SWHT Types of Human Trafficking

This episode of The Secret World of Human Trafficking introduces what human trafficking is and explains that it involves the exploitation of a person for labor, services, or commercial sex. It then outlines several major types of trafficking, highlights how trafficking commonly occurs through grooming, coercion, and abuse of power (often by people the victim already knows), and clarifies common misconceptions about what trafficking is (and is not).

Transcript

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Hello, welcome to the secret world of human trafficking. I'm your host, David J. Story. I'm also the author of the Omega book series. I hope you'll learn something from today's episode. So please let's get started. In this episode, we'll discuss the different types of human trafficking. When people think about human trafficking, they often think about major movies like Taken, Extraction, Last Seen Alive, and Along Came a Spider, where a young girl is abducted and exploited for sexual situation or ransom. There are real elements of human trafficking in these movies. The truth is human trafficking is much darker and sicker in reality. There are many different types of human trafficking, each with having its own ways of exploiting someone. A more realistic movie that depicts human trafficking is the sound of freedom. I highly recommend this movie if you haven't seen it yet. The movie is based partly on Tim Bollard. He's a former federal agent who founded Operation Underground Railroad to combat child sex trafficking. This movie tugged at all my emotions. One minute I was sad, then angry, and then happy. I cried and laughed. It was a very good movie and well produced. You can find out more about Operation Underground Railroad and what their organization does at www.escue.org. Okay, let's define what human trafficking is. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, human trafficking is a crime involving the exportation of a person for labor, services, or commercial sex. I'll list the different types of human trafficking, then we'll go back and discuss each one individually.

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Now let's take a look at these different categories.

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Sexual exportation, forced labor, debt bondage, domestic servitude, organ removal, forced begging, child soldiers, and forced marriage. Now let's look at each one of these in more detail. Sexual exploitation, the most well known form of human trafficking, pertains to different forms of sexual exportation, including forcing someone to engage in commercial sex such as prostitution or pornography. According to 2021 data from the International Labor Organization, ILO, total trafficking, an estimated 27.6 million people are victims of human trafficking worldwide. Of these victims, 23% or approximately 6.3 million are subject to commercial sexual exportation. That's prostitution or pornography. Now let's talk about victim demographics. Gender. 78% of sex trafficking victims are women and girls. Women and girls make up 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry. 92% or 5,796,000 of these sex trafficking victims are adults, and 8% or 378,000 are children worldwide. The United States statistics, while there is no reliable estimate of the total number of people trafficking in the United States or worldwide, data from sources like the National Human Trafficking Hotline provide a snapshot of reported cases. In 2023 reported cases, this doesn't include unreported cases. The National Human Trafficking Hotline received reports of 9,619 potential human trafficking cases involving 16,999 potential victims. Of these cases, 5,572 were related to sex trafficking. I guess the other 4,047 falls under the other category. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported over 18,400 hospital child sex trafficking cases in 2023. Think about this. That's enough children to fill up a stadium like the Phoenix Suns basketball arena. There's a city here in Georgia called Norcross. Currently has an estimated population of about 18,375. Let's think about that. There are an estimated 18,400 possible children disappearing in one year. That's equivalent to the entire population of Norcross, Georgia, dropping off the face of the earth, never to be seen again. And that's just one year. Let's look at the risk. Risk factors, survivors often have backgrounds of sexual and physical abuse, poverty or substance abuse, runaways and unhoused youth. I guess that's children living on the streets. And members of the LGBTQ plus community are also at a higher risk. Analysis of trends found that traffickers or perverts, I use the word traffickers and perverts interchangeably, are often employers, family members, or intimate partners. They'll typically use emotional, psychological, or emotional abuse and often recruit victims online. Like in chat rooms, federal prosecution. A 2027 report on US federal cases found that in fiscal year 2022, 1,070 defendants or perverts were charged with human trafficking offenses. Of these six bastards, excuse my French, of these defendants, specifically charged with sexual exportation and abuse of children, 94% were male and 71% were white. At least 6% were females and 29% other races. That doesn't say much for us white guys. But just imagine the number of these perverts that didn't get caught and are still out there. Think about the unescorted children that come across the US borders every year. How many of these are taken into some form of trafficking? These are not even figured into this equation. Okay, let's move on to the next category forced labor. Forced labor occurs when individuals are compelled against their will to provide work or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion. In twenty sixteen it was estimated by ILO, remember that's the International Labor Organization. That's twenty nine point nine million people around the globe were in forced labor. These traffickers do not discriminate when it comes to forced labor. Victims can be any age, race, religion, gender, nationality, or social economic group. There are certain risk factors that create a greater likelihood that an individual would be forced into labor trafficking, such as an unstable immigration status, like people coming across the US border or any other country's borders. Also language barriers, poverty, lack of social support, or suffering some trauma. Let's look at the top five types of forced labor industries. This includes agricultural, harvesting crops, raising and feeding animals, or packing plants, orchards, or nurseries. Domestic work, cleaning, cooking, child and elderly care, gardening or other forms of labor in the home. Factories, working in any factory setting for any industry utilizing mass production. Nightclubs and bars, performing for patrons. This may also include sexual exportation. Hospitality working in casinos or hotels often involves extreme or unsafe tasks with little protection and or compensation. Many of these people who cross the U.S. borders are swept up in some form of human trafficking. Next we have debt bondage, also sometimes called bonded labor. Debt bondage occurs when an individual gives themselves into slavery as security against a loan or when they inherit a debt from a relative. It will also look like an employment agreement, but one where the worker eventually finds repayment of the loan to be impossible. This will result in permanent enslavement. Migrant laborers are often caught up in this form of enslavement. While they are searching for better economic opportunities in a new country, many times they are swept up into some form of human trafficking. Now let's look next at domestic servitude. Domestic servitude occurs in private residents. This is where domestic workers are not free to leave their employment. They are often abused and underpaid if they are paid at all. They don't even receive many times the basic benefits and protections such as paid time off. They are often limited to movement solely within the residence. This also makes it hard for labor officials to inspect employment conditions in private homes, and these workers can face abuse, harassment, and exportation. Let's look at to me one of the sickest forms of human trafficking, and that is organ removal. This is one form of human trafficking that's rarely talked about. While not as prevalent as sex and labor trafficking, organ removal is a widespread and universally condemned practice. Many victims are killed or left for dead once one or more of their organs have been removed. This black market trades in bones, blood, and other bodily tissues and organs, with as many as 7,000 kidneys illegally obtained by traffickers every year. These kidneys can sell for anywhere between$50,000 and$200,000. The individual involved with organ removal consist of four populations. Desperate patients who are willing to travel great distance, like Mexico, South America, or many other parts of the world, and they face considerable danger to obtain these transplants. Also, you have equally desperate organ sellers, outlaw surgeons willing to break the laws. Organ brokers and others Imagine being a sex slave and you've outgrown your usefulness. You've gotten too old, maybe you've been slapped around too much and not as attractive as you once were. Do you think your owner or pimp is just going to let you walk out the door free? I would guess he would try and get as much money as he could out of you. So he then turns you over to one of those organ brokers. Next we have forced begging. If you've ever been out in public, you've likely encountered situations where small children or teenagers are begging for money on the street. While not always the case, a great number of these children are forced into their situation by traffickers through intimidation or threats. This is one of the most widespread forms of trafficking and one of the most visible, with exploited children being out in plain sight child soldiers. The use of child soldiers can be a form of human trafficking when involving unlawful recruitment. This can be governmental forces, paramilitary organizations, or rebel groups. Many of these children are forced into cooks, guards, servants, messengers, soldiers, or spies. It can be difficult for these children to leave these situations due to hunger, poverty, or protection from other forces in violent regions. Next we have forced marriage. You hear this a lot, men having several wives or very young wives. While marriage is the legal or formal recognition of the union of two consenting people in a personal relationship. The key word here is consenting. Forced marriage is when one individual does not consent. This forced marriage can happen as a result of threats, pressure, or force. This type of marriage is labeled as human trafficking because it is considered involuntary servitude. And it still goes on unofficially in parts of the world, Africa, South Asia, Middle East, and even here in the United States and Canada, within certain immigrant communities and some religious groups. The Trafficking Victim Protection Act of 2000 defines involuntary servitude as a condition of servitude included by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that if the person did not enter into or continue in such conditions, that the person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint, or the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process. Prior to forced marriage being classified as a form of human trafficking, the United Nations considered it a form of slavery. Now let's talk about what is not defined as human trafficking. There are a few misconceptions regarding what constitutes human trafficking, as the following crimes often go hand in hand with human smuggling. While human trafficking involves the exportation of an individual, human smuggling involves the helping an individual who voluntarily, that's the key word here, voluntarily, individual who voluntarily seeks to gain illegal entry into a foreign country. This happens a lot at our southern border. People sometimes hire someone normally called a coyote to take them across the border. I'm not talking about the animal, I'm referring to the human kind of coyote. It may start out as human smuggling and eventually escalate to trafficking, but the smuggling is not considered human trafficking. I mentioned earlier many of the men, women and children who come into this country illegally are swept up into one of these trafficking groups, never to be seen or heard from again. This leads us to missing persons. While some trafficking individuals may be missing, not all missing individuals are necessarily trafficked. There are many various reasons why a person could be missing that are often unrelated to trafficking, such as addiction. Despite this, runaways and missing children are highly at risk of being sucked into trafficking. It is estimated that of the children reported missing to the National Center for Missing and Exported Children NCMEC in 2021 who had run away from the care of child welfare services, nineteen percent were likely victims of child sex trafficking. And finally we have kidnapping. Kidnapping refers to an individual being taken illegally against their will. This is usually for a ransom. There is a misconception that traffickers will snatch victims off the street, but this is not always the case. The majority of trafficking victims are not kidnapped, but often groomed online on some form of social media or by people that they already know. Friends, coworkers, relatives, or someone in authority. Staying informed and up to date on current human trafficking information is key to increasing prevention. I'll take each one of these categories and we'll do an entire episode on each one later. That's it for our show for today. Thank you for joining in, and I hope you were able to learn something today that may help you understand what is going on around you and allowing you to be aware of the dangers to yourself and perhaps a loved one, and maybe inspire you to get involved in the fight to stop human trafficking. Please follow me on Facebook, subscribe to my podcast, and email me at DavidJStory at Hotmail.com or here on FanMail with your questions or comments. Oh and please check out my Omega Book Series. Omega 1, the Creation, Omega 2, A Cry for Help, Omega 3, The Head of the Snake, and Omega 4 Inside the Belly of the Snake coming in 2026. Go to Omegabookseries dot com for more information about the series. Available on Amazon in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Anyone who follows my podcast will receive a 15% discount code on the purchase of my books. If you have any questions regarding the Omega Book series, please don't hesitate to contact me. I hope you'll tune in to future episodes of the Secret World of Human Trafficking. Music by TuneReel.com. Thank you for listening, and I hope you'll be a regular follower of this series. That's it for today, and please remember, always watch your six and others too.