User:Michael Hamilton PAU/sandbox

Overview

There have been significant similarities between hostages, political prisoner, prisoners of concentration camps, battered women, and other victims of captivity. These systems of psychological captivity use high levels of control and micromanagement, exposure to chronic stress, isolation, fear, and instillation of helplessness. Trauma-coerced attachments (bonds) in human trafficking occur when trafficked individuals form powerful attachments to their traffickers. This is the result of complex interaction control dynamics, exploitation of power imbalances, and inconsistent positive and negative behaviors. Those who form a trauma-coerced bond are marked by shifts in their internal reality and cognition change due to their deterioration of self while undergoing inconsistent abusive tactics from their traffickers. This deterioration of self forces the victim to adopt a new world perspective that makes them dependent on their traffickers. Once this occurs, the victim will take responsibility for the actions of their trafficker, they will idealize their trafficker, and will strive to please. Some of the responsibilities that trafficked individuals take can include bearing the legal consequences of their trafficker, refusing to testify in court about the individual, or even testifying in court for their trafficker’s defense.

There is marked similarity between coercive controlling behaviors of intimate partner abuse and the tactics used by traffickers upon the trafficked. The trafficker will systematically strip the trafficked of their decision-making abilities, force a belief of omnipotence, and isolate their victim from any validation of the occurring abuse. The most common tactics that are used by the traffickers are micro-regulation, surveillance, threats, intimidation, humiliation, and isolation. The rate of victimization is chronic and the coercive control can be within multiple domains such as finances, children, dress, employment, family, and friends. Successful trauma-coerced bonds create an environment of fear, dread, and obedience in the absence of physical violence. On the flip side of the coin, successful trauma-coerced bonds create “love” and idolization. This type of environment can impose traumatic entrapment, which can cause symptoms indicative of post-traumatic stress disorder. These symptoms can include intrusion (memories, dreams, etc.), hyperarousal (sleeping problems, concentration difficulties, irritability, anger, panic, constant anxiety, etc.), dissociation, and flashbacks (American Psychological Association, 2013). Other symptoms that can result from such trauma-coerced attachments include depression, sadness, guilt, and shame.

The Trafficker and the Trafficked

The relationship between the trafficked and the trafficker can be of the romantic variety. In some circumstances, there is emotional loyalty and possibly the sharing of children. Within the context of sex-trafficking, victims are also subjected to pressure to pay off large debts, threats concerning citizenship status, and terror tactics concerning exposition of their work to family and friends. They not only have to deal with the power imbalance, they also deal with being an intimate partner to the trafficker, facing child custody, loneliness, economic dependence, and loyalty. Another piece of the situation pertains to the social support the victims experience to stay within the relationship between themselves and the trafficker. Other victims within the circle of the trafficked also play a part in creating and reinforcing trauma-coerced attachments. The social peer groups that constitute the victims of the trafficked are marked by competition, abuse, exploitation, as well as being the only form of social support.

Specifically, within human trafficking for sex work purposes, sex in and of itself plays a role in the creation and maintenance of trauma-coerced attachments. It has been suggested that commercial sex work mostly begins from economic desperation, fear, coercion, or manipulation. The operational method of coercion that manifests itself is taking those with poor knowledge of healthy sexuality and sexual abuse history, championing the belief of sexual empowerment through commercial exploitation of their bodies.

Specific tactics used to create trauma-coerced attachments

Both, victims of traffickers who have already formed the trauma-coerced attachment with their trafficker and the trafficker will seize control of their victims in multiple ways. Traffickers will often use recruiters to determine youth in need by frequenting typical locations. The initial point of contact is of empathy and compassionate intimate partners that enable escape from harsh living conditions or abusive homes. Traffickers will transport victims from their home communities to places where they are unfamiliar with the language, culture, or laws to prevent the victim from leaving their work environment. Traffickers will also change the victims’ names, which can impact the victims’ sense of self and identity at the most basic levels. Traffickers will use promises of love and a better life, which has been termed “love bombing.” Once entrapment occurs, traffickers use a grooming process called “seasoning” to produce the trauma-coerced attachment. The “seasoning” process consists of using flattery, building trust through intimate partner role fulfillment, normalizing sex by exposing victims to pornographic material, social isolation, disorienting victims with drugs and alcohol or multiple moves, and intimidation through psychological and physical abuse. Isolation is specifically used to get the trafficked dependent on the trafficker for emotional sustenance and to break any social ties they create, increase their debt burden, and further disorient the victim.

Initiation into the culture of human exploitation can consist of two different methods. Specifically, within sex trafficking rings, the slow initiation utilizes the “foot in the door” sell tactic where new victims are tasked to schedule appointments for other trafficked individuals before being sexually exploited themselves. The brutal initiation will occur as well, where traffickers will gang rape the victims that breaks down the will of the victim to resist. The trafficker also seeks to decrease the victim’s sense of autonomy by forcing the victim to work unreasonable hours to the point of exhaustion, deprive them of basic necessities such as food, water, clothing, shelter, sleep, and medical care. This deprivation reinforces the need for the victim to depend on the trafficker for basic survival, strengthening the traumatic-coerced attachment. The combination of a child who has been physically/sexually/emotionally abused, neglected, or abandoned, with exploitation tactics of the trafficker create the trauma-coerced attachment. When terror and gratitude is both instilled within the victim, the trafficker has successfully created a trauma-coerced attachment. Once the bond has been created, traffickers will reinforce their victims’ dependence on them by forcing the victims to violate their moral values, betray their connection to other human beings, or forced to watch or participate in the violation of others. This last tactic is considered the most destructive of all the coercive techniques.