Advances in Human Trafficking Victim Identification

This webinar presents findings from two forward-thinking studies that focus on human trafficking victim identification. This webinar should be of keen interest to investigators, victim services, health professionals, administrators of escort ad web scraping tools and databases, academics, and anyone interested in more precise tools to support the process of identifying human trafficking victims.

The first study, "Human Trafficking Screening Tool for LGBTQAI Victims: Different Experiences, Risks, and Needs," explores the requirements necessary for the development of an LGBTQAI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning/ queer, asexual, or intersex) trafficking victim identification tool via a series of key informant interviews with public health providers. The authors argue that this community faces dangers where they are uniquely susceptible to labor and sex trafficking. Due to their high-risk status, the LGBTQAI population requires an effective, specialized screening tool. This project is in the development phase, and later we will validate this tool in public health settings.

The second study "Indicators of Sex Trafficking in Online Escort Ads" presents results from a study exploring the use of escort ads in U.S. sex trafficking investigations. It tests whether many commonly-used indicators or "signs" of trafficking indeed indicate a higher likelihood that the individual being advertised is a trafficking victim versus an independent person advertising commercial sex. Its unique contribution is that it tests indicators being used in the field against a counterfactual (known case outcomes) in order to identify differences in the presence of various indicators between ads known to be part of a trafficking case and those known to be part of a case that involves consensual sex work, but not trafficking. Both projects have resulted in key insights that can be used to better identify individuals most at risk of human trafficking.