Blurred Lines in Street Based Sex Trading: The Mythical Line Between Victim and Criminal

BACKGROUND: Studies report the negative experiences of women involved in street based prostitution, including violence, sexually transmitted infections, poor mental health, and/or substance abuse. Street based sex trading involves women engaged in selling sex with and without a sex trafficker. The former results in an enlightened community perspective resulting in rescue and restoration, while the later are stigmatized and incarceration. Such a dichotomous paradigm serves to provide effective service to neither woman, as one focuses on a disempowering “rescue” paradigm, while the other is focused on punishment. 

METHODS: A quantitative, cross-sectional design was employed across five cities in the Midwest. Female respondents were recruited through respondent driven sampling. Data collectors located in the Ohio cities of Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo were required to know at least two individuals currently involved in the commercial sex industry. Individuals over the age of 16 that reported involvement in the commercial sex industry in the past year were eligible to take the survey on-line or in paper form. The initial seeds completed the survey, were paid, and received five coupons to provide to their peers in the industry. Peers who took the survey were paid and received five coupons and so on to provide access to social networks.  Researchers conducted descriptive statistics, chi-square, and T-tests. 

RESULTS: Of the 328 respondents, 115 identified themselves as having had a trafficker, while 213 did not.  Risk factors were identified for both groups. Researchers compared the following risk factors: having been an adolescent runaway, having experienced prior child abuse, having been sexually assaulted before entering the sex trade, the presence of drugs and alcohol use and abuse, experience with homelessness, educational difficulties or success, having a much older boyfriend involved in some aspect of the sex trade, and others. There was very little difference found between the two groups.

CONCLUSIONS: Social workers should be cognizant of the risk factors for women involved in street level sex trading with and without traffickers. Social workers should not be influenced by the mythical legal line of who is identified a victim or criminal. These labels serve to separate the worthy and unworthy, a practice that is antithetical to very foundation of social work practice. 

Social workers indoctrinated into only identifying victims of sex trafficking without attention to other women at risk, may succumb to political spin and support unfair value judgments placed on women that lead to continued invisibility. In providing services to victims, social workers may miss significant opportunities to reach out and work with women at risk who do not have a trafficker. Person in environment and empowerment theory is an approach that allows social workers to reach out to women, independent of the legal labels assigned them. The result will be that social workers will lead in the empowerment of these disenfranchised women, instead of following the lead of criminal justice institutions and well-meaning domestic sex trafficking advocates who would have us choose between those vulnerable women they call victims and those they call criminals.