Impact on Women​

The nexus of the global epidemics of sex trafficking and HIV/AIDS primarily manifests in the lives of women and girls. This intersection exists in sex trafficking victims’ increased vulnerability to HIV infection, the proliferation of HIV infection through sex trafficking, and the perceived and actual clashes between HIV and sex trafficking prevention efforts. Holistically addressing these intersecting issues entails framing the elimination of sex trafficking as a tool to reduce HIV transmission. This article explores this deadly junction for women and girls and proposes tools to address it.

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The direct and individual impact of sex trafficking and HIV on girls and women is illustrated by the experience of “Gita” (not her real name). Gita grew up in India, and was sold into sexual slavery by a family member when she was twelve years old. When she arrived at the brothel in Mumbai, she was locked in a room, raped, tortured, and abused until she was deemed sufficiently obedient. When the brothel owners began selling Gita, she was threatened with death if she refused to have sex with a customer. Most days she was forced to have sex with ten to twenty men. The brothel did not provide condoms, and she was not able to control which of her customers chose to practice safer sex. During her early teens, Gita contracted HIV from a customer. However, she was not allowed to seek testing or treatment and was forced to continue having unprotected sex with several men per day for several more years. Finally, Gita managed to escape to a local anti-trafficking organization and is now living in a shelter and receiving HIV treatment and counseling.

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Gita contracted HIV as a direct result of her status as a victim of sex trafficking. She also, unknowingly and unintentionally, may have spread HIV to customers who bought her after she became infected. If Gita were never trafficked, she may not have ever become infected with HIV and, in turn, transmitted it to the men who bought her and their future sex partners. Preventing this multiplier effect of HIV transmission catalyzed by sex trafficking involves fighting two global phenomena—a deadly disease and a highly complex and lucrative criminal industry, both of which disproportionately affect girls and women around the world.

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According to U.S. law, sex trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act is under eighteen years of age. Precise statistics for the number of women and girls trafficked in the commercial sex industry are difficult to obtain. However, the U.S. Department of State estimates that up to 900,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year, the majority of whom are women and girls forced into commercial sex industries. See U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report (June 2003). International Labor Organization data indicates that 1.39 million girls and women are victims of sex trafficking at any given time. See U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Person Report (June 2009).

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Sex trafficking is a global epidemic, and cases of forced prostitution and sex trafficking have been identified in almost every country in the world. The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that in the past thirty years, more than 30 million women and children in Asia have been victimized in the commercial sex industry. See United Nations Children’s Fund press release (2006). In Latin America, the International Organization for Migration estimates that the sex trafficking of women and girls is a $16 million-a-year business. See Association for Women’s Rights in Development, “Sex Trafficking Now a $16 Billion Business in Latin America” (2008). The scourge of sex trafficking also plagues Europe, Africa, and Australia. Even in the United States, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that up to 100,000 American children are at risk for sex trafficking each year, and 83 percent of the 1,200 human trafficking allegations made to the U.S. Department of Justice in 2007 were sex trafficking cases.

 

Sex trafficking victims, however, are at significantly increased risk for contracting HIV for a number of reasons directly related to the nature of their forced servitude. Sex trafficking victims are modern-day slaves, and thus are unable to make choices about or control some aspects of their lives, including their sexual activity. They are forced to sell sex acts on the street, in hotels, through escort agencies, at brothels, and many other places where they don’t have access to safer sex tools. Even when trafficking victims are held in brothels or other places where condoms are made available, they may not be able to enforce condom usage and other safer sex practices. Women and girls enslaved in commercial sex also are forced to endure sex with multiple partners, many of whom may also have had unprotected sex with multiple partners, which increases victims’ risk of contracting HIV. They further must endure the riskiest types of unprotected sex, such as anal sex, injurious sadomasochism, and violently abusive sex, which increases their risk of transmission. Often injuries inflicted during violent sex are not allowed to heal properly, as traffickers force victims to continue to serve men without seeking medical attention. As a result, trafficked women may have high-risk, unprotected sex with multiple partners despite having open genital cuts and abrasions.