Transgender people exist within the perfect storm of vulnerabilities that human traffickers use to exploit them. For example, trans people often lack familial support, are harassed for simply being who they are or supporting others like them, and experience rejection from services and opportunities – like housing and medical care. Traffickers take advantage of these needs and vulnerabilities and exploit them to maintain control over their victims. Research has even found that LGBTQ+ youth are significantly more likely to be sex trafficked than their straight counterparts.

My name is Ms. Mercy Gray (she/her) of the Bulaceño and Kapampangan peoples from the Philippine Islands. I am a survivor of much violence: colonization, domestic violence, assault, kidnapping, sexual assault, gang-based violence, human trafficking, and as an indigenous transgender woman living in America. This is my story.

As a child, I was groomed with narcotics and trafficked for sex at the age of 14 out of the states of Washington, Oregon, and Nevada. I first experienced houselessness at the age of 15 and survived in the commercial sex trade for ten years after that.

I first met my trafficker as a young scrawny gay boy from a military family living in a military town. I come from a conservative Texan Catholic background and met my trafficker while in the closet. Whether I wanted to be or not, I was, and remain 2SLGBTQIA+ (Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/ Questioning, Intersex, Asexual). The lack of awareness and discussion about these communities played a role in making me more vulnerable to trafficking and led me to look for answers from exploitative adults on the internet when I was only 10 years old. Having been molested earlier in my life and becoming sexually active at that age, I had lots of questions that many grown men had answers to. In searching for answers about my experience and identity, I met and was groomed by my 32-year-old trafficker.

Later on in my life, after nearly two decades of finding myself in the aftermath of being trafficked and finding all my own resources to heal from it, I began medically transitioning my gender. Despite 10 years of experience in social work and a bachelor’s degree, I found myself facing the same employment issues many other transgender people face: discrimination with a sudden new inability for gainful employment. I quickly went from working a permanent, full-time government job in law enforcement, making $37.00/hr, to needing to sell sex to survive and using the substances I was groomed to use as a child. I quickly found myself feeling 14 again. Scared, in the back of some strange man’s car, it didn’t matter how loud I could scream – no help would come for me.

Quicker yet, I found myself without access to the gender-affirming care medications, providers, and surgeries I needed and had already established. I met an older woman who said she would help me and provide me with the hormones I needed. Out of necessity, I found myself sleeping on her floor – next to a stripper pole and massage table. But these street hormones made me incredibly ill, causing a serious infection that left permanent damage and scarring on my body.

I began to need this woman to survive. I experienced a refusal of medical care and prescription access and was treated disrespectfully and poorly by medical professionals – an experience common to many transgender and gender non-conforming people. As a result of my dysphoria, recent trauma from my boyfriend at the time, and a lifetime of abuse, I resorted again to the narcotics I had been groomed to consume as a child for the purposes of sexual acts for items of value. This woman quickly had a solution for this too, providing me with men to sleep with, narcotics to do so, and fake promises of job and other opportunities.

This is what it looks like to become a statistic. Despite my education, career, and the tremendous work I had put in to overcome my childhood trauma, the discrimination I experienced pursuing my gender identity caused me to fall into a bad way.

This is the story of so many transgender survivors across America – total systems failure. We face stark discrimination on all fronts. One U.S. Transgender Survey found that 50% of transgender women had traded sex for income. Despite this, transgender survivors are often excluded from programs that exist to help human trafficking survivors. In my experience, many housing programs, medical services, and first-response resources either do not accept transgender people or are not culturally responsive and trauma-informed to any 2SLGBTQIA+ person.

Facing discrimination on multiple fronts, 2SLGBTQIA+ people are both vulnerable to trafficking and face barriers when seeking assistance of any kind. Support systems and inclusive policies are needed to reduce this community’s vulnerability to traffickers and increase our access to services after exiting our trafficking situations. Without basic needs being met, 2SLGBTQIA+ people face a greater risk of returning to trafficking situations.

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The post The 2SLGBTQIA+ Community Needs More Support Systems and Inclusive Policies to Reduce Vulnerabilities to Trafficking first appeared on Polaris.

Policy change takes time and collective effort — and when we reach our goals, it’s important to celebrate milestones and keep the momentum going. In that spirit, this blog is one of a three-part series on recent wins across the country, as states introduce and improve laws that prevent exploitation, support survivors, and hold traffickers accountable.

Polaris has played our part in these successes, sitting on local coalitions, providing testimony, writing letters, and filing slips in support of survivor-centered policies. But this work needs all partners at the table to be successful — and we invite you to join the movement.

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Sex trafficking is terrible at any age, but stories about child victims and survivors in particular tend to draw more attention. This carries over into lawmaking trends, where policies geared to protect children naturally gain more momentum.

In Illinois, the Prevent Unfair Sentencing of Youth Act gives judges more discretion in sentencing children found guilty of harming their abusers. It requires judges to consider factors such as involvement in the child welfare system and history of sexual exploitation, and it creates a pathway for judges to depart from mandatory minimums or return the case to juvenile court.

Growing support for laws like Illinois’ not only helps victims and survivors of child sex trafficking but also represents a step toward racial justice. Black girls and women are overrepresented among victims of sex trafficking and overcriminalized by the criminal legal system, including in situations where they have defended themselves against their exploiters.

At other times, the desire to protect children can obscure the nuances involved in fighting human trafficking. California passed a law classifying sex trafficking of children as a serious felony under the state’s “three strikes” law, enabling longer sentences for repeat offenders and aiming to dissuade traffickers from exploiting children.

The bill was highly contested — including by advocates who recognized that such a law could be used to prosecute victims and survivors caught in cycles of trafficking themselves. With these concerns at the forefront, dissenting assembly members ultimately passed the bill but with specific amendments to protect victims and survivors from being criminalized under the new law.

How can you help advance nuanced, survivor-centered policymaking? Join us in continuing to push for relief benefiting survivors of all ages, including those whose criminal records are the result of their trafficking experience as a child.

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The post Prioritizing Survivor-Centered State Policies: Spotlight on Child Sex Trafficking first appeared on Polaris.

Survivors of human trafficking should be the main character of any human trafficking story, not a supporting actor. We must trust survivors, listen to their stories, and center both. 

Named after the North Star, an historical symbol of freedom, Polaris leads a survivor-centered, data-informed, and justice and equity-driven movement to end human trafficking. Since 2007, Polaris has operated the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline, connecting victims and survivors to support and services, and helping communities hold traffickers accountable. 

Eliminating human trafficking is a challenge that requires support from all corners of the world, and we welcome everyone who wishes to join the movement. The film Sound of Freedom is a Hollywood depiction based on one person’s stories. It should be seen as exactly that — not a comprehensive view of human trafficking nor a model of how to best end human trafficking. There are many additional perspectives and stories that complete the picture. Polaris has spent two decades listening to survivors. The knowledge that has been shared with us comes from many communities and individuals who are impacted differently, and it is their lived experiences that inform Polaris’s work.

Through our work, Polaris has built the largest known dataset on human trafficking in North America. The data and expertise gained from two decades of working on trafficking situations in real-time helps us to partner with service providers and law enforcement; support survivors on their healing journeys; and address the vulnerabilities that enable the business of stealing freedom for profit.  

Polaris continues to believe that the true heroes in the anti-trafficking movement have been and will always be survivors of sex and labor trafficking. We think the focus of the movement should remain on those with lived experience. 

Polaris’s first priority is to listen to victims and survivors, act based on their recommendations and expertise, and support their empowerment and paths to freedom. While not everyone uses this approach, we know it to be the only approach that provides survivors the support they need, keeps them safe, and truly works towards ending human trafficking.

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The post Responding to Sound of Freedom: Hollywood Needs to Center Survivors and Their Voices first appeared on Polaris.

For survivors of human trafficking, breaking free from the exploiter is often just the beginning of a long, hard journey. Most need longer-term support to truly heal from the physical, emotional, and mental traumas they have experienced, long after their exploitation has ended. 

Sadly, few can find it. 

Data from the inaugural National Survivor Study (NSS), the largest and most comprehensive survey of survivors of human trafficking in the United States to date, suggests that long-term healing and recovery options for survivors are few and far between. 

Survivors’ Long-Term Health Needs

Several of the top reported needs by survivors were health related, including access to trauma-informed behavioral and mental health services. Even long after exiting, nearly 40% of survivors had not been able to find appropriate behavioral and mental health help. Another top need was managing chronic or long-lasting health issues, reported by 30% of survivors. 

“It takes years and years to reassemble a life”

Health issues resulting from trafficking often lead to financial challenges. One survivor shared, “I had to spend my entire retirement and more and go into debt to get proper treatment. Getting treatment buried me alive.” Medical debt can be completely outside of survivor control, as one survivor shared, “I have over $40,000 in medical debt from being IVC’d [involuntarily committed].” A choice between receiving necessary health care and keeping food on the table is a choice no one, especially a trafficking survivor, should ever have to make. 

Medical Debt is Just the Beginning

Traffickers abuse the financial system both for financial gain and to assert control over the people they exploit. This often results in large sums of debt and poor credit for survivors. Support in repaying debt as a result of abuse is one of survivors’ most persistent long-term needs, with 34% reporting a need for this assistance at the time of the study. As one participant put it, “Because of fraud from trafficker [I] am in debt that they created so [I] could not leave.” 

“My exploiter put me in a lot of debt, totaled cars attached to loans/insurance. I wasn’t able to pay off payday loans that he forced me to take out in my ‘good credit standing name’ for almost 6 years after I left”

Survivors’ credit scores are also deeply affected by financial abuse. At the time of the survey, 31% of survivors still needed credit repair. While the passage of the Debt Bondage Repair Act (DBRA) has made credit repair for trafficking survivors possible for the first time, early comments from survivors indicate the process is time-consuming and very complex. As a result, the credit repair process for survivors of trafficking has yet to be widely utilized.  

Pivoting Towards the Future

Survivors have told us that the way recovery support in the US is provided is not working. We must listen to survivors, and respond by changing how and what services are delivered. The NSS showed us that affordable or free mental and behavioral health services are critical not only for achieving good physical and mental health after trafficking, but also financial health. Debt and bad credit is keeping survivors trapped in insecurity, and the existing relief services are not effective. As one survivor shared, “this financial hole which continues to drag me into a mental and emotional black hole.”

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The post Still Looking: Survivors Need Long-Term Solutions first appeared on Polaris.

For Philadelphia, one of our initial focus cities under the initiative, we created this action guide with and for local stakeholders to help prevent trafficking of the local vulnerable youth population.

The post Action Guide: Trafficking Prevention for Youth in Philadelphia first appeared on Polaris.

Wearing tight jeans is not an invitation to a sexual encounter. Indeed, nothing a person does, says, or wears makes that person in any way responsible for their own harassment, assault, or other victimization – including trafficking. 

That’s the short version of the message of Denim Day, an internationally-recognized day to support survivors of sexual violence and bring awareness to the issue of victim-blaming. Human trafficking survivors know this issue all too well. Many are dealing with criminal records that are the direct result of their having been victimized and forced into committing crimes by a trafficker – a very tangible form of victim-blaming. But the mental health and emotional aspects of being treated as if you are at fault for your own sexual assault are equally damaging to people who have experienced trafficking and the manipulations traffickers deploy so expertly to make victims believe they are making their own choices. 

Victim-blaming relies on the perception that the person had a choice – that they made a wrong decision that led to their trafficking situation. But human trafficking is never the victim’s fault. It can show up in any number of scenarios, including supposedly therapeutic environments or when interacting with law enforcement. It often looks like questioning what a survivor could have, or should have, done differently to “prevent” their trafficking situation – such as not engaging in commercial sex, having irregular immigration status, or accepting a job that turns out to be a trafficking scam.  

The tendency to blame the victim in scary situations is challenging to address legislatively because it is often an unconscious decision or choice –  a way to psychologically separate ourselves from them and maintain the view that bad things don’t happen to good people. Telling yourself that the victim must have done something wrong may be self-protective. 

Unfortunately, what protects one person’s emotional well-being can have an extremely harmful, real world effect on others. This is particularly true when trafficking survivors are blamed for their own victimization. This social stigma and the fear of not being believed may prevent them from seeking help or resources after they leave their situation. The internalization of that blame could make survivors think they did do something wrong, and they might not see themselves as deserving of help.

This potential tragedy is compounded by the fact that people who are blamed for their abuse report greater distress, increased depression, worsened symptoms of anxiety, and more complicated post-traumatic stress disorder. Holding survivors responsible for the exploitation they endured or insinuating that they had a choice in being trafficked is unfair. It’s time to change the culture around victim-blaming. YOU can help by examining your own thoughts and reactions to victims of these crimes. Challenge yourself and your friends to recognize the harm this blame has on survivors and stop viewing survivors as responsible for their trafficking situations.

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The post The Impact of Victim-Blaming on Human Trafficking Survivors first appeared on Polaris.

UPDATED APRIL 2025

Many survivors of human trafficking are also survivors of sexual abuse.

During April’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we are exploring the intersection of sexual abuse and human trafficking.

Human trafficking is defined as the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor against their will. Sexual abuse can be a method of control that traffickers use – in both sex and labor trafficking situations. We looked at contacts to the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline from 2015 through 2022 and examined the number of victims who experienced sexual abuse as a method of control during their trafficking situation. In situations where force, fraud, or coercion was known, we found that:

• 18% of all the victims who experienced combined sex & labor trafficking experienced sexual abuse as a method of control (826 victims).
• 11% of all sex trafficking victims experienced sexual abuse as a method of control (5,892 victims).

From January 2020 through November 2022, we found that 10% of sex trafficking victims who contacted the National Human Trafficking Hotline experienced sexual abuse (6,909 victims), either prior to their trafficking experience or as a method of control during the trafficking experience.

Sexual abuse is also a factor that can make people more vulnerable to human trafficking. Someone who has past experiences of sexual abuse, violence, or trauma could be lured in and taken advantage of by a trafficker who is exploiting their need for something like protection or love. Of the contacts made to the Trafficking Hotline from 2015 to 2021 where a risk factor or vulnerability was known, we found that:

• 4% of all the victims who experienced combined sex & labor trafficking experienced sexual abuse prior to their trafficking situation (107 victims).
• 6% of all sex trafficking victims experienced sexual abuse prior to their trafficking experience (1,590 victims).

There is also a correlation between child sexual abuse and human trafficking. Polaris recently conducted and published the National Survivor Study, a research project designed to shed light on the experiences of human trafficking survivors in the U.S. When researching the conditions that make people vulnerable to trafficking the study found that 84 percent of participants experienced sexual abuse at some point in their childhood.

Sexual abuse and human trafficking are not isolated issues. The correlation between sexual abuse and human trafficking is disturbing and alarming, but not surprising. Sexual abuse can be a vulnerability that traffickers exploit and a way for traffickers to assert control over victims. Human trafficking cannot be left out of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and sexual assault cannot be excluded from the conversation about human trafficking.

Resources

National Human Trafficking Hotline: Call 1-888-373-7888 or text 233733
National Sexual Assault Hotline: Call 800-656-HOPE (4673)
Resources for survivors of sexual assault (National Sexual Violence Resource Center)

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The post Sexual Assault Awareness Month: How Does Human Trafficking Fit In? first appeared on Polaris.

Photo Credit: change.org.

The release of a National Survivor Study (NSS) by Polaris confirmed what many in the anti-trafficking field have always known – trafficking victims are being arrested and charged for crimes at shocking rates. The NSS data found that of 439 participating trafficking survivors, 62 percent had been cited, arrested, or detained by law enforcement at least once. Digging deeper into the data to see if the arrests might have come before or after the trafficking experience, 80 percent said the arrests came while they were being trafficked.

This study supported the claim that in cases like Zephi Trevino’s upcoming trial in Texas, law enforcement and prosecutors are ignoring a victim’s trafficking experience and going ahead with charges. Zephi was 16 when her adult boyfriend started trafficking her. She was later used by her trafficker as part of a scheme to rob a sex buyer. Her trafficker murdered the would-be sex buyer, and Zephi was then charged as an adult with capital murder for being part of the crime. The Dallas district attorney has continued moving forward with the case in spite of receiving evidence that the crime was a result of minor sex trafficking, ignoring the circumstances that she was a trafficking victim under both state and federal law.

Zephi’s case highlights how policies meant to protect trafficking victims can be disregarded when someone does not fit neatly into someone’s definition of a model trafficking victim. Legal aid organizations across the country are consistently challenged to prove the worthiness of survivors in order to clear criminal records that in many cases were a direct result of trafficking. In some cases, trafficking survivors have had to participate in clemency hearings where they were required to ask for forgiveness for crimes they were forced by traffickers to commit.

Concerned members of the public can contact District Attorney John Creuzot and ask him to drop or reconsider the charges. If you would like to sign up to support additional advocacy efforts on survivor record relief, visit our Take Action page.

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The post Study Confirms Trafficking Victims Like Zephi Trevino Are Being Consistently Criminalized first appeared on Polaris.

Telling the real story of human trafficking – the story that acknowledges that human trafficking is the predictable end result of systems built in an unequal world – requires listening to survivors to understand their experiences. However, as a Black survivor of human trafficking myself, I must tell you that the voices of Black survivors have historically been left out of the anti trafficking movement.

If you look at the origins of the anti trafficking movement, this erasure of Black survivors is not all that surprising. Historically, the focus has been on the enslavement of white women, with laws being enforced to prevent “white slavery” as early as 1885. These laws eventually included the Mann Act, otherwise known as the White Slavery Act. This was the law I was prosecuted under, which resulted in me having a criminal record due to crimes my trafficker forced me to commit.

This historical focus on the narrative that white women and girls are the primary victims of human trafficking – the stories involving elaborate abduction schemes and international destinations – neglects the true story that us Black survivors have been telling for decades.

From vulnerability and recruitment to extraction and criminal records, the truth is, to be able to tell the true story of human trafficking, we can no longer separate it from race. 

Victims: The fact is, Black women and girls are more vulnerable to sex trafficking than other races – with 40% of all victims and survivors of sex trafficking found to be Black in a two-year study by the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Recruitment: Traffickers prey on those most vulnerable in our communities. Year over year, National Human Trafficking Hotline data tells us that risk factors like poverty or being in the foster care system make people more vulnerable to human trafficking. Black people are still disproportionately impoverished and disproportionately represented in the foster care system.

Extraction: The anti trafficking movement often talks about rescuing victims – but there is no rescue in a system that criminalizes victims and survivors, especially those that are Black. In 2019, 42% of all prostitution arrests were Black people. 

Criminalization: Not only are Black people more vulnerable to trafficking, but Black survivors are also more likely to hold a criminal record than white survivors due to the adultification and over-sexualization of Black women and girls that has allowed the criminal justice system to see us as criminals and our white counterparts as victims. 

The marginalization of Black voices in the anti-trafficking movement has resulted in white survivors and survivor-led organizations receiving bigger platforms, more media visibility and more funding than those of their Black counterparts. This, in turn, has culminated in inadequate prevention measures, a lack of long-term services, and the re-exploitation of many survivors after they’ve left their initial trafficking situation.  Now, it’s time the anti trafficking movement listens to Black survivors to tell the real story. 

This blog was written by Shamere McKenzie, Hotline Training Manager at Polaris

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The post Listen to Black Survivors first appeared on Polaris.

Social media personality Andrew Tate is behind bars in Romania, amid rape and human trafficking allegations. In the press release about Tate’s arrest, Romanian officials said that Tate and his brother Tristan recruited victims by making them believe they were interested in having real romantic relationships with them, transporting them to live in houses where they were forced to act in porn videos that were sold online.

Tate has told news media he is no trafficker – since he didn’t physically force the victims to come to his home. Clearly, the Tates do not understand how trafficking works – at least under U.S law and – apparently, in Romania.

In the United States, what the Tate brothers are accused of is sometimes called Romeo pimping. A Romeo pimp lures vulnerable individuals – in this case young women – into commercial sex by luring them into romantic relationships. They target victims on social media and form relationships, on and off line. They look for people who are awed by their image and the lifestyle they represent. They promise not just love but a lifestyle.

This intentional building of a fraudulent, coercive relationship has long been a common method of recruitment into trafficking. But social media has clearly made it easier. 

“My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her… get her to fall in love with me, to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on web-cam so we could become rich together.”

– Andrew Tate

In recent years the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline, which Polaris operates, has recorded a considerable increase in online recruitment for human trafficking. In 2020 there was a 125% increase in reports of recruitment on Facebook and a 95% increase on Instagram compared with 2019. While some of that is recruitment into labor trafficking situations via online ads, much of it is recruitment that begins with a false relationship – love, used as a weapon.

To hear how real survivors were trafficked by people they had been defrauded into loving and trusting, head to our page on love and trafficking.

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The post The Tate Brothers and the Basics of “Romeo Pimping” first appeared on Polaris.