“The Game?” “Grooming?” “Trick?” … Trust me, I get it. I know it’s hard to keep all the human trafficking lingo straight, especially when you’re new to the advocacy world! As you learn, and start to speak out, you’ll want to make sure you’re using the correct language and phrases. That’s why Rollerskate to Liberate created this free never-ending, always improving, guide to help us all be better advocates. See something missing? Think we got it wrong? Contact us and let’s learn more together!

Terms to Know:

Abuser: Someone who claims to care about someone else but harms them 

• Example - Mother who hits their child, a boyfriend who belittles their girlfriend

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE): Encompasses various forms of physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction experienced in childhood. ACEs have been linked to increase the vulnerability of a person being trafficked in addition to premature death, various health conditions, and mental disorders.

BIPOC: Black Indigenous People of Color 

Bottom: Someone also in the life who is appointed by the trafficker to oversee or manage other victims; a trafficker’s “right hand”

‘Catch a case’: To be arrested or charged

Client/John/Date: A sex buyer

Coercion: A tactic used by traffickers and recruiters to gain an individual’s trust, to convince them they have no other alternative, and to alter their reality. Coercion includes psychological manipulation, isolation, micro-regulation, and threats to harm or actual physical violence to an individual or their loved ones

Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE): Those who sell or trade sex to meet survival needs, or are being exploited by a buyer or trafficker. Includes exploitation for profit, including escort, street and brothel services, stripping, and pornography. Anytime payment is exchanged for sexual objectification of another person

Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC): Involves the sexual abuse or exploitation of a child for the exchange for anything of value (money, shelter, food, etc)

Debt Bondage: A pledge of services (labor) by someone in debt to pay off known or unknown charges (e.g. fees for transportation, boarding, food, and other incidentals; interest, fines for missing quotas, and charges for “bad behavior”). The length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined, where an individual is trapped in a cycle of debt that he or she can never pay down

• Seen in labor trafficking situations. Especially in cases of traffickers to hold visas or important documents from immigrants

Exploitation: Using another person for someone’s

own personal benefit and gain

Facilitator: Any business or person directly or indirectly allowing a trafficker/pimp to carry out his exploitations

• Examples - Taxi drivers, hotel owners, and newspapers where girls are advertised

Fraudulent ‘I love you’: A form of fraud and coercion in which a trafficker tells a potential victim “I love you” in order to gain compliance; a trafficker may tell a victim that they are in a romantic relationship together in order to get the victim to do what they want

Grooming: The act of giving a “gift” in exchange for something in return. Grooming is used as a way for an abuser to gain the trust of a target

• Common grooming tactics involve gift giving, doing favors, making a target feel needed and loved, and creating a bond through secret keeping

• Grooming can also define the tactic someone will use to build a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person for their own personal gain 

Human Trafficking: Taking advantage of another person’s vulnerability for personal gain. This is done for either labor or sexual gain. Trafficking requires someone to use “force, fraud, or coercion” to meet these ends

• Sex Trafficking: Someone using a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act (when something is given in exchange for sexual acts)

  • Often seen in escort services, pornography, illicit massage businesses, brothels, on the streets soliciting

• Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (DMST)

  • Sex trafficking when the victim is younger than 18 years old.

• Labor Trafficking: Someone using a person for the purpose of labor or services

  • Often seen in involuntary or domestic servitude, agricultural labor, factories

Kiddie stroll: An area where young victims are often found, common in street sex work

Madam: A woman who controls an escort service or some form of commercial sex business; may work in collaboration with other traffickers.

• A madam is a trafficker just the same as a pimp is a trafficker

Pimp (aka trafficker) – someone who exploits those in the commercial sex trade. A pimp will take money from buyers in exchange for a person under their control (a prostitute) to be used for that buyers pleasure. A pimp is a trafficker

• A pimp may be called something different such as daddy or boss

• “Pimp culture” often implies a fun, glamorous lifestyle, whereas trafficker has a different connotation and legal ramifications. It doesn’t make a pimp any less of a trafficker

• Gorilla / Guerilla “pimp”: a trafficker who utilizes force and physical violence as a main means for control

• Romeo: a trafficker who utilizes psychological manipulation as a main means for control

Prostitute: Someone who exchanges sexual favors in return for money

• Independent sex worker: Someone who actively independently chooses to work in the commercial sex industry

• Trafficking victims can be under the label of “prostitutes, whores, hoes, or sex worker” but they are still victims if someone is profiting off their bodies

Recruiter: Someone who targets individuals and convinces them to participate in labor / sex trafficking

Sensationalism: People will often use exciting or shocking, yet slightly inaccurate, language and stories to talk about human trafficking in order gain more attention to the issue. Even if done with good intentions, it is important not to paint human trafficking in one light. The media and Hollywood often put out sensationalized content around human trafficking

Survival Sex: When a person exchanges sexual favors in return for a necessity such as food, shelter, drugs, or other tangible needs

The Life: Someone who says they are in “the life” or “the game” are involved in prostitution; calling the life of prostitution by these names gives an illusion of fun and adventure

Trauma Bonding: An emotional, psychological, and physical attachment and dependency between an abuser and their victim. arising from a recurring, cyclical pattern of abuse perpetuated by intermittent reinforcement through rewards and punishments.

Trauma-Informed Care: is an approach in the human service field that assumes that an individual is more likely than not to have a history of trauma. It recognizes the presence of trauma symptoms and acknowledges the role trauma may play in an individual's life. It is a form of treating and helping survivors heal.

Turn out: The act of someone forcing another into prostitution

Wife in law / sister in law – Women under the control of the same trafficker may refer to each other in this way

Phrases to Know:

No such thing as a teen prostitute: someone under the age of 18 cannot consent to being bought and sold, thus someone under the age of 18 involved in the commercial sex trade is ALWAYS a trafficking victim; media and news outlets will refer to someone who is a teenager in prostitution as a “child prostitute” or “teen sex worker” to discredit victimhood and this often falls under victim-blaming and discounts a victim’s story

Lived Experience Expert vs Survivor vs Victim: A victim is someone who is currently caught in a trafficking situation. Someone who has lived through and exited the situation is a survivor or lived experience expert. Always refer to those who have experienced trafficking a survivor or a lived experience expert based on their preferred title.