This research project follows a qualitative-quantitative approach used to gain a deeper understanding on the strategies used by the adults who are involved in the exploitation of children. This study exposes, and helps put into perspective, how the sexual trafficking of minors is differentiated from other types of sexual offending behavior. Integrated theory (including trauma theory) and multifactor theories, such as the confluence model provide the theoretical backdrop for this study. While the focus of data collection comes from perpetrators of child exploitation, it is important to underscore what we understand and hypothesize about victims. It is hypothesized that adverse childhood experiences and family modeling created a cascading effect that impacts the way adolescents interact in the adult world. Secondly, it is further hypothesized that as a result of these adverse situations, children’s vulnerabilities become manifest in unhealthy relationships with adults including those who have chosen to exploit them sexually.  Q Methodology is a research method that is used to study people’s subjectivity and points of view on a particular phenomenon and serves as the primary methodology used in this study.  Face-to-face interviews with inmates incarcerated in State of Ohio correctional institutions were conducted and consisted of specific questions which served as the platform for the Q sort. Questions targeted the topics of victim recruitment, victim retention, as well as explored offenders’ perceptions of the relationships they have with the girls they have exploited in the sex business. 

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On college and university campuses around the country, student activists are working to address two issues that have remained separate from each other: universities’ histories with the slave trade and modern-day human trafficking. This study analyzes these two trends in campus activism. First, the author tracks the movement to respond to American universities’ history with the Atlantic slave trade. Using social movement theory, the author analyzes the birth of this movement and the actors and factors that have led to its progress. Second, the author focuses on the campus-based movement to combat modern-day slavery. She notes the social reasons why the two movements have remained distinct thus far and suggests that the two movements could benefit from cooperation and integration.

Presentation Objectives:

·         To raise awareness about the role American universities played in the Atlantic slave trade and continue to play in modern-day slavery;

·         To trace the progress of two social movements and identify key actors and factors;

·         To assess the quality of universities’ responses to each movement;

·         To offer a toolkit for student activists and faculty seeking to contribute to productive conversations about their institutions’ history with slavery;

To suggest how the two movements could support each other.

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In 1885, The Salvation Army, social reformer Josephine Butler, and the Pall Mall Gazette joined together in a successful attempt to stem the trafficking of young girls from prostitution by raising the age of consent (for sexual activity) in London, England. This effort, known as the Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, involved a sensational newspaper series stemming from the actual purchase of a thirteen-year-old child (Eliza) to prove how easily a child could be obtained for illicit purposes. Drawing upon historical records, trial transcripts, and journal entries, Eliza's story illustrates the challenges faced by the reformers, as well as the ethical concerns as to their methods. The presentation will include opportunity to consider ethical and moral concerns in regards to contemporary advocacy for clients and legislation.

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Human trafficking, along with drugs and weapons have been reported as the top three largest organized crime industries in the world. It is estimated that one to two million women and children are trafficked annually around the world for the purposes of forced labor, commercial sexual exploitation, or domestic servitude. The main objective of this study was to explore the picture of sexual exploitation. The study showed that the sex trade is becoming very popular to traffickers because of the expanding commercial sex industry in Asia and male client’s preference for young women and virgin girls to avoid HIV infection (UNIFEM). Traffickers made an estimated $7 -12 billion in profits annually, whereas the human trafficking industry is $32 billion internationally (UN, 2008). The study observed that about one million ‘unreported’ Bangladeshi women were trafficked in Pakistan and 300,000 Bangladeshi children have been trafficked to the brothels of India over a period of time (Star October 8, 2000). Over the last five years at least 13,220 children were reportedly trafficked out of the country, 4,500 women and children from Bangladesh are trafficked to Pakistan annually (UNIFEM) and 50,000 Bangladeshi girls are trafficked to India every year through 4,222 kilometers border areas (Biswas, 2015). As a Tier 2 country, Bangladesh is a transit and a destination country for women and girls forced into prostitution. Bangladeshi women and girls are especially trafficked to India, Pakistan and the Middle East (TIP Report, 2015) using Dhaka- Mumbai-Karachi-Dubai as the main trafficking route (Biswas, 2015).

In this intermediate- to advanced-level workshop, participants will accomplish the following objectives:
 

·         Learn a new framework for creating a survivor-driven trauma-informed care model;

·         Discover and discuss specific Trauma-informed Practices for accompanying human trafficking survivors while providing assistance after exiting the trafficking situation;

Engage law enforcement, policy makers, service providers, academics, and survivors in improving the anti-trafficking response by learning techniques to create safety and reciprocity with and among survivors and responders.

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Ethiopian women who are sent to the Middle East to work as domestic workers and send money home find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. When families send their daughters they place a heavy burden of high expectations on them particularly because most of the rural families from where domestic workers are recruited are poor and often borrow money that is used to finance the long and tedious process of migration. In cases where families have borrowed and invested money, migrants are forced to pay the debt. On arrival in the Middle East, they become subjected to conditions of slavery, imprisonment, physical and psychological abuses. However, the gravity of their suffering at the hands of their masters is considered insignificant compared to the poverty at home.

This study focuses on a large number of women who returned home sooner than expected. Some women that returned without fulfilling their obligations have experienced rejection by families and communities and a number have committed suicide. This study examines the experiences of returnees through the intersectionality of cultural gender perspectives in Ethiopia (women’s low social status); the dynamics of globalizing Arab world cities where local traditions and practices of slavery may have become fossilized; and poverty of rural communities in Ethiopia, which often forces families to put their daughters in the hands of unscrupulous traffickers.

The objective is to commence a discussion among conference participants about how intersectional identities of gender, race and class shape the experiences of female domestic workers.

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LGBTQ youth account for a disproportionate rate of the runaway and homeless youth population, and experience disproportionately high rates of victimization. In July 2015, the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research completed the second year of a longitudinal study entitled the Youth Experiences Survey (YES): Exploring the Sex Trafficking Experiences of Homeless Young Adults in Arizona, which explores the sexual exploitation experiences of homeless youth and young adults, including LGBTQ youth. Of the 194 young adults who reported their sexual orientation in the 2015 YES survey, 68 reported having been sex trafficked (35.1%). Of the 68, 36 (52.9%) reported their sexual orientation as LGBTQ. The LGBTQ youth were found to be slightly younger at their first sex trafficking experience (LGBTQ 15.22 years vs. Heterosexual 16.23 years). The LGBTQ youth were significantly more likely to report having been sex trafficked for drugs, money and a place to stay. This presentation will explore the particular vulnerability of LGBTQ youth and the ways in which traffickers seek to exploit these vulnerabilities in order to compel youth into commercial sex.

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“She’s Your Daughter” will add value and social change to the local and national discussion around familial human trafficking. Connie was raised in a middle class, religious family in the suburbs of Tampa, Florida. She is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, pornography, sexual exploitation and domestic violence. Over 16 years of her abuse was at the hands of her serial, sex offender father. At 15, a pivotal time in a teenager’s life, Connie made a choice to be a prostitute. You will learn how her father became addicted to sex and pornography at the age of 13, became a serial sex offender and was still a pimp until he passed away at 82. Connie will share how she serviced men in the parking lot of her high school, the nights she was the party favor for high profile clients, and how she covered up living separate lives by being involved in school activities, such the dance squad, in beauty pageants and modeling. You will hear how she escaped, raised a family of her own, graduated with honors and obtained her Masters. in Adult Education, Training and Development. Today Connie is a beam of hope to other survivors. She travels internationally sharing her story and her journey. Attendees will learn the signs to look for and what they can do to make a difference in the lives of teens that are at risk, exploited or are being sold for sex.

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This session will discuss the details of a human trafficking case investigated by the FBI and Toledo Police.  This presentation will cover the investigation from start to conviction, going over such elements as the sting itself, victim witness issue's, and the trail. The presenters will also show clips from a training video used to educate police officers on what to look for when engaging potential victims and/or traffickers. 

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Research shows that approximately 70% of the population will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives. Although some of the traumatized population will seek help from caring professionals, workers who deal regularly with trauma stories and images are likely to experience symptoms of Secondary Trauma transferred to them from the disturbing material. These symptoms can mimic symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, without the individual being the primary participant in the event.

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Until December 2005 child trafficking and slavery were not crimes in Cameroon. Despite the recognition as a crime, very few prosecutions have been made for child trafficking and enslavement in the country. This study examines the self-recovery efforts of survivors in the North West Region of Cameroon that has been identified as the main catchment area. It is a tracer study of the lives of 218 child slaves in the region aged 30 – 45 years old. Seventy-four percent of them are females and 26% are males.
This study looks at the economic, professional, and family lives of the survivors. Twenty-two percent of the women are married or stayed in a marriage for at least ten years. A shocking 48% of survivors have released their own children into slavery while 64% of the women embraced survival sex work in at some time in their lives.
Twenty-four percent of females became pregnant by their masters and/or relatives, yet less than 2% of these children recognize them. Economic desperation of survival sex workers, “prostitutes”, is very high with most of them living in slums, attempting to operate petty businesses. A few have become enslavers recruiting other desperate survivors into yet another budding form of secondary slavery where survivors lacking marketable skills become prostitutes under the control of an older and retired prostitute who sets the rules of the game. These rules promote peer monitoring and peer abuse of the slaves by each other.
The survey recommends long term recovery programs for victims and survivors of child trafficking as a major way to break the vicious cycle of childhood slavery in Cameroon.

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Trafficking of persons with disabilities is a disturbing new trend in the United States. The 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report identifies persons with disabilities as a vulnerable population in the United States. However, the trafficking of persons with disabilities in the United States is largely unexplored. The primary objective of this session is to raise awareness about this growing problem. This presentation discusses why persons with disabilities are targeted, how they are trafficked, how this can be prevented, and how victims can achieve justice and accountability.

The program will draw from new research on the U.S. -- an in-depth analysis of federal criminal and civil trafficking cases involving victims with disabilities. Case materials document victims with disabilities trafficked into the sex industry, held in forced labor, and trafficked into sexual servitude. Victims have been trafficked and abused in multiple sectors, including the meatpacking industry, the agricultural sector, the commercial sex industry, and domestic servitude.

Case analysis reveals that traffickers target victims with disabilities in order to steal their government disability benefits. A Pennsylvania woman was sentenced to life in prison plus 80 years for a scheme that targeted six individuals with disabilities. As individual representative-payees, perpetrators fall outside the monitoring and investigative authority of federally-mandated Protection & Advocacy agencies.

This presentation will identify the system failures and missed opportunities that contribute to the continued trafficking of persons with disabilities. Using these lessons learned, we hope to initiate a dialogue on how the anti-trafficking community can best serve this vulnerable population.

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Victims of child trafficking may appear to have formed a positive and close relationship with their trafficker despite the abuse, coercion, and exploitation they have experienced. Terms such as Stockholm Syndrome and trauma bonding are used in the literature pertaining to the psychological trauma experienced by victims to explain this identification and bond with the perpetrator (Cohen, Mannarino & Deblinger, 2006; Adorjan, Christensen, Kelly & Pawluch, 2012). However, more recently, research has focused on the concept of complex trauma, which was first proposed by Herman (1992) and can be summarized as, “symptom clusters reflecting alterations in affect regulation, consciousness, self-perception, perception of the perpetrator, relations with others, and systems of meaning” (Resick, et al., 2012, p.241; Ai, et al., 2013).  The topic of bonding with the trafficker comes as a direct result of qualitative data collected by the presenter with 15 service providers. This session openly examines the attributes of this bonding process among victims of child trafficking, the resulting dynamics, their connection to current interventions, and future strategies in addressing this bond.

Presentation Objectives:

·       To become familiar with outcome data specific to service provider experiences related to the victim bond

·       To examine the complex trauma and the corresponding social constructs that fuel the bond with the trafficker

·       To identify several areas of direct practice that are impacted by the resulting victim resistance and strategies to overcome them

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In the US, law enforcement serves as the primary entity in identifying victims of sex trafficking. Scholars and others have questioned why identification of trafficked persons is so low while estimates of trafficking in the US are so high. New York City is a hub for sex trafficking in the US. The contradiction between increasing training and development on the part of law enforcement in NYC and a continued lack of identification of trafficked persons brings to question the nature of the relationship between trafficked persons and law enforcement. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with twenty-two former trafficked persons, this study examines the relationship between trafficked persons and law enforcement in New York City. This relationship manifests in a Victim-Criminal framework and sheds light on why identification of trafficked persons is so low. Findings illustrate that law enforcement’s simplistic perception of sex trafficking, coupled with policies that further marginalize trafficked persons, effectively inhibit the identification of trafficked persons.

Presentation Objectives:

·       To explore theories of why identification of trafficked persons is so low;

·       To outline the role of law enforcement in identifying victims of sex trafficking, focusing specifically on New York City;

·       To describe the Victim-Criminal Framework, which sheds light on the relationship between trafficked persons and law enforcement;

·       To analyze the policies, coupled with law enforcement perceptions, that inhibit the identification of trafficked persons;

·       To present suggested policy and training

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The stigma associated with addiction is so ingrained in our society that it may keep people from getting well. This training will empower people to be proud of their recovery and not shame addiction. Recovery message training helps eliminate barriers to recovery resulting from the stigma and discrimination associated with addiction. This workshop will discuss how as a community we can start advocating for a system of care that supports recovery throughout the individual’s lifespan. This talk will focus on supporting the development of addiction recovery advocates and leadership within the recovery community.

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The drug trade industry is the biggest underground network next to human trafficking. With this commonality, we can see how these two global issues intersect and are closely linked. Contrary to popular belief and media representation not all sex trafficking survivors are dependent on drugs prior to being trafficked. There are several ways drug use intersects with sex trafficking including control, coping, drug purchase/sale, and recruitment. Drug addiction is intrinsically linked to the sex trade, an estimated 40 to 85 percent of people trafficked are engaged in one of the ways drugs intersects with the sex trade (National Center for Biomedical Technology, 2016). Drug addiction and severe mental health problems, including posttraumatic stress disorder are barriers to exiting the sex trade (Valera, Sawyer, & Shiraldi, 2001).

 

Presentation Objectives:

·         To expose attendees to concepts and terms associated with drugs and the underground commercial sex trade.

·         To increase awareness of the intersects of drug addiction and the sex trade.

·         To discuss and increase knowledge on approaches and resources for trafficked survivors.

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Pop culture and social media have portrayed gangs and pimping as "cool". Over the past few years in the United States, criminal gang activity has become a serious problem concurrently with human trafficking, emerging as one of the fastest growing crimes. This presentation will give participants a closer look at gang-motivated sex trafficking cases, gang dynamics, and recruitment/control tactics used by gang members.

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This session is for Social Workers, Counselors and those working with the purpose of assisting people with positive change. This session will focus on the importance of establishing positive relationships with populations served. A review of Social Work ethics and incorporating religion and spirituality into the working relationship will be provided. Participants will learn the difference between religion and spirituality, better understand moral conflicts when working with specific populations, and ethical dilemmas in the working relationship.

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Sex trafficking is a present day reality both internationally and nationally (U.S. Department of State, 2010). Children and adolescents with histories of sexual and physical violence or rape are particularly vulnerable to being trafficked as grooming techniques and violence are used by traffickers in their recruiting repertoire (Alvarez & Alessi, 2012; Clawson, Dutch, Solomon, & Grace, 2009; Hammond & McGlone, 2014). The mental health concerns among human trafficking victims include emotional, behavioral, social, and spiritual ramifications (Clawson, Dutch, Solomon, & Grace, 2009; Hodge, 2014; Zimmerman, Hossain, & Watts, 2011). Despite the myriad of individuals who are trafficked annually within the United States, scant research attention focuses on the sequelae of trauma and subsequent

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Power-based personal violence is not an individual problem; it’s a community concern. Bystander intervention re-frames the focus of prevention; it calls on all of us to make choices that could make a difference in the lives of others. Many know of active bystanders – most recently personified in Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson – but knowing of them and knowing how to make similar choices are two very different things. This session will be an interactive workshop demonstrating the relevance of bystander intervention as a means of prevention around power-based personal violence including sexual assault, stalking, intimate partner violence, and sexual exploitation. Participants will outline obstacles and barriers to intervention, practice safe methods of intervention recognizing those barriers, and discuss observable behaviors that may call for intervention. Participants will also share proactive and reactive means of intervention. Violence in any form is unacceptable. As active bystanders, we have the opportunity to change the culture around violence so that everyone knows it is unacceptable.

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