Understanding Human Trafficking FICTION

vs.

FACT

FICTION: Human trafficking always involves moving, 
traveling, or transporting a person across state or 
national borders. 

FACT: Human trafficking is NOT human 
smuggling. These are two distinct crimes. In fact, 
the crime of human trafficking does not require 
any movement whatsoever. Persons can be 
recruited and trafficked in their own communities 
and even their own homes.

FICTION: All human trafficking involves commercial 
sex.

FACT: While there is much wider awareness 
about sex trafficking in the United States, human 
trafficking also encompasses labor trafficking. In 
a labor trafficking situation, persons are exploited 
for cheap or unpaid labor and are sometimes 
forced to take on unreasonable debt as a 
condition of employment. 

FICTION: Only women and girls are victims of sex 
trafficking. 

FACT: Men and boys can also be sexually 
exploited. LGBTQ + boys and young men are 
particularly vulnerable to trafficking. 

FICTION: All human traffickers use physical violence. 

FACT: By far the most pervasive myth about 
human trafficking is that it always - or often - 
involves kidnapping or otherwise physically 
forcing someone into a situation. In reality, most 
human traffickers use psychological means 
such as tricking, defrauding, manipulating or 
threatening victims into providing commercial sex 
or exploitative labor.

FICTION: Human trafficking is only a “big city” 
problem.

FACT: Wherever there is a demand for 
commercial sex or cheap labor, human trafficking 
will follow. The internet and smartphones 
enable traffickers to reach customers and recruit 
potential victims regardless of geographical 
constraints. 

FICTION:  All commercial sex is human trafficking. 

FACT: While all sex trafficking includes 
commercial sex, not all commercial sex meets 
the legal definition of human trafficking. For 
commercial sex to qualify as human trafficking, 
force, fraud, or coercion must be present. 

However, all persons under the age of 18 who 
engage in commercial sex are considered 
trafficking victims under Federal and State laws, 
regardless of whether force, fraud, or coercion 
are present. Under Pennsylvania’s Safe Harbor 
Law, persons under the age of 18 cannot be 
prosecuted for the crime of prostitution. 

FICTION: All human trafficking victims are ready to get 
help.

FACT: Trafficking victimization is complicated 
and victims do not always self-identify. The 
fear, shame, trauma, isolation, and manipulation 
inherit in human trafficking can prevent a victim 
from seeking help or attempting to leave an 
exploitative situation, no matter how dangerous. 

Pennsylvania allows trafficking survivors to 
petition the court to vacate convictions for 
prostitution, criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, 
loitering and prowling at night time, obstructing 
highways and other public passages, and 
simple possession of a controlled substance if 
their convictions were sustained as a result of 
trafficking victimization. For more information 
on criminal record relief for survivors see 
The Institute to Address Commercial Sexual 
Exploitation and The Survivor Reentry Project. 

FICTION: If a person consented to be in their initial 
situation, then they cannot later be considered a 
trafficking victim. 

FACT: Initial consent to engage in commercial sex 
or labor prior to acts of force, fraud, or coercion 
(or if the victim is a minor in a sex trafficking 
situation) is not relevant to the crime. Further, a 
person cannot be considered to have consented 
to being exploited where consent was obtained 
through improper means, or in the case of minors, 
where their particularly vulnerable status renders 
it impossible to consent in the first place.