Sex Trafficking in the Spotlight: What High-Profile Cases Teach Us

In September 2024, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Sean “P. Diddy” Combs with sex trafficking, racketeering, and other charges. According to prosecutors, Combs used his business empire to sexually abuse and exploit women.  These charges came after a video was released of Combs violently assaulting his former partner, the singer Cassie Ventura Fine.

The allegations against Combs are lurid, and have been the subject of international media attention. Yet the case has also drawn criticism, as the common understanding of sex trafficking is often outdated. While this crime can involve physically forcing someone to have sex for money, the definition is much broader.

What Is Sex Trafficking?

Under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), sex trafficking includes a range of different activities where a person uses force, fraud, or coercion to compel another person to engage in a commercial sex act. It is usually broken into three elements:

1. Acts: a trafficker recruits, harbors, transports, provides, obtains, patronizes, or solicits another person to engage in commercial sex.

2. Means: a trafficker uses force, fraud, or coercion (which can include threats of physical harm, psychological harm, reputational harm, threats to others, and debt manipulation).

3. Purpose: a trafficker’s goal is to induce the other person to engage in a commercial sex act, which is defined as “any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.”

Importantly, sex trafficking is still a crime even if the survivor/victim initially consents to it. The focus of sex trafficking charges is on the perpetrator’s behavior, not the survivor/victim’s choices. In sex trafficking cases, it isn’t unusual for a person to engage in commercial sex willingly at first – which the trafficker then uses to coerce or exploit the survivor/victim to continue to engage in commercial sex act.

Sex Trafficking and Coercion

The Combs case provides a window into how traffickers often use threats and coercion to force survivors/victims into continuing to provide commercial sex.  Sex traffickers do sometimes use physical force to control survivors/victims. In many cases, however, perpetrators use other methods to control their victims.

A common scenario involves what is known as “boyfriending.” This occurs when a person (usually a man) showers another person (usually a younger woman) with love, affection, and gifts. He then convinces her to “be nice” to his friends by engaging in sex acts with them – and she may agree at first. He may then coerce her to continue to engage in commercial sex based on that initial encounter, keeping any money that she earns and trapping her financially. He may also use emotional manipulation to keep her in “the life.”

Other common scenarios include:

• Exploitation of addiction, where a person’s substance abuse disorder is used as a method to coerce them into commercial sex;

• Survival exploitation, where a person in a vulnerable position is offered basic necessities like food and housing in exchange for commercial sex; and

• Online exploitation, where a person may have willingly engaged in a sex act or taken revealing pictures and is threatened with the images being posted online if they don’t continue to provide commercial sex.

Coercion and threats play a major role in sex trafficking and other forms of human trafficking. It is important to understand this to better support survivors and victims. Sex trafficking – like many other types of gender-based violence - doesn’t always look the way that someone might expect.

Help for Survivors and Victims of Sex Trafficking and Other Forms of Abuse

Sex trafficking may be in the news because of a celebrity trial – but it affects thousands of people throughout the United States every year. It often doesn’t happen in the way that it is portrayed in pop culture. Learning more about sex trafficking can help you have empathy and understanding for survivors and victims – and even spot signs of trafficking in your community.

Blackburn Center offers supportive services to survivors and victims of violence, abuse, and other types of crime in Westmoreland County. If your life has been affected by sex trafficking or another type of abuse, we are here for you. Reach out to our hotline at 1-888-832-2272 (TDD available) anytime to talk to a trained crisis counselor. All calls are free of charge and can be anonymous.