Human trafficking 101
Myths and misconceptions
Polling Exercise [will be done at the in-person training session as a review]
- Go to menti.com
- [Insert number once set up]
- [Final presentation will have slides for each Fact or Fiction and will show live poll results – this will be reset for each time we conduct a training]
Fact or Fiction?
- Federal human trafficking law contemplates both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals as victims.
- Human trafficking requires some form of travel, transportation, or movement across state or national borders.
- Trafficking does not require physical restraint, bodily harm, or physical force.
- Human trafficking means forced prostitution.
- You can consent to human trafficking.
- Trafficking victims can be paid for their work.
Human trafficking defined
Federal and State definitions
- Federal definitions
– Sex trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such acts has not attained 18 years of age
Commercial sex act means any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person
– Labor trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery
- See Cal. Penal Code 236.1 for CA definition
– Legislature finds that the definition of human trafficking in this section is equivalent to the federal definition of a severe form of trafficking
In simpler terms…
- Human trafficking is the exploitation of another for the purposes of commercial sex or labor by means of force, fraud, or coercion, or any commercial sex act of a minor
- Forms of labor trafficking: debt bondage, involuntary servitude, forced labor, child labor
- Forms of commercial sexual exploitation: pornography, massage parlors, escort services, internet, street prostitution, prostitution at agricultural sites and truck stops
- Traffickers commonly coerce victims via economic, psychological, and/or chemical means
- Think about this: you can only sell drugs once, but you can sell a human over and over again
- Most simply, the Polaris Project defines human trafficking as stealing freedom for profit
Human trafficking in Los Angeles
- Many people incorrectly assume that trafficking mostly happens outside of the U.S.
- Los Angeles is a large trafficking hub
- This can be attributed to tourism, gangs, agriculture and construction, and it being a large transportation hub
Facts about Trafficking
- People are trafficked into all kinds of industries: sex work (commercial and non-commercial), domestic service, restaurants, hair braiding, garment industry, magazine crews, drugs, fishing, manufacturing, home care/elder care, construction, hospitality, housekeeping, daycare, forced peddling, agriculture, cleaning, marriage
- Traffickers can be anyone, including friends, acquaintances, organized crime/gangs, farms/agricultural, diplomats, businesses/subcontractors, family members/relatives
