According to the United Nations’ International Labour Organization, human traffickers victimize an estimated 27.6 million people worldwide.
Of those victims, approximately 23% are exploited through sex trafficking. Among them, 78% are women and girls, while 22% are men and boys. The data also shows that 92% of victims are adults, and 8% are children.
Sex Trafficking
According to the Trafficked Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), Sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. (22 U.S.C. § 7102(11)(A)).
Recruitment
It is a widespread misconception that sex trafficking only involves kidnapping. After all, that is the image often portrayed by the media and television. In reality, kidnapping represents one of the least common methods of recruitment within the sex trafficking world. The majority of trafficking cases reveal that victims actually know, love, and trust their traffickers. In many instances, the trafficker may be a parent, relative, spouse, romantic partner, or someone the victim perceives as an “employer.”
More frequently, traffickers rely on fraud or coercion (forms of manipulation) to recruit and control victims. These tactics can take many shapes, often depending on the individual’s specific vulnerabilities that the trafficker seeks to exploit. In today’s digital age, recruitment through social media platforms and video game chat rooms has become alarmingly common. Fraudulent job postings are another widespread method used to lure unsuspecting individuals.
Read the following examples to gain a clearer understanding of how recruitment can occur.
Example 1: Gail is 14 years old, feeling lonely and misunderstood by her family and peers. She likes to play video games. Pepper is a teenage girl who plays the game when Gail enters online mode. They talk over the mics and have fun and good laughs together. They start to message each other, and now Gail calls Pepper her best friend. Pepper seems to validate, encourage, and understand her more than anyone else. Pepper is asking to meet with Gail for a coffee date and a shopping trip to the mall. They meet and have fun. Pepper tells her, “You could move in with me if you want. I can get you a customer service job working with me, and it would be fun! But maybe don’t tell your parents. They wouldn’t understand.” Gail thinks it over for a while. She has a fight with her mom, and she impulsively decides to take Pepper up on her offer. Gail didn’t know that the job Pepper offered was stripping at a club and selling sex to customers. Gail sleeps in the back of the building with a few other girls/women. Gail is moved from club to club every two weeks. She wants to leave, but feels like she can’t. Pepper tells her regularly, “Your family would never accept her back now. Nobody wants a wh*re for a daughter. And I’ve taken good care of you. If you try to leave, I know where you and your family live. You’ll stay if you want your family safe.”
Example 2: Benny wants to earn his bachelor’s degree and start a good career so that he can help support his family. His father recently abandoned them, and he wants to step up as the oldest son. He asked his boss if they offer college tuition assistance. His boss replied, “Normally we don’t offer that, but I like you, kid, and I see a lot of potential in you. Let me take you under my wing as a son, and I’ll help you out. Meet me at my house this Saturday at 8pm for a side job, and you can start earning tuition assistance that way.” The “side job” turned out to be pimping out Benny at house parties. Benny thinks that if he stops, he won’t be able to help support his family, and that he would have failed them just like his father did. He returns home, and his mother never seems to notice what is happening because Benny puts on a brave face.
Harboring
Harbor by definition means to:
1). give shelter or refuge to; to be the home or habitat of.
2). to hold especially persistently in the mind
With this definition in mind, harboring refers to providing shelter or lodging to another individual. In the context of human trafficking, it specifically means that the trafficker provides a place for victims to stay, whether temporarily or long-term, as part of the exploitation process. That act of offering or controlling a victim’s shelter constitutes harboring.
Example 1: …Gail didn’t know that the job Pepper offered was stripping at a club and selling sex to customers. Gail sleeps in the back of the building with a few other girls/women. Gail is moved from club to club every two weeks. She wants to leave, but feels like she can’t. …
Transportation
Regarding transportation, Polaris Project notes, “Trafficking in escort services can use rental or private vehicles, buses, trains, and airlines to travel the country to access different commercial sex markets. Once there, they rely on taxis, rentals, and ridesharing apps to transport victims to/from buyers. Illicit massage networks hire private taxi drivers to transport victims between brothels.”
Cities with major ports, highways, and airports tend to experience higher rates of human trafficking due to their convenient access to multiple modes of transportation. Victims may be concealed among cargo shipments on ships, travel alongside their traffickers on commercial flights, or be transported in the storage compartments of freight trucks. Highways that cross several states often serve as preferred routes for traffickers, providing a range of logistical options and easy mobility across jurisdictions.
Provision
“Sex trafficking is the … provision … of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act…”
When I first read this portion of the legal definition, I was unsure what “provision” meant in this context. I now understand that it refers to the act of supplying or making a victim available to a buyer. In other words, sex trafficking involves providing a trafficked individual to a consumer for the purpose of a commercial sex act.
We want to read your interpretation of this definition, as well as any comments or questions you may have, in the comment section.
Obtaining
Obtaining a person for the purpose of commercial sex acts refers to having possession, control, or access to that individual. This does not only describe the literal purchase of a person for commercial sex. It also captures situations where someone gains control over a victim in a position of power or exploitation in order to use them for commercial sex acts.
Patronizing and soliciting of a person
The mention of “patronizing” and “soliciting” within the TVPA directly addresses the buyers of trafficked victims. If you know anything about business, you’ve likely heard the term supply and demand. Products—or in this tragic context, people—are supplied because there is buyer-driven demand. In simple terms, the demand for commercial sex fuels the supply of exploited individuals.
Addressing the buyers of sex-trafficked victims is critically important, because the industry could not exist without their willingness to purchase sex.
The state of Montana’s Title 45. Crimes § 45-5-705 (1) defines patronizing a victim of sex trafficking as follows:
A person commits the offense “ if the person purposely or knowingly gives, agrees to give, or offers to give anything of value so that a person may engage in commercial sexual activity that involves sexual contact that is direct and not through clothing with another person who the person knows or reasonably should have known is a victim of sex trafficking.”
Patronizing refers to a buyer going through with—or agreeing to—a transaction for commercial sex, and engaging in the sexual act(s) while knowing, or having reasonable cause to know, that the person is a sex trafficking victim.
Soliciting, on the other hand, is the act of seeking out, requesting, persuading, or attempting to obtain a person for commercial sex, whether or not the transaction is completed or paid for. Solicitation can occur online, in person, or through a third party.
In simple terms: solicitation is seeking to buy commercial sex; patronizing is the follow-through.
Force, Fraud and Coercion
Force, Fraud and Coercion, speak to how a trafficker may gain and maintain control of their victim(s). These can play out in so many different ways. The following are 8 key ways a trafficker may use force, fraud and/or coercion to maintain control.
- Violence and threats of violence: Victims often experience physical abuse, and traffickers frequently use threats against the safety of the victim’s loved ones as a way to maintain control.
- Deception: Deception is a common tactic used in recruitment. For example, a false job listing may serve as a front for what is actually a trafficking operation. Victims are often manipulated through lies such as, “You can go once you pay off this debt,” “We will bring your family from Venezuela so you can be together,” or “You cannot trust the police.”
- Imprisonment: Physical restraints, imprisonment, or constant surveillance and monitoring are also common. Examples include doors locked from the outside, surveillance cameras, or victims being confined in dog cages, etc.
- Collusion: Victims may be forced to participate in illegal activities such as selling or using drugs, engaging in prostitution, recruiting additional victims, theft, fraud, and more. This often causes victims to feel complicit in their traffickers’ crimes. As a result, many believe they cannot seek help because they fear they will also be arrested.
- Debt bondage: Debt bondage is a tactic in which a victim becomes indebted to their trafficker. This can happen, for example, when someone needs help paying medical bills and a trafficker steps in to “help” them. Because the trafficker is a predator, they continually compound the debt or add more debt every time the victim fails to meet their requirements or quotas. A trafficker may present themselves as a “manager” for an adult film actor but is, in reality, functioning as a pimp—taking all or most of the victim’s earnings under the claim that the victim still owes money. By design, the victim can never fully repay the debt; it becomes perpetual. In some parts of the world, entire families have been enslaved for generations under debt bondage.
- Relationship: A trafficker can be a romantic interest, spouse, or boyfriend of the victim. The romantic bond is strategically used to keep the victim feeling a sense of loyalty to their trafficker. A trafficker taking on a mother or father figure role in the victim’s life can have a similar effect. The grooming process can last days, weeks, months, or even years. Traffickers are often highly strategic in how they handle their victims. Emotional manipulation becomes a powerful stronghold that can leave victims feeling trapped and unable to leave.
- Isolation: This includes restricting victims from speaking to their family and friends or from interacting with the outside world in normal ways. Isolation may also be reinforced by maintaining a language barrier.
- Religion, culture and beliefs: Compelling a victim’s compliance through religion, rituals, superstition, or deeply held personal beliefs that they would not want to betray.
Conclusion
Sex trafficking is a complex crime. Understanding the elements that make up sex trafficking equips you to recognize the red flags. Whether you are concerned about someone in your life or evaluating a situation you may have encountered yourself, knowledge is power—and applying that knowledge is even more powerful.
If you suspect that someone you know may be in danger of being trafficked, may be a trafficker, or may be involved on the demand side of the industry, please contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text INFO to 233733. The National Human Trafficking Hotline is 24/7 and confidential. If someone is in immediate danger, call or text 911.
Sources
U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Human Trafficking Quick Facts.” DHS, https://www.dhs.gov/human-trafficking-quick-facts. Accessed 13 Nov. 2025.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “Harbouring Explained.” UN ODC, 2021, https://www.unodc.org/unodc/human-trafficking/Webstories2021/harbouring-explained.html. Accessed 13 Nov. 2025.
Polaris Project. “Human Trafficking and the Transportation Industry.” Polaris Project, https://polarisproject.org/human-trafficking-and-the-transportation-industry/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2025.
“Harbor.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harbor. Accessed 13 Nov. 2025.
OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (Version 5.1) [Large language model; used for proofreading assistance]. https://chat.openai.com
“Mont. Code Ann. § 45-5-705: Patronizing a Victim of Sex Trafficking.” FindLaw, https://codes.findlaw.com/mt/title-45-crimes/mt-st-45-5-705/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2025.
Human Rights First. “Force, Fraud and Coercion.” Human Rights First, https://humanrightsfirst.org/library/force-fraud-and-coercion/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2025.
American Public University System. “Law Enforcement and Legislation: ‘Patronize’ and ‘Solicit’ Are Two Words That Make a World of Difference.” APU Edge, https://apuedge.com/law-enforcement-and-legislation-patronize-and-solicit-are-two-words-that-make-a-world-of-difference/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2025.
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