareness, acting, supporting law enforcement, and praying. These
strategies are imperative to win this fight, but supplication is foremost vital. As Christians we
must never belittle the power of supplication; there's an evident, mysterious, imperceptible riddle
to the control of supplication. God is continuously tuning in indeed when we don't think so.
When Paul depicts our otherworldly armor, he incorporates the belt of truth, the body armor of
God's exemplary nature, the shoes of peace, the shield of confidence, the head protector of
salvation, and the sword of the Spirit—the exceptional Word of God. But he doesn't halt there.
“Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers
for all believers everywhere” (Ephesians 6:18).
Conclusion
Victims are boys as well not just women and children. Christians need to help prevent the
risk of long-term physical and mental health problems, exposure to sexually transmitted
infections (STIs), and substance and physical abuse against these victims. We can lower these
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risks through education, community awareness; acting, supporting law enforcement, and prayer
plays a critical role in fighting against human trafficking. One of the hardest things to do when it
11 comes to sex trafficking is to forgive, especially when it is a crime against an innocent human
being. God’s Word teaches us to forgive because He first forgave mankind. Luke 23:34 states,
“Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
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References
Chung, R. J., & English, A. (2015). Commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of
adolescents. Current Opinion in Pediatrics, 27(4), 427.
doi:10.1097/MOP.0000000000000242
Deshpande, N. A., & Nour, N. M. (2013). Sex trafficking of women and girls. Reviews in
Obstetrics & Gynecology, 6(1), e22.
Kaplan, D., & Kemp, K. (2015). Domestic minor sex trafficking: An emerging health crisis. The
Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter, 31(7), 1-6.
doi:10.1002/cbl.30050
Masters R.E., Way, L.B., Gerstenfeld, R. B., Muscat, B.T., Hopper, M., Dusch, J.P., Pincu, L.,
and Skrapec, C.A. (2013). CJ: Realities and challenges (2nd ed.). New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill.
Orme, J., & Ross-Sheriff, F. (2015). Sex Trafficking: Policies, Programs, and Services. Social
Work, 60(4), 287-294. doi:10.1093/sw/swv031
Polaris. (2016). Sex Trafficking. Retrieved October 19, 2016, from
https://polarisproject.org/sextrafficking
Steen, R., Jana, S., Reza-Paul, S., & Richter, M. (2015). Trafficking, sex work, and HIV: Efforts
to resolve conflicts. Lancet (London, England), 385(9963), 94-96. doi:10.1016/S0140-
6736(14)60966-1
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