Zip ties and shopping carts: Myths about sex trafficking make it harder to address real issue
The warning may have popped up on your TikTok or Facebook feed: be wary if you see a zip tie around your car door handle.
The alarmists posts claiming sex traffickers are putting zip ties on cars to mark potential victims have circulated social media since at least 2019. One post last month warned shoppers at a grocery stores to look out for markings on cars by traffickers. But the claim is a hoax.
The threat of sex trafficking, which affects millions of people worldwide, is real. But hoaxes and myths such as zip ties on cars give people a false sense the crime , experts said.
“The person who is going to attempt to sex traffic or labor traffic a person isn't going to put as a zip tie on your car,” said Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, an associate professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. “They're going to try to befriend you or your children and they're going to build a relationship of trust and then they're going to exploit that person.
"These myths make us look in the absolute opposite direction of where we should be looking,” she said.
The FBI last month announced more than 200 sex trafficking victims, 84 of which were children, were found in a nationwide sweep, dubbed Operation Cross Country. The youngest victim was 11 years old.
More than half of all human trafficking victims identified in 2021 were children, according to the Human Trafficking Institute. Sex trafficking accounted for 92% of all human trafficking criminal cases filed last year.
The common perception of trafficking involves an abduction by a stranger, but most of the time the trafficker is someone the victim knows and has a relationship with, Roe-Sepowitz said.
Myths surrounding trafficking “make us distracted by the boogeyman idea when the traffickers are really trusted people — good looking interesting, charming people who have access to us or our children and figure out our vulnerabilities,” Roe-Sepowitz said.
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Who do sex traffickers target?
Human traffickers typically target people in situations of vulnerability.
Some risk factors include poverty, homelessness, involvement with the child welfare system and being runaway youth, according to the Polaris Project, a nonprofit organization that works to eradicate human trafficking. LGBTQ people and people of color are also more likely to be trafficked.
“All of these things come together to create the set of vulnerabilities, whereas certain people have more access to safety, have more access to resources and more access to someone who will help them if a trafficker tries to purchase them than others, and traffickers are aware of this,” said Robert Beiser, strategic initiatives director for sex trafficking at Polaris. “They seek to exploit people from an immigrant community, people who aren't stably housed, people who don't have positive relationships and connections to their community, and those are the folks who become trafficking victims.”
Children with special needs are also at a disproportionate risk of being trafficked, Roe-Sepowitz said.
“We don't think kids who have special intellectual needs necessarily are very romantic or want to romantic relationships. We don't we kind of take them out of that category of normal relationships, which makes them very, very vulnerable,” Roe-Sepowitz said.
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What roles does social media play?
Since the onset of the pandemic, Polaris has seen an increase in reports of online sex trafficking. Online recruitment of all human trafficking increased 22% in 2020.
“People are interacting much more with people who they don't know in places like social media, and that has resulted in traffickers going to social media and looking to find people that they can exploit,” Beiser said. “At the same time, many survivors have reported significant connections to help and support through social media and other types of electronic communities.”
The platforms most commonly used to recruit sex trafficking victims since 2019 are Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, according to the Human Trafficking Institute.
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What are the indicators of sex trafficking?
Sex trafficking isn’t a crime as easy to identify and report as a carjacking or kidnapping.
Most often, an indicator of sex trafficking is recognizing people who are vulnerable, Beiser said.
“People often think that it will be some sort of blaring indicator like the tie on a car,” Beiser said. “But that's not what we see with thousands of trafficking survivors calling the hotline. We hear that someone needs safety and needs support.”
Children who are victims of child trafficking typically don’t have an adult in their life they can turn to for help, Roe-Sepowitz said.
Any person under 18 years of age selling sex is legally a trafficking victim.
“The ways that traffickers trap victims is by making them feel like they have no other choice but to choose to be with the trafficker,” Roe-Sepowitz said. “What we want is a trusted adult — a teacher, a coach, a neighbor, an auntie — someone who cares about that child who they can go to.”
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What can be done?
While federal and state agencies work to find victims, Roe-Sepowitz said it’s crucial to combat trafficking at a community level.
“We have a lot of agencies that are international and they say they're rescuing kids, but in our local communities we do not have enough federal and state support for the work that needs to happen to protect children,” Roe-Sepowitz said. “And I want to really challenge people to do prevention on this topic with their children.”
Beiser echoed the importance of community work in eradicating trafficking, adding that “sex trafficking can only happen because men are willing to buy sex from trafficking victims.”
"Stopping trafficking really takes lifting up the people in our community who are experiencing the most challenges and making sure that they're just as safe as anyone else.”
If you or someone you know might be a victim of human trafficking, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline via telephone at 1-888-373-7888, via text at 233733 or via chat.