What is Human Trafficking

Children can be victims of human trafficking regardless of their citizenship, residency, or immigrant status. In Florida, when a report is accepted at the Florida Abuse Hotline, maltreatment codes apply to two types of human trafficking: sex and labor.

Sex trafficking is defined as a commercial sex act induced by force, fraud or coercion or in which the person induced to perform such act is under 18 years of age. Commercial sex acts include, but are not limited to, prostitution and/or pornography as a means for the perpetrator to make money. The mere fact that the victim is a child and the act meets the definition of a commercial sex act, makes the child a victim.

Labor trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion, for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, peonage (where someone is held against their will to pay off a debt), debt bondage, or slavery. Forced labor may result when unscrupulous employers exploit workers who are vulnerable due to high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, discrimination, corruption, political conflict, citizenship status or cultural acceptance of the practice. Victims of domestic servitude generally have an informal workplace such a home, which often socially isolates domestic workers from the community. That type of informal workplace is conducive to exploitation since authorities cannot inspect private property as easily as they can inspect formal workplaces.