Sex Traffickers’ Views: A Qualitative Study into Their Perceptions of the Victim–Offender Relationship (original) (raw)

2017, Journal of Human Trafficking

Until now, most of our knowledge regarding sex trafficking comes from studies of victims. Only a limited number of empirical studies have focused on those who conduct the business of sex trafficking. This article examined sex traffickers' perceptions of the victim-offender relationship. Using a grounded theory approach, verbatim interviews with sex traffickers were analyzed. Four major themes emerged: perceptions of the initiative, the (victim-offender) relationship, their own role and work methods, and on the victims who reported to the police. The results provide a complex picture that shows variations in relationships, roles, and work (control) methods over time within the same victim-trafficker dyad as well as between individual sex traffickers. KEYWORDS Initiative; sex trafficking; victim-offender relationship; work and control methods Over the past decade, awareness concerning human trafficking has increased. The phenomenon has become a priority on the international policy and law-enforcement agenda. In 2000, the United Nations took action with the "Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children," also known as the Palermo Protocol (United Nations, 2000). Human trafficking is defined in the protocol as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, or abduction, of fraud, of deception, of abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation," with exploitation including "at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs" (United Nations, 2000, p. 2). In Dutch law, forcibly recruiting, transporting, moving, accommodating, or sheltering another person with the intention of exploiting that other person is punishable as human trafficking. Article 273f of the Dutch Code of Criminal Law criminalizes human trafficking, whether this takes place across international borders or within the Netherlands (Dutch National Rapporteur on Trafficking, 2013). Victims of human trafficking, both adults and children, comprise two broad categories-victims of labor trafficking and sex trafficking (Busch-Armendariz, Nsonwu, & Heffron, 2009). This article focuses on the latter category. It must be noted, however, that there exists debate on the definitions used for sex trafficking,