Trafficking Misinformation

The film Sound of Freedom is a Hollywood depiction based on one person’s stories. There are many additional perspectives and stories that complete the picture. 

There are a lot of scary rumors out there about how people get recruited into human trafficking. None of them are true - at least that is what we've learned from operating the Human Trafficking Hotline.

The voices of Black survivors have historically been left out of the anti trafficking movement. To tell the true story of human trafficking, we can no longer separate it from race.

The language we use when talking about human trafficking can be triggering to survivors and preventing victims from recognizing they're in a trafficking situation. It's past time we listen to survivors and develop survivor-centered language.

The truth is, in most human trafficking situations, there are unlikely to be visible “signs” or “indicators” that trafficking is happening - unless you know something else about the situation - unless you know the story.

Polaris, the leading organization working to prevent and reduce sex and labor trafficking in North America, issued the following statement in response to accusations of human trafficking by Wyoming congressional candidate Harriet Hageman.

Polaris, a technology-enabled NGO that fights sex and labor trafficking, uses its multidisciplinary expertise on human trafficking and applied cryptography to outline a vision for web3 that will empower and protect vulnerable communities while holding perpetrators of abuse and crimes accountable.

Twenty years ago human trafficking had only officially been a crime in this country for about a year. Building awareness was an urgent undertaking. Today, we see a new urgency around awareness - the need to move past the myths and stereotypes toward a deeper understanding of how human trafficking actually happens.

Compassionate, committed individuals and communities like yours are the most powerful resource there is to prevent and reduce human trafficking. But to leverage your power, you need the best possible information. For this reason, Polaris has created an interactive, online training program: Human Trafficking 101.

Compassionate, committed individuals and communities that care are the most powerful resource there is to prevent and reduce human trafficking. However, to leverage this power, we must ensure that they are armed with the knowledge necessary to do the work.

Stories have the power to change things, for better and for worse. This detailed guide is designed to help content-creators for any medium tell compelling, realistic stories of human trafficking.

In a statement before a judge about her court-ordered conservatorship, pop icon Britney Spears likened her situation to a form of human trafficking. So is it? While we don't know the full extent of Spears' situation and cannot definitively say whether or not it amounts to trafficking, the level of financial and personal control that she described certainly resembles the forms of control and coercion tactics used in situations of labor trafficking.