Introduction
The United Nations defines human trafficking as “the acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception with the aim of exploiting them.” Practically, every global nation is impacted by this particular crime. The challenge for all the nations, irrespective of how rich or poor they might be, is to aim for catching hold of the criminals who exploit distressed and despaired people and to protect the trafficking victims, as most such victims are believed to go through unimaginable sufferings in their pursuit of getting and leading a better life. Such victims are to be provided with the assistance they need to lead a better life after having had gone through the trauma that is common in such crimes. This essay is a brief literature review about human trafficking and the psychological effects that it has upon the victims.
Problem Statement
What psychological effects does human Sex trafficking have upon its victims? This paper is a literature reviews whose pursuit is to assess the degree of psychological impact that human and sex trafficking has upon the victims of this crime. The literature review is carried out by referring to the literature in the last decade and the inferences are presented in a well-structured manner.
Literature Review
While there are a number of physical issues that the victims have to undergo because of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, like for instance, forced abortions, concussions, gynecological health issues, transmission of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS, and miscarriage among others. However, in addition to the above, the psychological trauma that the victims of human trafficking have to undergo are simply unimaginable and are difficult to be express in simple words.
Leah Kaylor, in her study on the psychological effects upon victims of human and sex trafficking presents an exhaustive explanation about the same. According to Kaylor , the psychological impact upon sex victims is much greater and highly intense when compared to the physical trauma and suffering they have to go through. The following are a few psychological disorders that victims of human and sex trafficking typically would suffer from:
“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Depression Anxiety
Panic disorder
Suicidal ideation
Stockholm Syndrome, and
Substance abuse ”
The trauma that the victims of human trafficking generally undergo is truly devastating in nature and getting the victims out of such trauma is very critical.
A study conducted by Farley across nine different global nations in the year 2003 revealed that many prostitutes, who were smuggled and forcibly pushed into the flesh trade, had experienced intense and ruthless form of violence, which comprises of rape as well as sexual assault and in most of the cases, violence was recurrent. “A large proportion (68%) had suffered from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), with a level of severity comparable to that experienced by Vietnam War veterans, as well as psychological dissociation.”
According to a report by Fondation Scelles that was published in the year 2012 , prostitution, which is also considered to be a form of human trafficking, essentially has a global angle to it, as it encompasses roughly about 40to 42 million people globally, out of which approximately about 90% are reliant on a customer. Also, about 75% of such people fall in the age range of 13 and 25 years of age.
Another report presented by the Office for Victims of Crime, Training and Technical Assistance Center, presents alarming facts about the degree of impact that this crime and trade has upon the victims. This report was authored by Erin Williamson in the year 2009 and was published by Office for Victims of Crime, Training and Technical Assistance Center, Fairfax, Virginia.
The statistics and facts presented in the above document bring to light the way in which the effects of human trafficking often imitate several other forms of criminal activities like domestic violence, sexual abuse, as well as physical torture. Almost in a similar manner to domestic violence, the perpetrators of human trafficking often use psychological pressure for controlling the victims. The various forms that this intense psychological pressure laid on the victims takes is myriad and quite often differs on the basis of the form of trafficking as well as the individual situations of every single case.
Most often than not, human trafficking is a crime that is perpetrated by people whom the victim is acquainted with, like for instance, neighbors, distant family members, friends, fiancés, or the lovers of the victims. These perpetrators start building a highly trusted relationship with the victim before they forcibly get the victims involved into this crime, as the trust they create for themselves bestows them with the power to control the victims mind as well as body.
Victims of labor and sex trafficking are often threatened by saying that any attempts to escape, then their loved ones would be harmed or killed. The traffickers inculcate a sense of intense fear in the victims by using a number of threats related to banishment, legal trouble through law enforcement, exposing the victim and their families in an unruly manner, and a plethora of other punishments. This kind of fear instilling and threatening is considered to be one of the highly effective and popularly used tools by traffickers in order to manipulate their preys.
Human trafficking is currently being denoted as being a form of contemporary slavery. The serious psychosocial impacts of this crime has essentially made the Federal Government of Nigeria to quickly respond to the call for combating this crime, which was given out by the United Nations to all global nations, and the Nigerian Federal government has become a signatory to “the Transnational Organized Crime Convention (TOC) and its trafficking in Persons Protocol on the 13th December, 2000.”
Emenike N. Anyaegbunam, et. al., have adopted a victimological paradigm in their study to assess the psychological coercion upon the victims of human trafficking. The paradigm that the above study adopted actually helps in identifying the reason behind few specific categories of people being highly susceptible to becoming victims of human and sex trafficking when compared to other risks.
Quite often, it is believed that the victims of human and sex trafficking are physically forced to give into the demands of the traffickers. However, it has been construed that psychological coercion without any kind of physical abuse of coercion plays a much greater role in conquering the victims of human sex trafficking. There are evidences that offer good amount of credence to the psychological coercion involved in human trafficking upon the victims. For instance, the Involuntary Servitude Statutes, a law aimed at eradicating slavery in the United States since the year 1865, discovered that individuals might be held in a coercion that is non-violent in nature.
A background paper that was released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime stated that the human and the social consequences of human and sex trafficking are extremely astounding. Ranging from the physical assault and torment experienced by the victims to the psychological as well as the emotional trauma, and also to both the economic as well as the political implications of ununrelenting crime rates, the effect on individuals as well as the society at large is clearly detrimental and disagreeable.
The impacts of human and sex trafficking affect the victims in almost all areas of their lives. Victims of human and sex trafficking often have to deal with physical abuse, sexual assault, mistreatment, dearth and deprived health before having been actually taken into the crime. These circumstances are only worsened with the trafficking as they fall prey to this crime without their will to do so.
There is presence of physical, sexual and psychological trauma and abuse in each and every stage of the entire process of human and sex trafficking. In addition, other elements that are mandatory to this process are deprivation and torment, forcing the victim into substance abuse, high degree of influence, economic mistreatment and obnoxious conditions at both work as well as in personal life. The prime differentiating element in relation to the outcomes of human and sex trafficking from the impacts resulted from singular distressing and harrowing incidents is the fact that human and sex trafficking typically encompasses sustained and recurrent trauma.
Hughes and Denisova, in their 2002 study present the typical contexts of human and sex trafficking that are generally marked by extreme degrees of physical and psychological torture, which is further worsened by a relentless struggle to survive under circumstances that are extremely harsh and even life-threatening at times. The study also reveals that the victims of human and sex trafficking go through a myriad range of symptoms as having been reported by victims who have experienced the torture, like for instance psychosomatic and psychological reactions, “psychoactive substance abuse and dependence, social reactions and psychophysical consequences of STDs or injuries.” The reactions range from intense degree of fear, high level of guilt that is persistent in nature, a feeling of having been betrayed, helplessness, trauma, shock, feeling isolated and lost, among others.
A few among the numerous symptoms related to psychological trauma as reported by victims of human and sex trafficking are post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), high levels of anxiety, depression, as well as disorientation. These victims have also reported feelings of massive degree of sadness and loss of hope in both their future and also their life in general. Many of the victims of human trafficking carry constant suicidal tendencies, possess cognitive impairment and memory loss, and are apparently highly withdrawn in nature.
References
Denisova, D. H. (2002). Trafficking in Women from Ukraine. United States: National Institute of Justice.
Emenike N. Anyaegbunam, D. U. (2015). Psychological coercion of trafficking in human persons: Antecedents and Psychosocial consequences for the victims and society. IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS), 20(3), 21-27. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from http://iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/Vol20-issue3/Version-8/E020382127.pdf
European Parliament. (2014). Sexual Exploitation and Prosittution and its impact on gender equality. European Parliament. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2014/493040/IPOL-FEMM_ET(2014)493040_EN.pdf
Kaylor, L. (2015). Psychological Impact of Human Trafficking and Sex Slavery Worldwide. Washington D.C: American Psychological Association (APA). Retrieved March 10, 2016, from https://www.apa.org/international/pi/2015/09/leah-kaylor.pdf
M. Farley, e. a. (2003). Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Journal of Trauma Practice, 2(3/4), 33-74. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdf/Prostitutionin9Countries.pdf
United Nations. (2008). An Introduction to Human Trafficking: Vulnerability, Impact and Action. New York: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from https://www.unodc.org/documents/human-trafficking/An_Introduction_to_Human_Trafficking_-_Background_Paper.pdf
United Nations Office od Drugs and Crime (UNODC). (2016). UNODC on human trafficking and migrant smuggling. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from United Nations Office od Drugs and Crime (UNODC): https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/index.html?ref=menuside
Williamson, E. (2009). Human Trafficking. Fairfax, VA: Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from http://www.ncdsv.org/images/OVCTTAC_HumanTraffickingResourcePaper_2012.pdf
World Health Organization (WHO). (2012). Understanding and Addressing Violence against Women - Human Trafficking. Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO). Retrieved March 10, 2016, from http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/77394/1/WHO_RHR_12.42_eng.pdf
Yakushko, O. (2009). Human Trafficking: A Review for Mental Health Professionals. Educational Psychology Papers and Publications(11), 3-6. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1090&context=edpsychpapers
