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.
Read Follow-Up Notes

Content: Over the course of his tenure, he’s interviewed over 300 victims. In many cases, those who have been exploited believe that they are offenders, Woolf told me. “ They fear law enforcement…because they’re technically committing a crime and that is prostitution,” he said. Read Follow-Up Notes
Is legalizing prostitution the best way to tackle sex trafficking? The Department of Homeland Security defines human trafficking as a “modern-day form of slavery involving the illegal trade of people for exploitation or commercial gain.” 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. “