By Amber Horning, Loretta Stalans,

In 2019, the National Institute of Justice funded the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Loyola University Chicago to understand how sex traffickers learn how to facilitate sex work. This study sought to address Priority Area 3 of the NIJ solicitation: Building Knowledge of the "Grooming" Process of Traffickers (i.e., how does one become a sex or labor trafficker?). Previous studies funded by NIJ examined "traffickers' decision-making and organizational processes"; however, much of how one becomes a sex trafficker and its processes remain unexplored. This study provides empirical data to address this critical gap in the knowledge. We use the broader term of sex market facilitator (SMF) rather than sex trafficker as persons involved in facilitation change roles and jobs. Because of their varying roles and tasks, legally qualifying as a sex trafficker can change by day, week, month, or year and often change across the life course. Typically, individuals are involved in multiple roles in the sex trade; these roles can include sex work, recruitment, assisting sex workers or facilitators, and primary facilitation. Sex market facilitation can involve recruiting and scheduling clients for sex workers, protecting workers during interactions with clients, managing operations, and profiting from the sex workers' earnings. In this study, we use the broader term SMF because it includes those who legally qualify for pandering or sex trafficking. As previously mentioned, their legal designation can change quickly or over time. We use the term sex worker as a neutral and inclusive term and are not implying the voluntary or involuntary nature of selling sex. Individuals who sell sex can drift between voluntarily selling sex and being coercive or physically forced to sell sex. The goals of this study were to 1) provide an understanding of the social learning process involved in sex market facilitation, such as who passed down those skills, what is passed down, and how this impacts their recruitment and management strategies 2) evaluate how these social learning processes vary based on participants' prior traumatic experiences and master status designations.1 and 3) establish how participants are socially and criminally networked and how this impacts facilitation. There have been many studies about how sex traffickers recruit sex workers. However, very few studies evaluated how sex traffickers are recruited and learn to recruit sex workers or sex trafficking victims or facilitate sex work, along with facilitation strategies, including interpersonal and economic coercion. This study aimed to close the gap in the literature by investigating the etiology of becoming a sex trafficker or a sex market facilitator and how this knowledge is transmitted across the generations. Research Questions This study aimed to answer three research questions. 1) Are there patterned processes or mechanisms from which older/experienced traffickers teach or model these skills to the pimps2 , main sex workers3 , sex workers, or sex trafficking victims who, over time, recruit other trafficking victims? a) How do the early experiences of SMFs, particularly trauma, contribute to their social learning and recruitment into facilitation? b) Using an intersectional4 lens, how does social learning explain the social processes of sex market facilitation, passing those skills to family, boyfriends/girlfriends, friends, sex workers, sex trafficking victims, or even other SMFs? 2) How do traffickers detect potential recruits' vulnerabilities, and what are the key individual and structural vulnerabilities they target? How is grooming similar and different in New York City and Chicago? 3) How are traffickers socially networked to other traffickers, pimps, and main sex workers, and how is grooming similar and different across social networks in New York City and Chicago?

Lowell, MA: University of Masachusetts Lowell, 2024. 219p.