How Pornography Can Fuel Sex Trafficking

Sex trafficking is a form of modern slavery in which someone coerces or deceives another person into commercial sexual exploitation for profit.¹³

Sex trafficking in porn is a much bigger issue than most people realise. According to cases reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, pornography was the 3rd-most common form of sex trafficking, after escort services and illicit massage businesses.¹⁴

Numerous surveys reveal the undeniable link between pornography, the sex industry and sex trafficking, meaning porn is not private or victimless.

The vast majority of human trafficking victims come from vulnerable populations, and of the approximately 24.9 million victims of forced labour, an estimated 4.8 million are trafficked for sex. Even more disturbingly, more than 1 in 5 sex trafficking victims are children.¹⁵

Sex trafficking isn’t always about kidnapped victims who are kept imprisoned. Whilst that does happen, sex trafficking often involves psychological manipulation and often exploits the most vulnerable populations. In fact, according to a report of prosecuted sex trafficking cases in the U.S, 59% of coercive tactics used by traffickers were non-physical, compared to 41% of tactics involving physical coercion.¹⁶

It is also important to remember that psychological manipulation used by traffickers can often be just as powerful, if not more powerful, than physical force.¹⁷

Pornography and sex trafficking are connected in several ways:

Sex trafficking victims can be forced, tricked, or coerced into pornography production.
If someone is physically overpowered, drugged, or otherwise made to participate in a commercial sex act against their will or without their consent, they have been sex trafficked by force.
Compelling someone to participate in a commercial sex act by lying or tricking them qualifies as sex trafficking by fraud.
If someone is made to participate in a commercial sex act through the use of threats, manipulation, or intimidation, that is sex trafficking by coercion.

One common way trafficking occurs in the porn industry is through the coercion used by agents and producers, and even directors on set. Many performers enter the porn industry out of financial desperation, some face substance addictions, and others already in the industry stay out of fear that their history in porn will make it impossible to find another job.

While this is not the case with all performers, it’s important to recognise that agents and producers often exploit these vulnerabilities in order to coerce performers into producing more and more hardcore content. Producers may lie or withhold information about what is expected of the performer. Agents may threaten to blacklist the performer if they don’t go through with what they’re pressuring them to do. This type of coercion is commonplace in the porn industry, and legally speaking, it’s trafficking.

In this article, a retired adult film performer has warned that the growing appetite for ‘abuse’ porn is damaging amateur female performers, who are expected to take part in increasingly extreme scenes.¹⁸

People can be coerced or forced into acts that they didn't consent to, which is then distributed as pornography. This means that not all content on mainstream porn sites is consensual and can include videos of trafficked individuals, including rape and sexual assault.

This BBC report tells the harrowing story of a 14 year old girls who was raped whilst parts of the assault were filmed and later uploaded to one of the largest online porn platforms. One of the videos was viewed over 400,000 times.¹⁹

Sexual abuse and sex trafficking are incredibly traumatic events to begin with, but when that trauma is filmed and distributed as pornography, victims are re-traumatised over and over.

How can a consumer guarantee that the porn they’re watching is consensual and free from abuse?

Porn can be used to groom trafficking victims and “train” them on what is expected of them. Pornography effectively normalizes sexual violence, which can set the stage for victims’ abuse, especially when consumers’ viewing habits involve violence or other fetishes.²⁰
Not only can porn normalize abuse for victims, but it can also normalize sexual abuse in the minds of pornography consumers. Some evidence suggests that this desensitization toward sexual violence through the consumption of porn can manifest in more willingness to buy sex, which increases the demand for individuals being trafficked for sex.²¹

As long as there’s a demand for porn, especially that which is violent, abusive, or degrading, the porn industry will continue to exploit vulnerable people to meet that demand.

_{13 (Legislation, 2015)

14 (Polaris, 2020)

15 (International Labour Organisation, 2017)

16 (Feehs & Wheeler, 2021)

17 (The United States Department of Justice, 2020)

18 (Saul & Independent, 2016)

19 (Mohan & BBC, 2020)

20 (Lanning, 2010)

21 (Herrington & McEachern, 2018); (Demand Abolition, 2018); (Gervais & Eagan, 2017)}