Wearing tight jeans is not an invitation to a sexual encounter. Indeed, nothing a person does, says, or wears makes that person in any way responsible for their own harassment, assault, or other victimization – including trafficking.  That’s the short version of the message of Denim Day, an internationally-recognized day to support survivors of sexual violence and bring awareness to the issue of victim-blaming. Human trafficking survivors know this issue all too well. Many are dealing with criminal records that are the direct result of their having been victimized and forced into committ ..read more

For most Americans, it’s normal to assume that your employer will treat you with dignity and respect, regardless of the industry. It’s not radical to expect safe and fair working conditions.  But that’s not always the case if you are a foreign worker with a temporary work visa, like the H-2A or H-2B. In 2021, more than 250,000 workers were granted work permits through the H-2A visa program, which brings essential migrant workers into the US agriculture sector. Almost 90% were Mexican nationals.  These visa holders accept seasonal employment in the US, hoping that they will receive f ..read more

Many survivors of human trafficking are also survivors of sexual abuse. During April’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we are exploring the intersection of sexual abuse and human trafficking. Human trafficking is defined as the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor against their will. Sexual abuse can be a method of control that traffickers use – in both sex and labor trafficking situations. We looked at contacts to the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline from 2015 through 2021 and examined the number of victims who experienced sexual abuse ..read more

Photo Credit: change.org. The release of a National Survivor Study (NSS) by Polaris confirmed what many in the anti-trafficking field have always known – trafficking victims are being arrested and charged for crimes at shocking rates. The NSS data found that of 439 participating trafficking survivors, 62 percent had been cited, arrested, or detained by law enforcement at least once. Digging deeper into the data to see if the arrests might have come before or after the trafficking experience, 80 percent said the arrests came while they were being trafficked. This study supported the claim ..read more

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken an important step to protect noncitizen workers from exploitative employers who threaten them with deportation or with other types of retaliation related to their immigration status. From now on, DHS will expedite deferred action for those workers who have experienced or witnessed work violations and would like to cooperate with the investigation.  When workers call the National Human Trafficking Hotline to report abuses at their workplaces, one of the most common methods of control they mention is threats of deportation. In fact, b ..read more

From zip ties to car seats to perfumed roses, there are a lot of scary rumors out there about how people get recruited into human trafficking. None of them are true – at least that is what we have learned after 15 years of operating the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline. But the reality is, in some ways, equally frightening: The vast majority of trafficking victims know and often love or trust their traffickers, who are family members, so-called friends, intimate partners, or even prospective employers. Still that scary stuff in your social media feed can – understandably – begin to mak ..read more

Testimony from victims of crime is often the key to the successful prosecution of any crime. But that success can come at a significant cost to the victims themselves, who have to repeatedly relive some of the most painful or scary moments of their lives. The situation is even more difficult for victims of human trafficking, who often have complex emotional ties to the trafficker.  That’s why Polaris worked with the U.S. Department of Justice to ensure that the particular needs of victims of human trafficking were taken into account in its latest guidelines for how federal prosecutors wor ..read more

I am a survivor of human trafficking. I am also a Black woman.  Telling the real story of human trafficking – the story that acknowledges that human trafficking is the predictable end result of systems built in an unequal world – requires listening to survivors to understand their experiences. However, as a Black survivor of human trafficking myself, I must tell you that the voices of Black survivors have historically been left out of the anti trafficking movement. If you look at the origins of the anti trafficking movement, this erasure of Black survivors is not all that surprising. Hist ..read more

Photo Credit: Anything Goes With James English is licensed under CC BY 3.0. Social media personality Andrew Tate is behind bars in Romania, amid rape and human trafficking allegations. In the press release about Tate’s arrest, Romanian officials said that Tate and his brother Tristan recruited victims by making them believe they were interested in having real romantic relationships with them, transporting them to live in houses where they were forced to act in porn videos that were sold online. Tate has told news media he is no trafficker – since he didn’t physically force the victim ..read more

The findings of the National Survivor Study (NSS) tell the story of survivors after they exit their exploitation – and it’s the first time this story is being told at this depth and scale. What led us here was not a regimented and narrow research goal. Instead, it was humility, flexibility, and the willingness to step back, listen, and let a diverse group of survivors lead.  Polaris has recently released a report titled, In Harm’s Way: How Systems Fail Human Trafficking Survivors. The report shares the initial findings from the NSS, a scientifically rigorous research project designed to s ..read more