75% of human trafficking victims are female. So what about the other 25%?
25% of human trafficking victims are men and boys. They are trafficked all around the globe both for labor and for sex. Exploitation can be and is forced upon anyone regardless of gender. Because men are the minority of victims, they are often forgotten. After all, how can a boy be trafficked? They’re much stronger than girls. They could get out of it if they wanted to. Right?
Wrong.
Trafficking is more than just physical force. It is psychological abuse. It is economic control. It’s exploiting the ignorance of the general public.
Men, desperate for work, accept job offers in foreign countries. When they arrive, their passports are confiscated, and they are forced to work all day, every day, never allowed to leave the premises. This happens to thousands of men every year.
Teenage boys, often from broken families where they were neglected or abused, sometimes homeless, are lured into prostitution by peers offering to “help them out”. Some of them are LGBTQ youth, vulnerable if kicked out of their homes due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. The majority are heterosexual, though they may be forced to provide homosexual services.
But because the majority of human trafficking victims are female and because of various cultural beliefs regarding masculinity, the issue of male human trafficking victims is often overlooked, even by anti-human trafficking organizations.
These men and boys are invisible because of societal stereotyping.
Restore One and Urban Light are two organizations working specifically to help male victims and shine light on the underserved nature of male victims.
Restore One provides residential recovery programs to American boys who are survivors of domestic minor sex trafficking. Urban Light works in Thailand to empower young males to live life out of the grasp of exploitation and trafficking.
Operation Underground Railroad works to rescue and restore male and female child trafficking victims around the world. Bruce* was orphaned very young and left to the care of his stepfather. He was forced to be a house slave, working from 3am to midnight every day, beaten if he did not perform his duties. Samuel* was abused by his father throughout his childhood with other older men using and sexually exploiting him as well. After years of abuse and sexual exploitation, he was solicited by a trafficker via Facebook. This trafficker had also been trafficking some of Samuel’s friends. Samuel was taken from the city to an island to be trafficked. With no boat to escape, he was trapped. Both of these boys have since been rescued by O.U.R. operations.
(*Names have been changed)
And if you know a male victim of human trafficking, check out these points put together by the U.S. Department of Justice on how to support them as they recover from their abuse.
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