Sexual Violence and Human Trafficking

According to World Without Exploitation, the majority of women and girls who are survivors of sex trafficking are survivors of childhood sexual abuse.[1] 

Sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and/or physical abuse increase a child’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation.[2]

Youth who experience sexual abuse are “28 times more likely to be arrested for prostitution at some point in their lives than children who [did] not.”[3]

Among girls who are survivors of sex trafficking, a history of child sexual abuse is the most common characteristic.[4]

The State Department’s 2021 Trafficking in Persons report identifies “intimate partner violence or domestic violence” as factors that increase an individual’s vulnerability to human trafficking.[5]

The vast majority of human trafficking survivors experience multiple forms of abuse, such as domestic violence and sexual assault.[6]

Many survivors of trafficking also suffer multiple forms of abuse at the hands of their attacker, including sexual violence.[7]

[1] World Without Exploitation, available at https://www.worldwithoutexploitation.org/stats.
[2] Linda a. Smith et al., Shared Hope Int’l, The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children 4 (2009)
[3] Cathy S. Widom, Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Later Criminal Consequences, Nat’l inst. of Justice Research In Brief (Mar. 1995), available at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/abuse.pdf.
[4] Francine T. Sherman & Lisa Goldblatt Grace, The System Response to the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Girls, in Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice 336 (Francine T. Sherman & Francine H. Jacobs eds., 2011)
[5] U.S. Department of State, 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report: United States, available at https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-trafficking-in-persons-report/united-states/.
[6] Center for Court Innovation, The Intersection of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Human Trafficking, available at https://childlaw.unm.edu/assets/docs/video-conferences/2016/UnderstandingHumanTrafficking_2.pdf.
[7] Human Trafficking Prevention Resource Center of Louisiana, What is Human Trafficking?, available at https://humantrafficking.la.gov/what-is-human-trafficking/.