Top Sex Trafficking Victims are Hispanic Females

32 percent of alleged U.S. human Trafficking incidents involved sex trafficking of children

January 21, 2009

U.S. NEWS -- According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Human Trafficking Reporting System (HTRS) operation recorded 1,229 alleged incidents of human trafficking in the United States between January 1, 2007, and September 30, 2008. Of those alleged human trafficking incidents reported over a 21-month period, 83 percent involved allegations of sex trafficking. Furthermore, 32 percent of the 1,229 alleged incidents involved sex trafficking of children. On the other hand, as of September 30, 2008, less than 10 percent of the alleged incidents have been confirmed as human trafficking by the HTRS. (Characteristics of Suspected Human Trafficking Incidents, 2007-08)

Breaking down the numbers, only 112 of the 1,229 of the alleged incidents have actually led to an arrest and been subsequently confirmed by HTRS, law enforcement, or the victims must have received a special non-immigrant Visa classification, as provided under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA). Next, 286 incidents were confirmed not to be human trafficking, while 708 incidents lack enough data to determine if human trafficking actual took place. Lastly, leaving 123 incidents are still pending a decision by HTRS.

Bearing in mind only 10% of these alleged incidents are confirmed, more than 90 percent of victims in both alleged and confirmed human trafficking incidents were female, while almost all (99%) victims in alleged and confirmed sex trafficking incidents were female. Meanwhile, 40 percent of victims in alleged and confirmed labor trafficking incidents were male.

Ethnically, Hispanic victims comprised the largest share of alleged sex trafficking victims (37%), and also made up more than half of alleged labor trafficking victims (56%). Asian victims made up one tenth (10%) of alleged sex trafficking victims, compared to almost one third (31%) of labor trafficking victims. Moreover, slightly more than half of all victims in alleged human trafficking incidents were U.S. citizens, and U.S. citizens accounted for 63 percent of sex trafficking victims, compared to only 4 percent of labor trafficking victims.

About two-thirds of the victims in alleged human trafficking incidents were age 17 or younger (27%) or age 18 to 24 (38%). Of the approximate 1,020, sex trafficking victims 71 percent tended to be younger than age 25. Contrastingly, labor trafficking victims tended to be older with 70 percent over the age 25.

Furthermore, over 25 percent of alleged sex trafficking incidents contained multiple victims, and nearly 50 percent of labor trafficking incidents had more than one victim. Almost 80 percent of the human trafficking suspects were male, while 20 percent of the sex trafficking suspects were female, compared to about a third of labor trafficking suspects. Additionally, 47 percent of labor trafficking incidents were more likely to involve more than one suspect, compared to 37 percent of the sex trafficking incidents. Two-thirds of the sex trafficking suspects were under age 35, while two-thirds of the labor trafficking suspects were age 35 or older. Also, U.S. citizens accounted for 66 percent of suspects in alleged incidents, with three-quarters of the sex trafficking suspects being U.S. citizens and a third of the labor trafficking suspects being U.S. citizens.

Finally, we can deduct from these alleged and confirmed incident statistics that the majority of victims are U.S. citizens being trafficked U.S. citizens for the purpose of forced prostitution or sex slaves. Of these trafficked citizens, most are Hispanic females under the age 25. While male U.S. citizens, johns, or unidentified sex offenders, are fueling this horrid enslavement of young women and children.