October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and people are helping educate others on the topic. These efforts can raise understanding about the dynamics of abuse and how different forms overlap, like how domestic violence and sexual assault are linked. Another thing we should learn about is how domestic violence and human trafficking are related. 

Domestic violence, trafficking, and the sex trade all involve someone with more power and resources trying to control another person with less power and resources. A controlling person may use threats, isolation, and even physical and sexual abuse against their victims. They may also use emotional manipulation by making someone feel poorly about themselves or financial abuse by controlling another person’s money.  

Learning how domestic violence and sexual exploitation are related, including how each one can increase a person’s vulnerability to the other, makes you better prepared to support survivors. 

Sexual Exploitation in Intimate Relationships 

When most people hear the words “domestic violence” they think about intimate partner violence. This is when someone in an intimate relationship—like dating or marriage—experiences abuse from their partner. People in the sex trade are sometimes in intimate relationships with their pimp or trafficker. 

Pimps and traffickers often make someone enter the sex trade by gaining their trust and creating an illusion that the two are closely bonded. This is called grooming. A person who is later forced into trafficking may have first believed that their trafficker was a caring partner. Nearly 40% of trafficking victims enter the sex trade this way. Traffickers tend to target people with vulnerabilities that may make them easier to groom, like living in poverty, having been in foster care, being from marginalized racial or gender groups, and having been abused.  

A pimp or trafficker may also try to control a person who sells sex by threatening to tell others about how they make money. This can be extra alarming when they have children, especially with the pimp or trafficker. The stigma surrounding the sex trade can make someone fear being blamed, further victimized, and even criminalized if they ask for help. This could lead to having their children taken away, or even placed with the abuser, which further discourages the person being abused from leaving or reporting the abuser.  

For a survivor named Xaria, the intimate partner violence she experienced for years worsened after she became pregnant. Her abusive partner turned into her trafficker who profited from selling Xaria to buyers and forced her to use drugs. Like many survivors, before Xaria was able to find support, she didn’t realize that she was experiencing trafficking. “I knew what had happened to me, but I didn’t know there was a name for it.”  

Sexual Exploitation When Escaping Domestic Violence 

Some people enter the sex trade when they are trying to escape intimate partner violence. This is not a free “choice” among many safe options, but an act of survival amid limited options to meet their basic needs. If a person’s abusive partner controls their money or access to necessities like housing or food, they may have few alternatives to support themselves after leaving.  

Seeking protection after escaping domestic violence can also be a path into sex trafficking. When Susannah left a harmful relationship, she feared her abuser would come after her. Having no one to turn to for help, commercial sex seemed like her only way forward. She then met a trafficker who manipulated her into believing he would protect her from her past abuser. “He would refer clients to me and I would give him a cut in return. I thought it was a business relationship. I thought I had the upper hand. My goal was to get housing and figure out a way to get my child from my domestic violence abuser,” Susannah explains.  

Keep in mind that sex trafficking is one form of human trafficking. Another form is labor trafficking, and the two can happen at the same time. For example, CAASE supported a survivor who was unaware her new employer would become her trafficker. After leaving an abusive relationship, Lydia accepted a job as a nanny in Chicago so she could support her children in Mexico. Her employer took her passport, sexually harassed her, and then raped her.  

Sex Exploitation, Family Control, and Family Rejection 

Some people are trafficked by their family or by someone close to their family. This is called familial trafficking. When these cases involve a youth, they may still take part in everyday activities and attend school. They may not report the abuse because they fear they won’t be believed, will be placed in the child welfare system, or that their family members will be taken away.  

A person can also enter the sex trade and experience trafficking due to being rejected by their family. A more powerful family member may deny another family member’s basic needs out of unfair biases. For example, LGBTQ+ youth can experience family rejection and abuse when their relatives don’t accept their gender identity or sexuality. Almost 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ+.  

At age 16, survivor Jose Alfaro was thrown out of his home by his parents for being gay. Soon after, he was trafficked by an adult pretending to help him. “Homeless LGBTQ people of color have long been exploited as trafficking victims,” says Jose. Some people call this type of trafficking “survival sex” because a person is forced to sell sex for food, money, and housing.  

To be clear, there is no such thing as a child or youth sex worker. Any youth subjected to sex in exchange for something of value is a trafficking victim. Child trafficking victims are prohibited from being arrested for prostitution in Illinois and are eligible for services under state and federal law. CAASE has led policy campaigns to center youth survivors and pass laws in our state, like the Illinois Safe Children Act and the Prevent Unfair Sentencing of Youth Act. 

How to Support Survivors  

What can we do to help trafficking survivors? We can advocate for survivor-led policy approaches like the Equality Model, also known as partial decriminalization. The goal is to offer trauma-informed services and safe ways to leave the sex trade. This policy approach also seeks to end the arrest of people who sell sex, no matter how they define their experience in the sex trade. Survivor Esperanza Fonseca explains that “the ‘Equality Model’ decriminalizes people exploited in prostitution and provides exit services. And it still holds pimps, brothel owners, and sex buyers accountable.” 

Want to learn more about the important issues discussed here? Start by reading about the signs of human trafficking. You can also look to CAASE’s blog posts on the sex trade: 

• What is Sex Trafficking? 
• The Mental Health Impacts of the Sex Trade 
• Follow the Leadership of LGBTQ+ Sex Trade Survivors 
• Black Women are Still Fighting to be Free from Sex Trafficking 
• Workers’ Rights Won’t Fix the Sex Trade 
• The Truth About Sex Trafficking  

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CAASE published this piece on October 11, 2023. It was authored by Tayler Mathews with assistance from Hayley Forrestal. It was edited by Madeleine Behr. Learn more about our staff here.