TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 4-FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 4 411 trafficking may collaborate and document ways to identify trafficked survivors across school, clinical, and community settings. Evidence-based treatment for counseling sex trafficking survivors and trauma-informed techniques for supervising counselors working with sex trafficking survivors could be identified. Conclusion The results of this study illuminate the effect of labels on attitudes and how those attitudes predict empathy and rape myth acceptance in counselors. The presence of prostitute and sex trafficking labels influenced attitudes and predicted levels of empathy and rape myth acceptance in counselors. The importance of obtaining training on the topic of sex trafficking was also identified. The implications of this study related to the counseling profession were outlined and the study limitations were presented. Counselors must reflect on whether they hold stigmatizing beliefs about individuals who have engaged in commercial sex work or who have survived forced sexual exploitation. Additionally, counselors working with sex trafficking survivors may avoid using the prostitute label as this was linked to greater rates of rape myth acceptance and decreased rates of empathy. Future research areas may identify prevalent human trafficking myths and develop human trafficking competencies. The motivating factors and barriers to receiving training on human sex trafficking may also be explored. Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure Data collected in this study was part of a dissertation study. The dissertation was awarded the 2019 Dissertation Excellence Award by the National Board for Certified Counselors. References Alvarez, M. B., & Alessi, E. J. (2012). Human trafficking is more than sex trafficking and prostitution: Implications for social work. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work , 27 , 142–152. doi:10.1177/0886109912443763 American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Andretta, J. R., Woodland, M. H., Watkins, K. M., & Barnes, M. E. (2016). Towards the discreet identification of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) victims and individualized interventions: Science to practice. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law , 22 , 260–270. doi:10.1037/law0000087 Aosved, A. C., & Long, P. J. (2006). Co-occurrence of rape myth acceptance, sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism, classism, and religious intolerance. Sex Roles , 55 , 481–492. doi:10.1007/s11199-006-9101-4 Baldwin, S. B., Fehrenbacher, A. E., & Eisenman, D. P. (2015). Psychological coercion in human trafficking: An application of Biderman’s framework. Qualitative Health Research , 25 , 1171–1181. doi:10.1177/1049732314557087 Barreto, M., & Ellemers, N. (2005). The burden of benevolent sexism: How it contributes to the maintenance of gender inequalities. European Journal of Social Psychology , 35 , 633–642. doi:10.1002/ejsp.270 Barry, K. (1979). Female sexual slavery . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bettio, F., Della Giusta, M., & Di Tommaso, M. L. (2017). Sex work and trafficking: Moving beyond dichotomies. Feminist Economics , 23 (3), 1–22. doi:10.1080/13545701.2017.1330547 Bohart, A. C., Elliott, R., Greenberg, L. S., & Watson, J. C. (2002). Empathy. In J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work: Therapist contributions and responsiveness to patients (1st ed., pp. 89–108). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.