Grooming Traffickers: Investigating the Techniques and Mechanisms for Seducing and Coercing New Traffickers

Executive SummaryPurpose and Goals of This StudyIn 2019, the National Institute of Justice funded the University of Massachusetts Lowelland Loyola University Chicago to understand how sex traffickers learn how to facilitatesex work. This proposed study sought to address Priority Area 3 of the NIJ solicitation:Building Knowledge of the “Grooming” Process of Traffickers (i.e., how does onebecome a sex or labor trafficker?) Previous studies funded by NIJ examined “traffickers’decision-making and organizational processes”; however, much of how one becomes atrafficker and its processes remain unexplored. This proposed study provides empirical data to address this critical gap in the knowledge.We use the broader term of sex market facilitator (SMF) rather than sex trafficker aspersons involved in facilitation change roles and jobs. Because of their varying roles and tasks, legally qualifying as a sex trafficker can shift by week and inevitably change across the life course. Typically, individuals are involved in multiple roles in the sex trade; these roles can include sex work, recruitment, assistant, or primary facilitation, or those who recruit and schedule clients, protect workers during interactions with clients, and manage and profit from the sex workers.' earnings. In this study, we use the broader term of sex market facilitator (SMF) because it includes those who either legally qualify for pandering or sex trafficking. We use the term sex worker as a neutral and inclusive term and are not implying the voluntary or involuntary nature of selling sex. Individuals who sell sex can drift between voluntarily selling sex and being coercive or physically forced to sell sex.The goals of this study were to 1) provide an understanding of the social learningprocess involved in sex market facilitation, such as who passed down those skills, whatis passed down, and how this impacts their recruitment and sex market facilitationstyles, 2) evaluate how these social learning processes vary based on participants'demographics and prior traumatic experiences and 3) establish how participants aresocially and criminally networked and how this impacts facilitation. There have beenmany studies about how sex traffickers recruit sex workers. However, very few studiesevaluated how sex traffickers are recruited and learn to recruit sex workers or sextrafficking victims or facilitate sex work, along with facilitation strategies, includinginterpersonal and economic coercion. This study aimed to close the gap in the literature by investigating the etiology of becoming a sex trafficker or a sex market facilitator and how this knowledge is transmitted across the generations.