October
is Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM), an awareness month that is particularly meaningful for me.
Domestic violence was the first issue I worked on as an advocate, and I
remember my first training vividly – the power and control wheel, the cycle of violence, and the myths surrounding
intimate partner and familial abuse. I remember the women and children that I
worked with in shelters, support groups, and in the courtroom, and I can’t
forget the devastating impact I saw this issue have on so many people’s lives.
So, when I left my work on domestic violence in Nashville, TN and shifted my
focus to the anti-human trafficking field in Washington, D.C., I carried my
first passion with me.
Although
I had little expectation that domestic violence would be so closely tied to human trafficking when I
arrived in D.C. to work for Polaris Project, I did have
an inkling that my work with domestic violence victims was far from over.
In my first week of training, I quickly realized that the power and
control used by traffickers was incredibly similar to that of batterers and I
subsequently developed the Human Trafficking Power and Control Wheel to raise awareness about these
similarities in non-physical forms of control. The abuse was similar, cycles of
violence and coercion were present, and to top it all off, the case that
brought me to the anti-trafficking field in the first place was both a case of
domestic violence and human trafficking.
On the surface, the case appeared to be a straightforward
domestic violence incident where a woman and her child had been physically
abused by the woman’s live-in boyfriend. However, while waiting to testify, the
woman expressed fear of being in trouble with the police because a Vice
Detective had been questioning her about the defendant. I was confused,
thinking she meant a DV Detective, and seeing my confusion she explained that
her boyfriend had not only abused her and her child but had also forced her to
engage in commercial sex. With this disclosure, I felt fairly helpless as an
advocate. I had worked on plenty of cases of intimate partner sexual
abuse, but sexual exploitation (i.e. human trafficking) had not really occurred
to me as a potential form of intimate partner abuse. The case and my feeling of
incompetence stayed with me, opening my eyes to the intersections of domestic
violence and human trafficking.
However, when I came to the anti-trafficking field, I
couldn’t seem to find an appropriate place for this woman I had worked with.
There was no mention of an intimate partner as a trafficker and her story was
lumped into a fairly large category of “pimp-controlled” trafficking. While my
take on pimp-control was that it was intimate partner violence anyway, she still didn’t fit
the idea of pimps having a “stable” or controlling multiple women at one time.
And what if her abuser had started selling her daughter for sex? There
was also very little recognition of family members or parents as traffickers.
Maybe
it was just a rare case and not the norm for human trafficking? Maybe I was
over-thinking it? Nevertheless, a few months into my work on the national hotline for human trafficking,
I realized that her case was far from unusual. I ended up working on multiple
cases where family members and intimate partners were perpetrators of both sex
and labor trafficking and in 2010, we started to categorize them as such. In a
few months, 10% of hotline calls were
reports of intimate partner or familial human trafficking and I had heard
multiple stories of intimate partners, parents and other family members who
compelled their victims into commercial sex, domestic servitude, sexual
servitude and labor.
Although
it is rarely the type of exploitation or abuse highlighted by the media or by
either field, it is happening and it’s time we start calling it
what it is – both Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking.
When a mom and dad sell their daughter for sex to make their car payments –
it is familial sex trafficking and child abuse.
When
a husband forces his wife to sell herself for sex by
threatening to take their child away – it is intimate partner sex trafficking
and intimate partner abuse.
When a teenage boy convinces his girlfriend to sell sexual favors to feed
his drug addiction – it is intimate partner sex trafficking and teen dating
violence.
When a parent makes their child work long hours at the
family restaurant under duress instead of going to school – it is familial
labor trafficking and child abuse.
And when a husband forces his wife to work, taking all of
her wages and beating her if she loses her job – it is intimate partner labor
trafficking and intimate partner violence.
But why don’t we call these crimes what they are? What
stops us from understanding that domestic violence and human trafficking can
not only involve the same types of power and control, cyclical violence and
manipulative perpetrators, but can also directly collide, mixing the two crimes
together completely?
Unfortunately, there are several myths that keep us from identifying
these crimes and inhibit our understanding of intimate partner and familial
human trafficking:
The
myth that traffickers are usually someone unknown to the victim, not their mom
or dad or intimate partner – even though we know that those closest to us, those
who are supposed to love and care for us, can also exercise forceful bonds of
control, manipulation and abuse.
The
myth that abusive partners and family members wouldn’t go so far as
to exploit –
even though we know they commonly dehumanize, sexually abuse and economically
manipulate.
And
the idea that intimate partners (especially husbands) and family members
(especially parents) somehow have a right to force their loved ones to work but not
calling this forced labor – even though if the perpetrator were a stranger or
an “official” employer, we would recognize it as human trafficking.
These myths and discriminatory ideas inhibit us from
recognizing the intersections of these two issues, keeping domestic violence
and human trafficking in separate silos. When we treat these issues as
completely distinct, we risk misidentifying victims, providing inadequate and
uninformed services, and missing out on crucial collaboration between the
domestic violence and human trafficking fields.
So as we work to enhance the public’s understanding of abuse
during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, let’s also improve our own
understanding of the types of abuse that we can encounter in our work. By
acknowledging that human trafficking is one of these forms of abuse and that it
can intersect directly with domestic violence, we can ensure no advocate feels
ill-equipped when they come across their own case of intimate partner or
familial human trafficking. By uniting the domestic violence and human
trafficking fields around this issue, we can amplify our voices and work
together to end abuse and exploitation by those closest to victims: their
family members and intimate partners.
For
more information on the intersections, please see the following resources:
Intimate Partner and Intrafamilial Exploitation: How the
Intersections of Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking can profoundly affect
our Work by
Becky Owens Bullard
Becky Owens Bullard is a Project Coordinator for the Denver
DA’s Office and a trainer on issues of human trafficking, domestic violence and
sexual assault. Becky has conducted trainings nation-wide for diverse
audiences, created the Human Trafficking Power and Control Wheel, and authored
numerous trainings and victim assessment tools. She is the founder and editor
of the Voices Against Violence Project, www.VoicesAgainstViolenceProject.com, a forum for survivors and advocates to voice opinions and raise
awareness to end abuse.
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