Boys and men are also victims of sex trafficking | The Excerpt
On Sunday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: When people talk about the crime of sex trafficking they often think of girls and women. But there are male victims of sex trafficking too. The recent arrest and indictment of former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries on charges of international sex trafficking and interstate prostitution could bring dozens of men out of the shadows to talk about their trauma. Could this be the beginning of a broader reckoning involving male victims of trafficking? Steven Procopio, a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in men’s issues including sexual abuse and sex trafficking, joins The Excerpt to talk about this often overlooked community of survivors.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Sunday, November 24th, 2024.
When people talk about the crime of sex trafficking, they often think of people like wealthy financier, Jeffrey Epstein, a man who was accused of trafficking dozens of underage girls as well as young boys over the course of many years. We don't often think about the male victims here. A recent arrest and indictment of former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO, Michael Jeffries, on charges of international sex trafficking and interstate prostitution could bring dozens of male victims out of the shadows to talk about their trauma. Could this be the beginning of a broader reckoning involving male victims of trafficking?
I'm now joined by Steven Procopio, a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in men's issues, including sexual abuse and in particular sex trafficking. Thanks for joining me, Steven.
Steven Procopio:
Thank you very much. My pleasure.
Taylor Wilson:
Steven, I know you have a 17-year track record of working with male victims of sex trafficking. Would you tell us about the first male victims of sex trafficking you worked with? Without going into specifics, how did you find them and what were some of their stories?
Steven Procopio:
I was a faculty advisor at the Boston University Graduate School of Social Work, and there was 28 social workers that were on the staff that acted as the conduit from field education to their placement. And one of my colleagues did a workshop on trafficking of girls because that was her area of expertise. And during the course of the conversation, she said, "I can only talk about girls. I can't talk about boys, but we kind of sort of think it happens to boys. It's less than 10%. Boys don't get pimped, it's just gay boys that are doing this and they're doing it of their own free will."
I just could not digest that information at all, given the fact I had many years of dealing with sexual abuse of boys and men back in the day. That was my only guide. So to make a very long story short, I was founder of the first free standing project for trafficked boys in the United States as a result of my efforts.
Taylor Wilson:
And of course, Steven, and this is not to diminish the pain and suffering of female victims here, but you've spoken before about how even anti-trafficking advocates were slow to acknowledge, as you just mentioned, the existence of male victims. Why do you think that is?
Steven Procopio:
Even in the days when I worked in AIDS, there was a lot of pushback from various communities in terms of who was being served and the fear of taking funding away from them for another population. So with many in the women's community, they did not see this as an issue, and they were concerned that I was going to be going after funding to take it away from them.
And that's an old human service drama, which just doesn't work, it never happened. And there's a lot of sexism within the larger human trafficking community. I don't think all the women's projects are in that line, but there's still plenty of them that are pushing back.
Taylor Wilson:
Steven, I mentioned Michael Jeffries at the top. His partner Matthew Smith, and a third man, James Jacobson, were indicted in October, accused of using forced fraud and coercion to lure dozens of men to travel, not just to New York, but hotels around the world to attend these secret sex events.
We heard from US attorney Breon Peace saying the three men allegedly preyed on the hopes and dreams of their victims by exploiting, abusing, and silencing them to fulfill their own desires. I'm curious, let's talk about the male modeling industry just specifically here, Steven. Are those working in this industry particularly vulnerable to exploitation?
Steven Procopio:
First of all, what I want to say about Abercrombie & Fitch, I applaud the men that came forward because in my community we've known about him for years. And the problem that we could not get him indicted was the fear of victims coming forward. And that's also true for girls and women, it's just the fear of the threats and the coercion of the offender if they disclose.
So I would not say Abercrombie and Fitch was the modeling center, this happens everywhere. It's not just a modeling issue. It's kids who live in housing projects. It's kids from wealthy families that fall prey to it based on adverse childhood experiences. It can happen to any male, and it's not like one profession versus another. It just so happens that Abercrombie & Fitch with a male modeling venue.
Taylor Wilson:
What kinds of hurdles, Steven, do male victims of sex trafficking face in coming forward, and how might their journey differ from what female victims face?
Steven Procopio:
Well, first of all, there's no narrative for male survivors, and a lot of men don't have the language or the awareness that their experiences were sex trafficking. When we were going through the MeToo campaign, a lot of my male clients would say, "Well, what about me? I don't have a voice. I don't have backup around the narrative. I'm isolated and I'm alone."
There's a lot of fear of disclosure based on homophobia and sexism. And the non-gay people that are trafficked pretty much stay underground because they don't want to run the risk of being identified as gay. And I have to stress this is not a sexual orientation issue, it can happen to anybody, and it's quite pervasive.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, I think that's a crucial point to mention there, Steven. According to the United Nations on Drugs and Crime, boys represent the fastest growing segment of human trafficking victims. In their 2022 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, the UNODC noted that the number of boy victims more than quintupled between 2004 and 2020, Steven.
Is this because more boys are being trafficked, or is this because more boys are coming forward?
Steven Procopio:
I would say more boys and more providers are now coming forward as they have been trained on the issue of trafficking. And for the past 17 years, I've been traveling around the country doing awareness training, and I work in Canada now with groups up there in Ottawa to try and move that needle forward. And it's happening more around disclosure, but we still have a lot more to do. I'm not in statistics, I don't believe in statistics, it doesn't matter to me. The only issue is if you're being trafficked, that's something we need to stop.
And it's just doing assessment around boys, who may not be able to disclose, around complex trauma that they have based on adverse childhood experiences, and then behavioral indicators. So when I train on those two areas, I let people know that in that assessment, that should be a guide as a red flag for you to go deeper, that there's an issue maybe of sexual abuse or trafficking. 70 to 80% of both boys and girls come into trafficking with a prior history of childhood sexual abuse, so it's a continuum of sexual victimization.
Taylor Wilson:
Interesting. We heard about a large sex trafficking ring in Connecticut that was broken up in 2018, involving potentially dozens of victims who were trafficked over the course of two decades. In this case, Steven, the victims were developmentally disabled and mentally ill boys and men. When it comes to victims, who is most vulnerable here?
Steven Procopio:
I think in the developmental disability community, obviously they're at high risk based on cognitive and physical challenges, so they're easy prey. I think when we look at boys, we're looking at did they have sexual abuse as a history? Is there family violence within the home? Is there substance abuse within the home? Are they involved in gang activity, because gang activity is a lot around trafficking. And poverty.
So there's many different factors that may contribute to complex trauma and just make them much more vulnerable. And also, pretty much the number one reason is homelessness and runaway behavior because those folks are easy prey.
Taylor Wilson:
Talk to me, Steven, about the people who are buying the services of these sex trafficking rings. We talked through a few of them at the top, but who are these folks? And it really just seems to me like these worlds wouldn't be able to exist without them. Is that true?
Steven Procopio:
I don't want to close the door on other offenders, but what I'm about to tell you is also true for girls and women. It's a 35-year-old white male, married with children. So these are the people that are doing the offending.
When I did my focus groups in Boston with boys, I asked them, "Did you ever ask the buyer why he's doing this?" And I found out this is true for girls too, unfortunately, that the man will say, "We can do things to you and have you do things to us that our wife won't do." And that's usually oral and anal sex.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. We're in this new era of the internet, and I know that creates a lot of wrinkles to this conversation. What role does the internet play in all this, and what new challenges are you really seeing in this internet age?
Steven Procopio:
Well, the unfortunate thing is, depending on what part of the country you're in, everything is like Tinder, Grindr, and various hookup sites. I can't keep track of all the sites that are coming up where hookups are being made. So you may have a 35-year-old male who poses as a 16-year-old girl and then hook up with a boy, and then they take it from there.
And the police departments I've talked to they just can't get above and beyond. It's really sad. I think traffickers are very astute so it's hard. It's just really hard. The most you can dom as a provider, your goal is to work with a client that you have in front of you to do the best you can to get him the services he needs and stop feeling like you have to rescue every boy.
Taylor Wilson:
Steven, you've said you've talked with police departments through some of these issues, of course. What solutions are you really hoping to see on a policy or societal level to not just help victims but also prevent trafficking to begin with, as challenging as it is?
Steven Procopio:
Well, for boys I think we need to do much more around awareness training. And I've done both workshops virtually here in person and in Canada. And when I have a room of social workers or police officers or juvenile justice, they look at me like a deer with the headlights in their eyes because they just are so disconnected from the information that I'm giving them. They have an awareness about boys, but when I get into the specifics, they're not just yet up to speed.
The difficulty with social work, when we have social workers trained, when they go to organizations, the social worker that just starts their job, their longevity is three to five years then they're gone. So it's always having to retrain people and get them up to speed.
Taylor Wilson:
And just finally, Steven, what would you like listeners and viewers to walk away with as they think about this issue?
Steven Procopio:
Just have an awareness that this happens to boys too, and it's just not a girl thing, and they're not doing it of their own free will. They're sexually victimized with sexual abuse. There's many offenders that are after boys for the reasons I told you, and they need for us to support them without the sexism and the homophobia. And especially for the non-gay boys who remain underground, they need to have control because trafficking and sexual abuse takes control over a victim.
And you know, adolescents, they're not crazy about adults anyway. Their main group is their peer group. So if they have adults coming in, especially if they're experienced with offenders, and rightly so, they need to be cautious, and we want to support that with them.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. And before we close here, Steven, I want to just tell our listeners, if you are a survivor of sexual assault, RAINN offers support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE, and online dot R-A-I-N-N.org. Steven, a fascinating breakdown here on a really important topic. Thanks for joining me on it.
Steven Procopio:
Thank you so much. I really appreciated this and I appreciate you, your group reaching out to males. I really do appreciate that.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks to our senior producers Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.