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.

From zip ties to car seats to perfumed roses, there are a lot of scary rumors out there about how people get recruited into human trafficking. None of them are true – at least that is what we have learned after 15 years of operating the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline. But the reality is, in some ways, equally frightening: The vast majority of trafficking victims know and often love or trust their traffickers, who are family members, so-called friends, intimate partners, or even prospective employers.

Still that scary stuff in your social media feed can – understandably – begin to make you wonder. After all, it is somehow easier to imagine that strangers will do us harm than someone we know and care about. You can learn more about traffickers’ use of romantic and family love and a sense of belonging to lure people into exploitation by clicking here. As for that other stuff – about being followed around a Target that you saw on Tik Tok … Well, see below: 

The information below is what we learned looking at contacts made to the Trafficking Hotline since 2015 when we began collecting this kind of data. It shows clearly what not to be scared of – stranger danger.

• Trafficking rarely begins with abduction. In the cases reported to the Trafficking Hotline during this time period, only 6 percent of victims, where entry method into trafficking was known, reported being abducted into their trafficking situation.
• Kidnappers/abductors are not necessarily strangers: Abductions/kidnappings as a precursor to trafficking can be perpetrated by people known to the victims, such as people involved in gangs, members of the victim’s family or an intimate partner.
• Trafficking recruitment methods popularized on social media do not match the reality of what we’re seeing. Despite several, recurring viral social media posts warning about the use of zip ties being used to mark the vehicles of potential victims, car seats being used to lure people into trafficking situations, or drug-laced flowers to incapacitate potential victims, there are no mentions of any of these methods being used to recruit or lure people into trafficking situations. 
• Traffickers generally leverage an existing relationship to recruit victims. As we’ve highlighted in previous years, our data from 2015-2021 shows that traffickers most commonly exploit a familial relationship (21%), an intimate partnership (23%), or recruit their victims through a legitimate job offer or advertisement (36%).

Bottom line: If you are concerned about human trafficking, take time to learn and understand what makes people vulnerable and how you can keep yourself and your community safe. And if you see a rumor about human trafficking in your feed that sounds a little off, check a reliable source – not someone who is trying to rack up views on their social media channel! Then share the real story of human trafficking, not the rumors. 

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The post Valentine’s Day and Human Trafficking: Love Weaponized for Exploitation 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.

We know this because we asked survivors in detail about word choices and ways of thinking and talking about their experiences. They shared what they knew so that journalists, artists, advocates and activists could also take the time and make the effort to examine the language we all use when talking about human trafficking. It begins with how we tell the story. The quotes below come from interviews with the survivor experts who informed this piece. Read below, then go to Telling the Real Story of Human Trafficking to learn even more.

1. Language can harm victims by preventing them from recognizing they’re in a trafficking situation.

“Words like ‘rescue’ turn people off from getting help. It’s too dramatic, like you’re hanging off a side of a cliff. But when you are in the situation, you don’t think you are being trafficked, you just think this is your life. So you don’t recognize yourself.”

Human trafficking rarely begins with a kidnapping by a stranger. Instead, it often involves the subtle manipulation and coercion into trafficking by someone the victim knows and trusts. The result is that for much of the time they are in the trafficking situations, survivors do not see themselves as victims needing to be “rescued” or “saved” in any physical sense, so they assume the services and supports available to trafficking survivors have nothing to do with them. 

2. Language can shape public perception of how human trafficking happens.

“Understanding what happened to you as trafficking is a really important part of healing, but it took me 10 years to realize: Hey. Wow. I was trafficked, because my situation was so different from what I had seen represented as trafficking.” 

When we use phrases like “break chains” paired with imagery that reinforces harmful stereotypes, such as victims in physical constraints, we paint a picture of how human trafficking often looks that is not what the majority of survivors experience. Not only does this narrative prevent victims from self-identifying, it can also trigger a trauma response for survivors as they’re reminded of what it feels like to be less-than-human. 

Similarly, when we use phrases like “human trafficking is happening in our own backyards” and “human trafficking is hidden in plain sight,” we neglect to recognize that certain individuals and communities are far more vulnerable to trafficking than others. While its true that anyone can be a victim of human trafficking, human trafficking doesn’t happen in a vacuum and is the result of other persistent injustices and inequities in our society and economy. 

3. Language can place blame on victims and survivors.

“One thing I find hard to take is language or pictures or stories about ‘innocence lost.’ I feel like that means some victims are worthwhile and some are ‘guilty.’”

Our language can shape the way people perceive the story about human trafficking, as well as who is to blame. We may unknowingly place blame on survivors simply by how we frame our narrative or construct our sentences. For example, saying “he sold sex” versus “he was sold for sex” changes the way we interpret the situation. Additionally, saying “she was trafficked by him” versus “he trafficked her” changes who is doing the action and is more survivor-centered.

4. Language can perpetuate saviorism.

“You can’t rescue a person being trafficked. What you can do is create an opportunity for that person to leave.”

Trafficking survivors don’t need to be saved. Instead, they need to be supported as they leave their trafficking situation and access to services that allow them to rebuild and heal. When we use terms like “rescue”, “save”, and “set free”, we are perpetuating a savior narrative that centers us over survivors. 

5. Language can neglect to recognize the inherent strength of survivors.

“One thing that drives me crazy is the whole idea of being a voice for the voiceless. I had always had a voice, even when I was being trafficked, so I find that offensive.” 

Survivors have a voice. Full stop. Phrases like “voice for the voiceless” are not only offensive, but they are inaccurate. Survivors are not voiceless and it’s well past time that we listen to them. 

“It’s long past time to replace “rescue” with resiliency. I mean do we really think that these programs… are the reason a person who has experienced such trauma is successful? No. Not at all. A person’s success in healing belongs to them and is thanks to them. Period.” 

Language is ever evolving and adapting to new language can be hard, but it is critical that we listen to and center the experiences of survivors in order to help them rebuild and heal, and change the systems that prevent human trafficking from happening in the first place.  

We recognize that the language we’ve used to talk about human trafficking in the past has likely been well intentioned, but as we continue to center survivors in our work, language is another place we have to listen.

Learn more about telling the real story of human trafficking in our media guide.

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The post Language Matters: 5 Ways Your Words Impact Trafficking Survivors first appeared on Polaris.

Maybe you’ve attended a training at school or work, or perhaps you’ve seen a poster at a rest stop about the potential “signs” of human trafficking. So now you feel equipped to figure out what is going on and the next steps that need to be taken to get help, right? 

Well, not exactly. 

The truth is, in most human trafficking situations, there are unlikely to be visible “signs” or “indicators” that trafficking is happening – unless you know something else about the situation – unless you know the story. 

Without knowing the story, “signs” of human trafficking can lead to judgments formulated from unconscious bias or harmful stereotypes. They can also lead to situations where a person in a trafficking situation is actually put in a dangerous position by a well-meaning stranger. 

That’s why we are asking people to learn the story of human trafficking – by learning how trafficking really happens and listening to victims and survivors. 

The real story of trafficking is about vulnerability. It’s the story of how traffickers find what a person wants or needs most in the world and gives it to them. Sometimes it’s love, sometimes it’s simply the money to survive another day. 

It’s a story you can’t read without some degree of context and proximity. Context meaning that you understand the dynamics of the situation or relationship you’re witnessing, and proximity meaning that you have some degree of relationship with someone involved. 

For example, teachers who understand trafficking are in a good position to ask questions if they notice a student’s grades slipping or behavior changing dramatically. Similarly, doctors, nurses, and medical professionals who understand trafficking are able to gain context and proximity by knowing what questions to ask and how to ask them so that the patient feels comfortable sharing.

But it’s not only professionals. Let’s say you offer someone a drink who is mowing your lawn and they say no thank you because they’re not allowed to take breaks. In this situation, you are close enough to that situation to be concerned. 

The key is learning to pay attention to the people around you, especially those with preexisting vulnerability or risk factors of human trafficking. 

Poverty, recent immigration, a history of trauma and abuse – these are all risk factors of sex trafficking and labor trafficking. The way someone looks and how they’re dressed are not. 

We have to stop looking for “signs” of trafficking and instead start listening to survivors to understand what’s really happening. This means focusing on identifying people or groups in our communities who may struggling to get by – and if they don’t get help, may be vulnerable to trafficking.

Ready to learn more? Take our Human Trafficking 101 – a free virtual training where you can learn how to protect your friends and family by learning how trafficking really works.

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The post Know the Story Not the Signs first appeared on Polaris.

“Baseless accusations like Hageman’s represent the very worst and most dangerous kind of political cynicism – an attempt to gain attention and support on the backs of some of our nation’s most vulnerable people. 

When politicians like Hageman mislead the public about human trafficking, they make it far more difficult for people who are actually at risk of being trafficked to understand their own vulnerabilities and make it less likely that victims will come forward and seek help. 

Weaponizing human trafficking against ideological or political opponents undermines our urgent and nonpartisan mission to end the trafficking, exploitation and abuse of the most vulnerable in our communities.”

About Polaris
Named after the North Star, an historical symbol of freedom, Polaris works to reshape the systems that make sex and labor trafficking possible and profitable in North America. For more than a decade, Polaris has assisted thousands of victims and survivors through the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline and built the largest known U.S. data set on the crime. With the guidance of survivors, and working with public and private-sector partners, we use that data to understand and improve the way trafficking is identified, how victims and survivors are assisted, and how we can prevent this abuse at the scale of the problem – 25 million people worldwide robbed of the basic right to choose how they live and work. Learn more at www.polarisproject.org. Follow Polaris on Facebook, on Twitter, or Instagram.

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Twenty years ago, the most urgent task in awareness was helping law enforcement shift their view of people in the sex trades to see them not as criminals but as people, and as potential victims. At the same time, policymakers had to be shown the magnitude of labor abuse and exploitation still happening in this country – decades after the era many thought belonged in history books with pictures of factories on fire and waifish child laborers.

Perhaps most importantly, people in general – from all walks of life and from all our diverse and intersectional communities – had to know so that people would care, and would make their voices heard. And so efforts like “Human Trafficking Awareness Day” were born, so that we could build and resource a movement to end this horrific abuse and support those who had fought their way through it – and come out as survivors on the other side.

It worked. People became aware and then they became horrified and then they wanted to know how to help. They too were asked to spread awareness, to help build the critical mass required to tackle a difficult, complex problem.

There is still work to be done, of course. We need to reach every, single, law enforcement agency in the country to provide them with the tools they need to prosecute traffickers. We need to reach more policymakers to help them understand how to prevent trafficking in the first place within the communities they serve.

And we need, urgently, to reach out to the public once again, to move past awareness, to a deeper understanding of how trafficking really happens and who it happens to. We need to replace simple awareness with meaningful understanding because we are tired of the slow pace of change. We must shift from smaller-scale individual response strategies to mass prevention strategies, like investment in safe, decent, affordable housing; a foster care system that actually provides children in need with stable, loving homes, equitable economic and criminal justice policies, and an end to gender-based violence.

But before the public can understand the complexity of this, we have to help undo some of the unintended consequences of all those early awareness campaigns: mythology, misunderstanding and misinformation. These errors spread through increasing awareness in much the same way as the end result of a game of telephone – where one child whispers something to another, who whispers what they heard to the next, and so on. What comes out at the end sounds like nothing the original speaker intended.

And so we have myths, spreading through the internet, about children being sold through complex schemes, shipped in overpriced file cabinets or preyed upon by a secretive cabal run by political operatives and Hollywood stars who are both pedophiles and cannibals.

These myths have real world consequences. Resources like the National Human Trafficking Hotline, like local police departments, like survivor-led, local organizations, are flooded with false reports. Responding thoughtfully takes a huge toll on the ability to serve others in the community who are either being trafficked or need assistance once they break themselves free.

These reports also mislead policymakers into believing in and supporting solutions that bear little relationship to the problem. For example, misinformation about the role of unauthorized border crossing and human trafficking is leading some in Congress to call for physical barriers between Mexico and the United States, though data shows most immigrant trafficking victims in the United States arrive through legal ports of entry.

During National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, to celebrate our 20th anniversary, we are asking you to join us in moving past awareness, to true understanding. Take this short training, become a myth buster in your community, share it with your friends, your colleagues, those you worship with, learn and volunteer with. We need you now more than ever.

The post Awareness vs. Understanding of Human Trafficking first appeared on Polaris.

The post Human Trafficking 101 first appeared on Polaris.

For this reason, Polaris has created an interactive, online training program: Human Trafficking 101. The training is comprised of six modules which address what human trafficking is, how it happens, who the victims and traffickers are, highlights the importance of knowing the story vs. knowing the signs, and discusses what we can all do in the fight against human trafficking.

There are also brief quizzes after each module to reinforce participants’ knowledge as they go, along with videos of survivors sharing their experience to provide additional insight into how sex and labor trafficking can happen, and what can be done to prevent it from the perspective of those with lived experience. Upon completing the online training, participants receive a certificate indicating that they have completed the training and are encouraged to share it with their networks.

We are asking you to spread the word about this training as far and as wide as you can. It has never been more urgent.

In the summer of 2020, conspiracy theories ranging from children being sold on furniture websites to rumors about text messages being used as a sex trafficking recruitment tool, flooded the Polaris-operated National Human Trafficking Hotline with calls and concerns that were simply not true. The barrage crowded out calls and contacts from people who truly needed help.

That has slowed down considerably, but the countless well-meaning people who learned about trafficking for the first time as result of those rumors are still out there – an untapped resource of well-meaning, compassionate people like you who can help to make real change.

The training can also be helpful for people who have been in the anti trafficking movement for a long time, who know that white vans and zip-ties are not part of the reality of how trafficking operates, but want the latest knowledge on how to help. As the anti trafficking movement has evolved over the past 20 years, we have learned more from survivor leaders about the real-life situations that made them vulnerable to trafficking. Armed with this knowledge we can work together to prevent trafficking in the first place.

If you work with a corporation interested in adapting this training for your employees, please contact us at corporateengagement@polarisproject.org.

The post Human Trafficking 101: Combating Misinformation with Education first appeared on Polaris.