How does sex trafficking work? How exactly do the traffickers find customers and make money? Why is it so hard for authorities to find them if customers can so easily?
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have you watched the movie “Taken” ? it can work like that. where someone local targets visiting women and kidnaps them, gets them addicted, and then sets them up as sex workers.
other times the woman may come from a poor country and voluntarily be “traffiked” meaning they work with someone who helps them get a visa to another country to set them up as a hooker. sometimes the woman is taken advantage of where she has her passport taken, and is basically trapped. other times, she’s not and it’s a beneficial relationship to both parties and she can come and go as she wants, work or not work.
no idea bout the 1st two questions, i get the feel these are only answerable by 1st hand experiences.
why is it so hard to find these people?, its an illegal activity that widely agreed to be a serious crime even to the point where otherwise hostile nation can cooperate to end this. These people will go out of their way to ensure they cannot be found even while hidden in plain sight, their lives literally depend on that.
I found [this article](https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/massage-parlors-sex-trafficking-report-pennsylvania-jersey-20180129.html) enlightening. Generally women from Asian countries are promised jobs with higher wages than what they can make in their home county. These women are brought through airports and driven to massage parlors where they are told they have to pay back the cost incurred bringing them to the US. The live and eat inside the parlor, there is surveillance and bars on the windows. How many strip mall massage parlors have you seen in your area? How do you know which are just massage parlors, which are parlors with willing sex workers and which are parlors with women who have no choice?
Sadly, you have to look at it as a business network. The catch all term “trafficker” is not too useful. There are folks who “source” – ie find the victims/participants (and some of these participants may go into the business knowingly). There are those who specialize in “transportation”. There are probably “brokers” in between. Then there are the people who run the final “retail service” – brothels etc.
Each participant in this network specializes in their area. Eg, the retailer is known by word of mouth or subtle (or not so subtle) advertising. It is not simple to break up a network – if you cut off one link, someone else comes in to replace it. You can hear “busts” of a particular element, say a “transportation” link. But, I suppose the reality is that there are many links active at any time and by their nature, they are going to be hidden from each other as well as the public.
There is very little child trafficking, but fear mongering around child trafficking is big business, there are several podcasts on your wrong about podcast explains this.
I am not a professional on the subject, but as a feminist it’s important to be informed and aware of why, how, and when trafficking happens. I recomend watching documentaries about victims or informative movies, such as “Trafficked” (will wallace) or this film on youtube: https://youtu.be/MFaDHgXPbUg . It’s easy enough to see it in text, but for myself, watching real emotion always stresses importance and embeds information. Personally I’m a visual learner. Sorry that I can’t be more help, I hope to have informed!
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