Sex Trafficking
trafficker while the girls were
“ Tiffany”
emotionally vulnerable and then lured from malls, bus
Having run away from her group home, Tiffany, a 12-year-old African American girl, went to New York
stops, arcades, and similar
City. At the NYC terminal, a neatly dressed, polite young man approached her and asked if she was
locations and trafficked into
all right; Tiffany, grateful for the attention, smiled. The young man asked if she would like to get
CSEC. Boxill and Richardson
something to eat. Tiffany accepted and over the meal she began to tell him about running away, her
concluded that the majority
troubled family life (father in jail, mother’s drug addiction, multiple foster/group homes), and her
of girls exhibited the “risk”
Report of the Task
dilemma of not having anywhere to go. He invited her to live with him and to be his girlfriend, prom-
characteristics commonly
Force on Trafficking
ising he would take care of her and they could be like “family.” Tiffany readily accepted, thinking
seen in adjudicated girls
she had found what she always been hoping for, “a home.” The first few weeks were wonderful; her
after being sexually exploited,
“boyfriend” took her shopping and bought her clothes, even a pair of high heels and a sexy dress.
not before. Their conclusion
Tiffany felt like a grown-up wife, cooking and cleaning and having sex nightly. Her boyfriend asked
must be viewed cautiously as
her to dance for him with just her underwear and high heels. Initially she felt awkward, but in time
it is a single study and the
with his encouragement and praise she felt proud to do it for him. After a few weeks, her boyfriend
methodology is not reported;
told her that they were going out to a club. He instructed her to dress sexy and gave her two drinks
however, it would be important
before they left. Tiffany woke the next morning with a hazy memory of the night before, barely recall-
to explore this situation in
ing dancing and stripping. While miserable and feeling like she never wanted to do anything like
further research.
of Women and Girls
this again, her boyfriend was excitedly counting money and verbally praising Tiffany for her actions. Unable to let him down, Tiffany began her life of sexual exploitation.
Research also identifies prior involvement in the child pro-
(From Girls Like Us, by R. Lloyd, 2011, New York, NY: HarperCollins. Copyright 2011 by Rachel Lloyd. Adapted with permission.)
tection system and placement in institutional settings as
In-depth interviews with former pimps and madams in Chicago
background characteristics of youths in CSEC (Farley, Matthews,
(Raphael & Myers-Powell, 2010) revealed they targeted women
et al., 2011; Gorkoff & Runner, 2003; Hay, 2008; Pierce, 2009).
and girls they perceived to be vulnerable, needy, or low in
Victim advocates and survivors of CSEC describe group homes,
self-esteem. One stated, “I looked for girls who needed [things],
foster homes, and shelters as target sites for recruitment by
who would do whatever to come out of the messed up homes and
traffickers, who take advantage of the concentrations of vulner-
escape from their [messed] up parents, and I pulled those girls”
able youth in these settings (Smith et al., 2009).
(p. 5). Another responded, “What would you look for? Broken bones, unhappy with parents, abused by some sucker.” One pimp recruited: “I helped girls who no one else would. I always picked
Individual Risk Factors
up throwaways and runaways and dressed them up and taught
In this section we review what is known about correlates of traf-
them how to survive” (p. 5).
ficking risk at the individual level. As mentioned previously, most
claimed he was helping rather than harming the individuals he
Although studies consistently find running away as a risk factor for CSEC, Boxill and Richardson (2007) cautioned that the reverse also needs to be considered: Running away and other behavioral risks may also be effects of sexual victimization rather than contributors to it. Boxill and Richardson (2007) examined county juvenile court records for a sample of girls recently involved in CSEC, reviewing the period of time prior to their CSEC for highrisk behaviors, and reported that most of the girls were “typical girls,” exhibiting no previous academic, family, or peer-group maladaptive behaviors. Instead, most had been targeted by a 30
of what is reported here is drawn from work on sex-trafficking victimization because empirical reports of individual risk factors for labor trafficking are scarce. GENDER AND AGE Globally, women and children make up the largest subset of victims trafficked into the sex trade (Curtol, Decarli, Di Nicola, & Savona, 2004; U.S. Department of State, 2004). The International Labour Organization (2012, p. 1) stated that “women, low-skilled migrant workers, children, indigenous peoples and other groups
