10 Types of Invisible Chains Traffickers Use to Keep Victims in Slavery
Published July 17, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Why don't human trafficking victims who aren't physically confined or chained up just leave? Because traffickers use many types of invisible chains, tactics of control and abuse, to confine victims in other ways. Think about these scenarios as if you were a trafficking victim and ask yourself, "if someone did this to me, could I leave?" Some common invisible chains are:
1. Coercion and Threats. Often, traffickers will threaten to rape, beat, murder or traffic the victim's children, spouse or family. This is a powerful threat, especially when you know the trafficker knows exactly where your family lives. Traffickers may also threaten to tell your family or community that you have been in prostitution or doing demeaning work. They may tell you what a failure you will be if you stop working.
2. Controlling Perception. Traffickers control victims' perception of their situation and the world by being their primary or only source of information. If the traffickers are the only people you know in the place you are, and they tell you that the police will beat, imprison or deport you, would you call the cops? The traffickers have also told you that you have no rights. They have told you the government is corrupt and everyone in the community is their friend. How about now?
3. Creating Dependencies. Traffickers often attempt to make their victims completely dependent. They may control physical items such as your passport or identification. They may force or entice you to take drugs or drink alcohol and become addicted. Traffickers also create economic dependencies by controlling all the your money and/or food.
4. Economic Abuse. Economic abuse is extremely common in human trafficking situations. Debt bondage- excessive debt enforced under abusive and unreasonable conditions -binds can bind you to your traffickers, especially if the traffickers have told you you'll be thrown in jail if you don't repay the debt. You can easily be trapped in a never ending cycle of fabricated debt and/or control of your money.
5. False Promises. Sometimes hope is the strongest weapon. The traffickers may have made you promises- earning money for your family, safety for yourself and your kids or even love from the trafficker. These promises are what lured you into exploitation and what keeps you here. Children are especially vulnerable to such manipulation.
6. Indulgences. One strong control tactic for creating emotional dependencies is providing occasional indulgences, like gifts, affection or information. These indulgences, especially when coupled with the false promises, lure you into a false sense of security and trust.
7. Isolation. Traffickers may isolate victims by limiting contact with others and monitoring conversations. Traffickers may prevent you from talking to your family or people in your same ethnic or religious group. They may repeatedly tell you that you are all alone in your situation, that no one will help or believe you, that you have no legal rights, that what has happened is your fault, or that there is no hope.
8. Minimizing and Blaming: Traffickers may reinforce internalizing blame by telling you that you're worthless, deserving of the abuse, or owned by another person. The trafficker claims you are personal property, which both minimizes you and justifies the abuse.
9. Privilege: Cultural, Religious and/or Gender. Sometimes, traffickers are of a dominate race/religion/gender compared to the victim. They may degrade your religious or cultural beliefs or force you to do things against your religion or culture. Male traffickers will often use gender privilege to control female victims, including using rape and sexual abuse as control tactics.
10. Sexual Abuse. Sexual abuse doesn't always have to be physical, such as rape, or sexual assault. Sometimes, sexual harassment and threatened sexual violence are even more effective tools of control. The trafficker may call you degrading sexual names or threaten to rape or assault you.
These are just a few of the invisible chains which traffickers use to keep their slaves. Sadly, many of these are just as effective if not more so than actually locking a victim up with chains.
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Amanda has been a full-time abolitionist for six years. During that time, she has created reports, documentaries and training materials on human trafficking in the United States and around the world.
incredible post, and one of the most iconic graphics of all time.
Posted by Nathaniel Whittemore on 01/04/2009 @ 10:28PM PT
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I have read that slavery during the Roman Empire and the feudal period (until the Black Death made serf labor scarce and the Industrial revolution briefly made human labor much more valuable) was not racially based, it was the punishment for losing wars or going into debt. I see many forces pushing us towards a new, nonracial sort of new feudalism. Technology is replacing people rapidly in scriptable jobs. I fear that "human trafficking" as you put it may become the norm as jobs dry up globally. I hope not. What can we do to prevent this without sinking into even worse traps.. I think controlled introduction of inefficiencies in desirable places could save us and provide a clear path to sustainability.
We must not be allowed to become a Third World World!
Posted by Live Simply on 01/06/2009 @ 09:24AM PT
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Hi!This is a very comprehensive look at what can cause modern-day slavery. Through my work with Minga (www.MingaGroup.ORG) I am always looking for clear-cut information like this and I especially am glad that you included sexual abuse in your list. Studies have shown that more than half of women sex workers in America were abused as children, and it's very important to recognize that abused children are at an even higher risk of entering into sex slavery.If you are interested in joining the movement to end the child sex trade through youth education and empowerment, go to www.MingaGroup.ORG.
Posted by Katie Simon on 01/09/2009 @ 09:17AM PT
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"child trafficking" in Sedgwick County (Wichita) Kansas. The children are removed illegally violating their constitutional and human rights, color of law, Federal and State laws with falsified documents. They are then placed in foster care where many of them are raped and abused - all in the name of money. The government pays the state of kansas and CPS/SRS to remove those cildren illegally -all at a cost to the tax payer. Our government is going to destroy our children and our country.
Time for a change.
http://www.thesociologycenter.com/slavetrade.html
Posted by Marlene Jones on 01/09/2009 @ 12:26PM PT
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This sounds a lot of how I was treated in school as a child!!
Posted by R W on 01/09/2009 @ 01:17PM PT
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This sounds a lot of how I was treated in school as a child!!
I meant to add this link:
http://www.angelfire.com/sk/abuse/index.html
Posted by R W on 01/09/2009 @ 01:22PM PT
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I don't know where to post this exactly but it is along this line I think.
Not many people are aware of implants. Unfortunately the people that have the most knowledge of these things are the wrong people. It still happens. People can be drugged and someone can put an implant in them (ear or other areas of the body) and then in turn "own" this person. They can try to make them live a certain way or do things through the use of voices or just physical torture with these things. The victims of these things are left to deal with the pain and human ignorance when trying to get their lives back. Trying to explain the whole thing leaves them slandered. Usually written off as a crazy person. This only feeds the phychosis of the person that put it there in the first place when their victim is left begging to be treated like a rational human being. Technology is usually no help as it can be manipulated and is not a place to turn. The law is usually no help as the description of the horror a victim endures is written off as drugs or mental instability. These people end up an outcast from the lives they once led and the things they once believed in due to human ignorance. All the while, there is someone tripping all over them, their rights and getting away with it. It is sick and it should not be so hard for a victim to be heard out. It should not add fuel to the fire when a victim denies the person that did this to their life. They should be allowed to refuse to use drugs, have sex with other people, be homeless, destitute just on the whim of some psycho. These things do really happen. Hackers love them.
Posted by Tanya Hoffman on 01/12/2009 @ 07:13AM PT
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Take a moment to look at the story of Tawni Lee Mazzone, formerly known as Maricopa Jane Doe in Phoenix AZ. This child was pushed or shoved from a vehicle moving at 75 mph, and died a day after impact. She was 17 years old, taken from her home by a pimp and tossed from the vehicle when she refused to give in to his demand that she prostitute for him-she lay unclaimed for 9 years because the perp refused to ID her and likely disposed of her possessions sometime in the 20 miles he traveled after running from the scene. He skipped town after parole, continued his trafficking of young women throughout the west under several different aliases and was recently returned to AZ. He was just sentenced to 3.75 years for his role in Tawni's death. This activity is rampant in Phoenix and other major cities in the West-young women are taken by serial offenders like this perp and turned out on the street. They are beaten and brutalized by these pimps, removed from their families and isolated.
Posted by Liz Cook on 01/16/2009 @ 11:58AM PT
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This is pretty crazy. I just saw a movie but it was more about forced slavery (drugs, threatening, weapons). Then noticed more and more about invisible chain slavery poping up on tv and online. Pretty good write up, I wrote a little something about it http://wgmeets.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/taken-somewhere/
Posted by When Giants Meet on 01/26/2009 @ 06:34AM PT
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so sad that society has not learned from history
Posted by Annie Bausman on 03/21/2009 @ 05:57AM PT
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When agencies and individuals knowingly remove a child on falsified documents and violations of Federal and State law, for monetary or any other reasons, that is child trafficking.
Child trafficking Definition: A child – a person under the age of 18; Traffic: transfer, harbouring or receipt by a third person or group, who organizes movement within a country. Threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud or deception, or the abuse of power any point of the movement do not need to be present in case of children, but are strong indications of child trafficking.
Child Protective Services, in taking children who do not meet the statutory definition of abuse or neglect from loving homes is creating more throwaway children than they are legitimately saving. CPS actors merely decide that children are at risk and that abuse or neglect may occur in the FUTURE. These are POLICE STATE TACTICS that are routinely deployed against citizens of totalitarian regimes. What happened to due process? What happened to the Constitution of the United States of America? Where is the Bill of Rights? Dismembering families and creating artificial orphans by means of fraud and/or deceptive trade practices is NOT legitimate government business.
CPS is part of a $14. billion dollar a year, tax payer fueled, child abuse industrial complex which provides jobs for caseworkers, judges, lawyers, bailiffs, various court personnel, psychotherapists, foster homes, pharmaceutical vendors and a host of others. CPS routinely employs unconstitutional actions, fraud, extortion, deceit, kidnapping, and conspiracy in an ongoing criminal enterprise designed to cheat the public and destroy the families of the United States of America for profit, for aggrandizement and to delude the public into thinking their actions are for the general welfare of this nation. Unconstitutional summary judicial proceedings designed to perpetrate for-profit crimes against humanity, family dismemberment and human trafficking, and to defraud the Federal Government for Social Services Agency operational funds have been perpetrated upon many families in America.
CPS engages in for-profit crimes against humanity consequent to the unlawful dismemberment of families to create human trafficking victims from which the County earns Federal funds with which to fund its operations. The exploitation of men, women and children for financial gain is the definition of human trafficking, which the former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice states is a modern day form of slavery. usinfo.state.gov/gi/global_issues/human_trafficking.html
Posted by Marlene Jones on 03/21/2009 @ 07:13AM PT
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I don't believe it. I got falsely reported in Kansas by a malicious relative, and CPS handled it very professionally with just one visit. If you had your kid taken away from you in Kansas you must have done something VERY wrong! They don't remove kids that easily.
Posted by Lynne Schultz on 10/31/2009 @ 08:24PM PT
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So true, but what about when it is little children you are dealing with. They can barely defend themselves.Recently in Trinidad and Tobago rumours spread that there was a container of kids ready to be deported, the gov't is trying to cover it up as sources say in that case what are we to do when we do not even have the facts and the very same people you are supposed to trust are the ones in control of this trafficking. It is llike you are living in invisisble chains without even realising it at your own home.
Posted by Shanna Sampath on 03/23/2009 @ 07:01PM PT
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I am a victim of human trafficking and the type of mind control tactics they use, are endless, starvation, drugging, abuse etc. the traffickers are usually sleazy horny losers who can't get a woman without drugs and controlling them. their only way of having sex with these beautiful woman is to kidnap, rape, and drugging or have control of the lives of these women. it's utterly sick and beyond human conprehension. Anyone who condones this or watch porn of women being raped needs to re evaluate themselves.
Posted by John Doe on 05/29/2009 @ 05:36PM PT
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I find this article well written and enlightening on modern-day human trafficking.
In my neighbourhood in Geylang ( Singapore ), the area has deteriorated over the area with street prostitution activities. While prostitution is legalised, soliciting is illegal in Singapore.
Among the street prostitutes, we notice there are Sri Lankan prostitution rings with pimps controlling and watching over the women for more than 3 years. The women are to solicit in the public walkways and then transact their sex deals in one of the licensed budget hotels providing hourly rated rooms.
Please see the videos and advise us what to do since our authorities are only focuing on arresting the girls....not the pimps or budget hotel operators who profited and knowingly facilitate the room services to the prostitution rings.
Are these videos depicting human trafficking by your definition?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utr7xuvkeVA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Sxg4Os0sQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0mo8FFuIL8
Thanks and Peace to all.
Jessy Koh
Posted by Jessy Koh on 06/19/2009 @ 10:27AM PT
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This is horrible. No one, absolutely no one should have to live this way.
Posted by Casey Williams on 06/23/2009 @ 12:13AM PT
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We need to install GPS in the bodies of the most vulnerable victims to locate them in case they get hurt and kidnapped again as well as to the bodies of traffickers to locate their whereabouts.
Posted by Ryan C on 07/03/2009 @ 04:10AM PT
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we have to go after the traffickers with most profit and use the funds to create the most secure facility in every police station for special victims for longer stay and 911 service to locate victims for necessary transportation. anyone who witness people transporting girls, girls in hostage should call 911 with their car license number, location of the house, pictures as an evidence so that those girls can be safely removed and placed in the facility for as long as they desire.
Posted by Ryan C on 07/03/2009 @ 04:22AM PT
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these applies to hospital workers, waiters at the restaurants, house keepers or anyone on the street, must see the signs of human trafficking and slavery and respond to it properly.
Posted by Ryan C on 07/03/2009 @ 04:24AM PT
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Wow Thank you for posting.
Posted by Amy Collins on 10/22/2009 @ 10:37PM PT
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Excellent post. As much as our materialistic society wants us to focus on ever more increasing levels of self-indulgence, we must focus instead on our responsibility for each other. Sometimes it is as simple as not turning away. Sometimes it just means picking up the phone.
Posted by Deborah Outman on 10/29/2009 @ 09:32PM PT
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I was in foster care and CPS is a human trafficking ring in itself! I was raped for four years in their care and then I was so screwed up when I got older, I hardly couldn't function mentally properly for years, Only by the grace of Jesus Christ was I able to overcome the horror of my life. I HATE pedophiles and if anyone were to touch my kid I would chop his wanker off and bury him or her alive... NO JOKE!!!!
Posted by Dawn Worswick on 11/14/2009 @ 03:56PM PT
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