The dire circumstances of the lives of human trafficking victims can make the problem seem insurmountable. But this crime doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s possible to identify the forces that shape this issue — and to create better solutions that may prevent trafficking before it begins.
Human trafficking is part of a continuum of violence and vulnerability, and deeply tied with desperation, economic instability, and — at least in terms of sex trafficking in Maine — trauma and addiction. We know that youth who grow up with more adverse childhood experiences than their peers — violence, addiction, loss and having someone close them incarcerated — grow up more likely to have more of these same experiences, as well as job and food insecurity, poverty and chronic health concerns.
The same is true of many victims of trafficking: the Maine Human Trafficking Needs Assessment tells us that most Maine trafficking survivors experience serious instability in their youth — which can make them more vulnerable to exploitation.
[MORE: 5 things you need to know about sex trafficking in Maine]
That vulnerability grows when those same youth experience childhood sexual abuse. Children who experience ongoing sexual abuse in their early years bring important lessons with them into adolescence. They learn that their body is a commodity — to be traded for affection, attention, basic needs, and their parents’ rent. They learn that they don’t own their bodies or what happens to them. They learn to equate their value with their sexuality.
They also learn to never, ever tell. If they tell, they won’t be believed. If they tell, terrible things will happen. All too often, those lessons ensure that they don’t tell. Only 38 percent of sexually abused children disclose the abuse they suffer. And when they do, sometimes they aren’t believed, and the system often fails them.
When these lessons are joined by lack of opportunity, lack of access to basic needs, and lack of trauma-informed mental health care, there are very few opportunities for positive or meaningful outcomes — and many opportunities for exploiters and traffickers to see a way to turn this situation into a profitable one.
It is possible to address the conditions that may lead to sex trafficking in Maine — though it’s not easy, of course. Significant efforts are underway to respond to early trauma, such as the expansion of Maine’s Children’s Advocacy Centers, coalitions such as the Maine Resiliency Building Network and prevention programming in communities across the state.
Access to health care, mental health and crisis supports, shelter, addiction treatment and basic needs are critically important to both prevent and respond to trafficking — and these, too, are something that we as a Maine community can choose to support.
[MORE: ‘The life’: Sex trafficking survivors tell their stories]
Still, no conversation about trafficking would be complete without recognizing that it is also an issue rooted in racial and gender inequality — as is the case with sexual and domestic violence. The vast majority of sex trafficking cases, like cases of sexual and domestic violence, are incidents of men victimizing women, and that violence increases when racism and homophobia are included. For instance, in cases of male survivors of trafficking, many or most are LGBTQ youth, victimized by men.
There is hope. We can address early trauma, and we can build the safety net to ensure that people have access to basic needs, health and mental health care, and substance abuse treatment. But until we change social norms and stop treating women’s bodies as commodities, the roots of sex trafficking will still be present in our culture.
The good news is that this, too, can be done. The hard won cultural changes related to domestic and sexual violence in the last 30 years give us hope that we know how to change the world on these issues — and in fact, we’re getting pretty good at it.
Destie Hohman Sprague is the associate director at the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault. She may be reached at destie@mecasa.org.