Recognizing and Responding to Human Trafficking in Texas, 2nd Edition _____________________________
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INTRODUCTION Human trafficking is an extreme and heinous violation of human rights that persists around the globe, including throughout the U.S., despite extensive efforts to eradicate this atrocious crime. Human trafficking is a crime involving the exploitation of victims for the purpose of compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud, or coer- cion. Force in the context of human trafficking includes physi- cal restraint, physical harm, sexual assault, and/or beatings, and may also include monitoring and confinement to control victims (National Human Trafficking Hotline, 2023). Fraud includes false promises of employment, living conditions, love, marriage, or a better life, and may also include withholding promised wages, or contract fraud (National Human Traffick- ing Hotline, 2023). Coercion may include threats of harm to self or others, debt bondage, psychological manipulation, or document confiscation, as well as fear-inducing threats to share information or pictures with others or report to authorities (National Human Trafficking Hotline). The most vulnerable victims are typically women and children; however, victims of human trafficking can be any age and any gender. Although multiple organizations publish data and statistics concerning human trafficking, at present there is no consensus on the total number of human trafficking victims in the U.S. Many victims of human trafficking never disclose the nature of their situation, and because of this, it is impossible to estimate the actual number of human trafficking victims. Other inherent systemic difficulties—such as lack of coordinated data and inconsistent definitions of key terms—add further chal- lenges to accurately estimating the number of trafficked people regionally as well as globally (Sprang et al., 2022). Because of this, healthcare providers and organizations involved with traf- ficked persons have been called to “increase their capacity to identify and refer people in trafficking situations and provide sensitive and safe services to people post-trafficking” (World Health Organization [WHO], 2012). Healthcare professionals are uniquely positioned to identify and intervene on behalf of trafficking victims, as outside of law enforcement, healthcare settings are among the few places where the lives of human trafficking victims may intersect with the rest of society, if only for brief periods (Trossman, 2008). Despite numerous multidisciplinary and multiagency efforts to reduce human trafficking in the U.S., this public health crisis persists. In 2021, the National Human Trafficking Hotline (NHTH) received a total of 51,073 substantive signals (phone calls, SMS, webchats, online tip reports, or emails) regarding instances of human trafficking, which resulted in 10,360 confirmed unique cases of human trafficking (NHTH Data Report, 2023). Because of this, healthcare providers across the U.S. must become well- versed in identifying individuals who may be in a trafficking situation and supporting them to safety.
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