(10)
Alarming FAQs and Important Definitions
Some important clarifications and defintions as outlined in the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000:
Sex trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act
(10)
Commercial sex act: any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.
(11)
Involuntary servitude: includes a condition of servitude induced by means of (a) any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that, if the person did not enter into or continue in such condition, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint;
or (b) the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.
(12)
Debt bondage: means the status or condition of a debtor arising from a pledge by the debtor of his or her personal services or of those of a person under his or her control as a security for debt, if the value of those services as reasonably assessed is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined.
(13,14)
Coercion: means (a) threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; (b) any scheme, plan or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; or, (c) the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process. (15)
*All definitions from Source 15
**Obtaining statistcs on sex slaves is difficult because: "When it comes to statistics, trafficking of girls and women is one of several highly emotive issues which seem to overwhelm critical faculties. Numbers take on a life of their own, gaining acceptance through repetition, often with little inquiry into their derivations. Journalists, bowing to the pressures of editors, demand numbers, any number. Organizations feel compelled to supply them, lending false precisions and spurious authority to many reports. The UNESCO TRAFFICKING STATISTICS PROJECT is a first step toward clarifying what we know, what we think we know, and what we don't know about trafficking." (9)