Is there a connection between porn and sex trafficking? We know sex trafficking is a horrifying injustice that affects millions of women and children around the world. Most of us feel shock and outrage when we hear about it.
Pornography, on the other hand, passes as “adult entertainment.” While we may think porn is indecent or that it represents societal degeneration, our concern rarely goes beyond that. However, important facts from the experts reveal a dark connection between porn and the world of sex and human trafficking.
What is sex trafficking?
Let’s start by defining sex trafficking: According to the Trafficking in Persons Report published by the US Department of State, “When an adult engages in a commercial sex act, such as prostitution, as the result of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion or any combination of such means, that person is a victim of trafficking.”
Additionally, “it’s child sex trafficking when a child (under 18 years of age) is induced to perform a commercial sex act.”1 In the case of a minor, proving force, fraud, or coercion against their pimp is not necessary for the offense to be categorized as sex trafficking.
Sex trafficking falls within the larger category of human trafficking, or trafficking in persons, which can include other types of forced or coerced labor. It’s important to note, per the US Department of Justice, that “coercion can be subtle or overt, physical or psychological.”2
Is porn sex trafficking?
When you hear the word “porn,” do you assume it just means consenting adults having a good time and letting people watch? It’s true that not all porn involves force, threats, or coercion. However, enough of it does that we should be very concerned.
In February of 2020, Exodus Cry shared the story of a young woman, Jewell, who was trafficked into pornography. Jewell’s father started trafficking her as a prostitute when she was just 11 years old. When she became a teenager, Jewell was trafficked into pornography production. Jewell writes:
“I was trafficked in porn a few decades ago, long before anyone heard the term “sex trafficking”. Everyone thought that the porn life was the Playboy mansion and that the prostitution life was Pretty Woman. I had no grid for the possibility that my trafficking was not my fault even though I was 11-17, underage the whole time.“3
Her story isn’t one of dark alleyways and the stereotypical environment of abuse described in books and movies. Jewell’s trafficking happened in broad daylight, on full camera sets with performers and perfect lighting. And yet, decades later, she is still reeling from the trauma that porn created in her life.
Child Sexual Abuse Material and Trafficking
We noted earlier that child trafficking is to induce a minor to perform a commercial sex act, even if it does not involve force, threats, or coercion. This immediately qualifies vast amounts of pornography as sex trafficking. Even prior to the internet, between 1953 and 1984, there were more than 6,000 images of children in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler magazines. Nearly 1,000 of these images showed sexual scenarios between adults and children.4
Covenant Eyes’ Porn Stats found that, “The most popular category of sexual searches was ‘youth.'” A 2014 article in the Pepperdine Law Review stated, “One out of five pornographic images is of a child. Over half of all child pornography is produced in the United States. Sales of these illegal images bring in over $3 billion annually in the United States alone.”5 More recently, the National Coalition on Sexual Exploitation has brought a class action lawsuit against the largest porn companies in the world because they have been profiting off of sexually trafficked children for years.6
In some cases, porn is sex trafficking, but the connection between porn and trafficking goes beyond the explicit cases like Jewell’s. Unfortunately, there are indirect instances of human trafficking related to pornography as well.
Pornography fuels the demand for sex trafficking.
Humans exploit other humans because they can make lots of money. Demand for commercial sex fuels the human trafficking industry. Without demand, it would disappear. Pornography fuels the demand for commercial sex by promoting the belief that women are sexual commodities, which is a key belief necessary for sex trafficking to exist.
Laura Lederer, former Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons for the U.S. State Department, says, “Pornography is a brilliant social marketing campaign for commercial sexual exploitation.”7 Porn is marketing for sex trafficking both directly and indirectly—directly because online and offline hubs for trafficking use pornographic images to draw the buyers and indirectly because of porn’s influence on the culture.
Pornography paves the way for prostitution.
Prostitution creates demand for human trafficking, so another way to see the link between porn and trafficking is to see how porn contributes to prostitution. To be clear, this does not mean that most or even many of the people who watch pornography will buy sex or actively engage in trafficking. However, porn contributes both directly and indirectly to the demand for sex trafficking.
Some data suggests that men who go to prostitutes are twice as likely to have watched a pornographic movie over the last year (66%) than a national sample (33%). Men who go to prostitutes frequently are also more likely to have seen a pornographic movie (74%) than those who have gone to a prostitute only once (53%).8
Pornography provides the script for commercial sex buyers.
Pornography can also train people how to buy sex. Victor Malareked comments in his book on commercial sex, “The message is clear: if prostitution is the main act, porn is the dress rehearsal.”9 Many victims of trafficking say they are shown pornography to demonstrate what the sex buyer wants. In one survey of prostituted women, 86% said they were shown pornography to illustrate specific acts, and 47% had been upset by a sex buyer’s attempt to make them do something in a pornographic script.10
Pornography desensitizes viewers to sexual violence.
According to former prostitute turned reformer, Norma Hotaling, “Pornography provides rationalizations for exploiters as to how and why their sexually exploitive behaviors are acceptable. It normalizes prostitution and commercial sexual exploitation allowing men to more freely engage in these criminal activities.”11
When it comes to watching pornography, viewers’ minds can become very desensitized, which can escalate to new genres, sometimes harder and stranger forms of pornography. Research indicates that the porn people watch shapes their sexual beliefs and preferences. Sex trafficking is a form of sexual violence, and many researchers have noted that pornography can desensitize its viewers.12
Porn producers engage in sexual violence.
Some of the most popular pornography includes physical violence, such as slapping and hitting, as well as verbal abuse and misogynistic language. Dr. John Foubert has compiled numerous peer-reviewed studies on violence in pornography. According to one of the studies he cites, “45% of scenes in online pornography include at least one act of physical aggression.”13 And often the violence is real. Many porn performers have recounted being pressured to endure horrific pain on set.
Some may reject the idea that the porn they watch can shape their perceptions of women, or their propensity for sexual violence. Even if that were true, many of the women being filmed must endure real physical and psychological violence. As recent investigations into mainstream porn sites have shown, consumers cannot reliably distinguish between “ethically” produced porn and unethically produced porn.
Sex traffickers use pornography to reach children.
Police have found that porn can be used to “groom” children into thinking sex between an adult and child is an acceptable, even enjoyable activity. As we’ve shared previously:
“In increasing numbers, online predators are actively seeking out children and grooming them for sex. [According to] the commander of the New Jersey Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force: ‘Online child exploitation right now is probably one of the biggest problems, from a crime perspective, in our country.'”
Not every teen or child who uses these apps is targeted by predators or exposed to porn. But it does happen with shocking frequency. Our friends at Protect Young Eyes have tested out the safety of popular social media apps like Instagram and TikTok. After creating an account where they posed as a teenager, PYE found that after “liking” a few popular (non-pornographic) posts, groomers targeted them with pornographic content and sexual solicitations.14
The porn industry is rife with coercion.
Legal distinctions aside, even if one deems pornography a potentially legitimate business enterprise, the actual recruitment, procurement, or employment of pornographic actors and actresses frequently involves false promises, threats, verbal abuse, and heavy drug use.
Deep emotional wounds and trauma often motivate people to get into porn. Once they’ve crossed the line into pornography, it feels impossible to break free of the industry. This is true even for some of the most successful and glamorous actors, as former porn performer turned pastor Joshua Broome shared with us.
From this place of vulnerability, producers manipulate performers, often using pornographic content as leverage. Leah Darrow was never a porn actress, but as a reality TV star she experienced this:
“When you thought that there was nobody there with like a person, a man with a camera on his shoulder filming you. There were hidden cameras, there were hidden microphones we found them in lamps we found them in pillows we found them we ripped them we threw them away, they filmed you through everything they took all the doors off of the hinges in where we were being filmed… they took the door off the bathroom. I remember all the girls screaming, because they were trying to use the bathroom.”
This non-consensual pornographic content allowed the producers to manipulate the actresses. And if this happens on mainstream reality TV shows, how much more does it happen within the porn industry? One author writes:
“Over the decades, research into the inner-workings of the industry has turned up evidence of the employment of psychological coercion and sometimes physical force to compel performance. Testimony to that end does not appear to be infrequent. As Shelley Lubben, a former pornography performer, has publicly testified: “Women are lured in, coerced and forced to do sex acts they never agreed to do…[and given] drugs and alcohol to help get through hardcore scenes.”15
Fight human trafficking by quitting porn.
We’ve looked at direct ties between porn and sex trafficking, as well as indirect connections. We can see many ways that pornography fuels sex trafficking. It intersects with prostitution and other forms of commercial sex. It contributes to the culture of violence that makes trafficking possible. And porn companies have been implicated in trafficking minors.
But we can make a difference. Think twice before clicking on something you shouldn’t. Let’s make changes to our own habits and hearts to stop the demand. There’s a greater connection between porn and sex trafficking than you may initially think.
LEARN MORE PORN STATISTICS1 US Department of State, “2022 Trafficking in Persons Report,” accessed December 12, 2022 at https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-trafficking-in-persons-report/.
2 US Department of Justice, “What is Human Trafficking?” accessed December 12, 2022 at https://www.justice.gov/humantrafficking/what-is-human-trafficking/.
3 Jewel Baraka, “A Survivor of Teen Porn Trafficking Speaks Out on Pornhub,” February 26, 2020. Accessed December 12, 2022 at https://exoduscry.com/articles/a-survivor-of-teen-porn-trafficking-speaks-out-on-pornhub/.
4 Judish A. Reisman, “Images of Children, Crime and Violence In Playboy, Penthouse And Hustler Magazines.” Accessed on December 12, 2022 http://www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/ccv.pdf.
5 Rachel N. Busick, “Blurred Lines or Bright Line? Addressing the Demand for Sex Trafficking Under California Law,” Pepperdine Law Review 42 (2015).
6 National Center on Sexual Exploitation, “The Class Action Lawsuit Against Pornhub and MindGeek, Explained,” March 11, 2021. Accessed December 12, 2022 at https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/the-class-action-lawsuit-against-pornhub-and-mindgeek-explained-2/.
7 From Israel Gaither, Linda Smith, Janice Shaw-Crouse, Thomas Stack, Lisa Thompson, Shelley Luben, Laura Lederer, Patrick Trueman, David Shaheed, David Kuehne, Donna Rice Hughes, Judith Resiman, Mary Anne Layden, Patrick Fagan, William Struthers, and Ron DeHaas, “Porn Has Reshaped Our Culture,” Speech, Convergence Summit, from PureHope, Baltimore, April 17, 2011.
8 Victor Malarek. The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It. (Toronto, Key Porter, 2009), 196.
9 Martin A. Monto, “Focusing on the Clients of Street Prostitutes: A Creative Approach to Reducing Violence Against Women – Summary Report,” October 30, 1999. Accessed on December 12, 2022. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/182859.pdf
10 Melissa Farley, Ann Cotton, Jacqueline Lynne, Sybille Zumbeck, Frida Spiwak, Maria E. Reyes, Dinorah Alvarez, and Ufuk Sezgin, “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries, Journal of Trauma Practice,” 2 (2004): 33-74, DOI: 10.1300/J189v02n03_03.
11 Karla Lorena Andrade-Rubio and Simón Pedro Izcara-Palacios, “Central American Women Trafficked to California,” Cross-Currents: An International Peer-Reviewed Journal on Humanities & Social Sciences 5 (2009). Accessed at https://saspublishers.com/media/articles/CCIJHSS_55_122-128.pdf.
12 Whitney L. Rostad, Daniel Gittins-Stone, Charlie Huntington, Christie J. Rizzo, Deborah Pearlman, and Lindsay Orchowski, “The Association Between Exposure to Violent Pornography and Teen Dating Violence in Grade 10 High School Students,” Archive of Sexual Behavior 48 (2019): 2137–2147. https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10508-019-1435-4.
13 John Foubert, “Is Porn Violent?” Accessed December 12, 2022 at https://www.johnfoubert.com/is-porn-violent/.
14 Chris McKenna, “4 Ways Pedophiles Exploit Instagram to Groom Kids,” Protect Young Eyes, August 19, 2019. Accessed December 12, 2022 at https://protectyoungeyes.com/4-ways-pedophiles-exploit-instagram-groom-kids/.
15 Noel J. Bouché, Exploited: Sex Trafficking, Porn Culture, and the Call to a Lifestyle of Justice (Pure Hope Coalition: 2009).
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