What is Sex Trafficking?

In order to fully understand the issue that is sex trafficking, we need to understand what exactly sex trafficking is…

First, let’s define human trafficking.

Human trafficking is “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for commercial sex through force, fraud or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform a sex act is under 18 years of age” (Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 2000).

It is modern-day enslavement.

There are two types of human trafficking. The first type is labor trafficking.

Labor trafficking is “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” (Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 2000).

Victims can be forced into domestic labor (such as housekeeping) or industrial labor (such as work in a warehouse).

The second type of human trafficking is sex trafficking.

Sex trafficking is “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting 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 act has not attained 18 years of age” (Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 2000).