TPC Journal V7, Issue 1-FULL ISSUE

48 The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 1 commercial sex to prove their love (O’Connor & Healy, 2006). Once victims have become completely dependent on their traffickers and are convinced that the easiest way to earn money and maintain their relationships is through selling sex, total dominance has been achieved (O’Connor & Healy, 2006). Although the grooming process outlined by O’Connor and Healy is a helpful model that represents how many persons become trafficked, these series of stages may not occur in every case. Persons may enter the commercial sex trade through a variety of avenues, and their experiences of becoming trafficked may be consistent with, or distinct from, O’Connor and Healy’s model. Contexts of Control Just as variability exists within the stages of grooming, different factors influence whether the grooming process itself results in victim compliance. Traffickers use a variety of recruitment techniques and forms of exploitation to obtain and maintain control (Shelley, 2010). Contexts of control acknowledge the complex associations that influence the relationship between victim and trafficker (Whitaker & Hinterlong, 2008). These factors include the individual resiliencies of trafficked persons, the grooming process, and the methods of force, fraud and coercion used by traffickers (Whitaker & Hinterlong, 2008). According to Whitaker and Hinterlong (2008), the four contexts of control include control-seeking , control mechanisms , controllability and resistance. The context of control-seeking refers to the trafficker’s desire to limit the victims’ choices in order to increase the likelihood that their desires are met (Whitaker & Hinterlong, 2008). Traffickers with higher rates of control-seeking seek more power over victims’ behaviors, appearance and travel (Whitaker & Hinterlong, 2008). They may determine what victims wear, control how they interact with buyers, confine persons to specific locations, identify and enforce a mandatory amount of earnings per day, or withhold passports, money and identifying documents (Whitaker & Hinterlong, 2008; Zimmerman, 2003). Traffickers use control mechanisms (e.g., threats of violence, debt bondage, psychological intimidation and acute violence) to obtain and maintain control of victims, and they may vary depending on the victims’ level of controllability, or capacity to resist due to their social or financial context, cultural or personal beliefs, physical limitations, or other deficiencies (Shelley, 2010; Whitaker & Hinterlong, 2008). Thus, a trafficker may attempt to recruit a young woman by showering her with expensive gifts and affection, but if she demonstrates a low level of controllability (e.g., she has a strong support system, is financially stable, has high self-efficacy), the control mechanisms are less effective (Whitaker & Hinterlong, 2008). Controllability can be further delineated into six subdomains: social, financial, physical, cultural, psychological and institutional (Whitaker & Hinterlong, 2008). Persons with a strong combination across these six subdomains have lower controllability levels and are less likely to become trafficked through the grooming process (Whitaker & Hinterlong, 2008). Because trafficked people are unable to predict or manage events that influence their health and safety, the methods of control in human trafficking are parallel to the characteristics of abuse described in the literature on torture (Saporta & Van der Kolk, 1992). Vulnerabilities and Risk Factors The market for commercial sex represents a diverse avenue that incorporates a wide spectrum of activities and transactions across many settings (Anderson & O’Connell Davidson, 2003). Although survivors of human trafficking are not limited to race, ethnicity, age, gender or socioeconomic status, vulnerabilities such as location, poverty, sexual minority status and childhood trauma history, among other factors, influence higher rates for potential sexual exploitation (Albanese, 2007; Bales, 2007; Hyland, 2001; Kidd & Liborio, 2011; Martinez & Kelle, 2013). The following section outlines a variety of risk factors that have been linked to entrance into the sex trafficking trade.