The Trafficking Victims Protection Act | Human trafficking is a crime involving the exploitation of someone for the purpose of compelled labor or a commercial sex act through the use of force, fraud, or coercion. Where a person younger than 18 is induced to perform a commercial sex act, it is a crime regardless of whether there is any force, fraud, or coercion.

• Force: Physical assault, sexual assault, physical confinement, isolation
• Fraud: False promises about work and living conditions, false pretenses for interpersonal relationships, use of fraudulent travel documents, fraudulent employment offers, withholding wages
• Coercion: Threats of serious harm or psychological manipulation such as holding someone at gunpoint, threating the life and safety of a person of their family and friends, withholding legal documents, debt bondage

Action-Means-Purpose (AMP) Model | the AMP Model can be helpful in understand the federal law on human trafficking. At minimum, one element from each of these must be present to establish a potential situation of human trafficking.

• Action: induces, recruits, harbors, transports, provides
• Means: force, fraud or coercion
• Purpose: Sex trafficking or Labor trafficking

3P’s | The three levels of the U.S. government’s response to human trafficking as described in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. The 3P’s are protection of victims, prevention of trafficking, and prosecution of perpetrators.

Child | A person under the age of 18 unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier. A child may be referred to as a juvenile or minor.

Labor trafficking | The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery (22 USC § 7102).

Safe harbor laws | State legislation designed to decrease or eliminate punitive measures for minors involved in commercial sex and improve their access to therapeutic services.

Sex trafficking | The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act, in which that act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age (22 USC § 7102).

Trafficking survivor | An individual in the process of recovering from the trauma of trafficking.

Trafficking victim | An individual currently experiencing trafficking.

Washington State RCWs related to CSEC:

• Chapter 9.69A RCW: Sexual Exploitation of Children
• Chapter 19.320 RCW: Human Trafficking