Predictors of Different Types of Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (DMST) Victim-Trafficker Relationships

Background and Purpose. Domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) is the commercial sexual exploitation of a minor citizen or legal resident within United States borders. It is perhaps the most common form of trafficking in the United States, with the federal government indicating that 300,000 teenagers are at-risk for this form of trafficking each year—although it should be noted that this number is contested in the literature. Federal and local policies do not make much room for the nuances of victim experience, in which multiple oppressive factors may contribute to DMST victimization, or different types of DMST victimization. Instead, officials tend to view DMST as a monolithic crime, rather than a variable phenomenon that appears driven by victims’ variable experiences with systemic poverty, racism, and family dysfunction. The purpose of this study is to examine how various forms of oppression predict DMST victimization, particularly specific subcategories of DMST victimization. Recommendations point towards strategies that may disrupt or mitigate this form of gender-based violence.

Methods. This study utilizes the secondary case files of 242 domestic minors who were trafficked for sex in one state in the southwest United States between 2012 and 2017. After establishing inter-rater reliability, the Principal Investigator coded the case files for the presence of intersectionality-informed variables, then employed multinomial logistic regressions to explore the multiplicative nature of risk factors in their prediction of different types of victim-trafficker relationships.  

Results. The results of the analyses demonstrate that risk factors predict different types of victim-trafficker relationships. Specifically, child welfare involvement (B = -2.20, p = 0.003), and juvenile justice involvement (B = 1.87, p = 0.01) are significant predictors of a family member victim-trafficker relationship. According to the final significant model (x² [12] = 33.19, p = 0.001), victims trafficked by family members are 11% more likely to have child welfare involvement, and are also 647% less likely to be involved in the juvenile justice system, than victims trafficked by a previously untrusted trafficker (someone the victim did not know before she was trafficked). Although this model does not contain any other significant predictors of victim-trafficker relationship types, lack of poverty approached significance as a predictor of a romantic partner trafficker (B = 0.60, p = .09). According to this statistic, victims trafficked by a romantic partner are 182% less likely to experience poverty than victims trafficked by a previously untrusted trafficker.

Conclusions. The social work profession is poised to draw the counter-trafficking community into a systems-informed dialogue about DMST as a human rights abuse that tends to follow sharp stratifications between the powerful and the powerless. The results of this study suggest that DMST victimization is not a monolithic phenomenon, in which all victims share the same experiences. There appears to be variations between the forms of oppression and risk experienced by victims prior to entering a specific victim-trafficker relationship dynamic. Social workers need to articulate these variations to the range of professionals who work within the systems that may prevent, identify, and remediate DMST.