Educational achievement, mental health diagnoses, childhood abuse, number of arrests and number of children all play a complex role in shaping a person’s vulnerability to commercial sexual exploitation, how long they are exploited for and how difficult it is to get out.
This is according to a study – “Sex trafficking vulnerabilities in context: An analysis of 1,264 case files of adult survivors of commercial sexual exploitation” by Courtney Furlong and Ben Hinnant – that appeared in PLOS ONE.
Commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) occurs when anything of value is given in exchange for a sex act. When CSE involves force, fraud, or coercion, it is termed sex trafficking. Due to the illegal nature of CSE, there is a profound dearth of literature surrounding who is sexually exploited and their outcomes.
In this study, the researchers analyzed 1,264 case files of adult victims of CSE who used a temporary safe house program in Atlanta, Georgia in the US between 2011 and 2021.
The researchers found:
- Compared to the general population, the women in the study were more likely to have experienced childhood sexual abuse, less likely to have a high school diploma, and more likely to have mental health diagnosis including bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and schizophrenia.
- Their rate of mental health diagnoses was 80% compared to a 20% rate in the general population.
- On average, they were 22.07 years old when they first entered CSE and spent 11.73 years experiencing exploitation.
- Looking at the number of times that participants cycled in and out of CSE, the individuals with bipolar disorder were 2.52 times more likely to have cycled, those with neurodevelopmental disorders were 1.73 times more likely to have cycled, and individuals with higher educational achievement or higher numbers of arrests were less likely to have experienced cycling.
- Women with lower educational achievement, younger entry into CSE, higher number of arrests and more children had, on average, longer experiences of CSE.
- Participants with a history of childhood sexual abuse were younger when they first entered CSE, while those with higher educational achievement were older.
For the authors, these results help paint a portrait of exploitation across a lifespan, and highlight important mental health considerations within this population, as well as barriers for survivors of CSE to get out and stay out of exploitation.
“CSE is a human rights violation, and its victims often encounter unique, often intersecting, challenges,” the researchers stated.
Implications of the findings include increased services for individuals with children and alternatives to arrest, and for practitioners to partner with psychiatric services to improve outcomes for individuals with mental health disorders, as well as partner with researchers to analyze existing data and improve data collection procedures.
