Title: Sex Trafficking in the United States - The Atlantic
Headings: When Sex Trafficking Goes Unnoticed in America
Politics
When Sex Trafficking Goes Unnoticed in America
Many cases go unreported, making it a difficult crime for law enforcement personnel to spot.
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Content: In 2012, the International Labor Organization estimated that there are 20.9 million human trafficking victims worldwide. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, sexual exploitation is the most commonly identified form ahead of forced labor. Numbers released by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center suggest that also holds true in the U.S., where more than 4,000 cases of sex trafficking were reported. And as a whole human trafficking is a lucrative industry that around the globe rakes in $150 billion. But it’s unclear whether the numbers are an accurate representation of the problem, because many cases aren’t reported, according to Monique Villa, the CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, which works to combat human trafficking. “ The problem with human trafficking is that of course the victims are silenced,” Villa said. “ We don’t have good data about it. You don’t know how many slaves there are around the world.” Traffickers also play into the narrative by telling victims, who are exploited for sex, that they are offenders, threatening to call the police and report them for prostitution if they push back. This makes sex trafficking particularly challenging because victims might be fearful of going to law enforcement and being charged with a crime.