Human trafficking entails using force, fraud, or coercion to compel people into providing service or labor. Human trafficking crime occurs with or without the smuggling of people across borders. It happens whenever people get forced into servitude by using fraud, threats, and additional methods of coercion.
Who Can Be Held Liable For Human Trafficking?
The new laws hold individuals or businesses who financially benefit from actions they knew and should have logically known regarding human trafficking. This includes those businesses that knowingly and directly participate in exploiting victims for their monetary gains. Businesses liable include topless bars, brothels, pornography websites, massage parlors, and adult entertainment companies. Defendants also include businesses that weren’t directly involved in exploiting victims but received monetary benefits from the activities. An excellent example of this scenario is a hotel that allows and doesn’t report sex trafficking operations and continues to receive a monetary benefit. Victims of human trafficking should contact a law firm in both personal injury and criminal defense to assist them in filing a claim.
Victims Of Human Trafficking
The biggest misconception surrounding human trafficking is that the victims involved are desperate foreign individuals who come from underdeveloped nations. The truth of the matter is that any person can become an easy target of human trafficking. Affluent, well-educated Americans can also become victims of such acts. People at the lower level of the socioeconomic ladder, however, are more likely the easy target of human trafficking. Such acts victimize both women and men, although women are more likely to fall victim to traffic trafficking. Sadly, kids are commonly victimized by perpetrators of human trafficking.
How Human Trafficking Occurs
Human trafficking happens in various ways. However, the most common and classic type of human trafficking entails transporting victims from their home country. Human trafficking perpetrators recruit victims using fraudulent guarantees of economic possibilities or usual employment arrangements. Some victims are also forcibly abducted in some cases. The victims are transported illegally after abduction or recruitment, and various forms of coercion get employed to pressure them to provide services or labor.
Industries Where Human Trafficking Is Prevalent
Human trafficking occurs in any industry, but there are specific industries the majority of human trafficking victims end up in. The industries usually associated with human trafficking include the following:
- Agriculture: The agriculture sector is a common destination for most human trafficking, especially in areas that require extensive pools of periodic labor.
- Sex industry: A significant proportion of human trafficking victims work in the sex industry as entertainers or prostitutes.
- Hospitality: Trafficking victims may work in this industry at places like cleaning services or hotels.
- Manual labor: Some of the victims of human trafficking are forced to perform manual in manual labor jobs, usually at factories or for contractors.
Human Trafficking Victims Can File Lawsuits
In the past, human trafficking victims had minimal options regarding their available legal choices. Criminal prosecution of perpetrators of human trafficking has been difficult for several reasons. Human trafficking perpetrators are usually elusive and hard to recognize as the necessary proof is usually hard to present. In any occurrence, criminal prosecution does little to assist the victims of human trafficking in bouncing back from the harm caused by perpetrators.
Today, human trafficking victims can file a lawsuit against commercial businesses that profit from or facilitates human exploitation and trafficking. Federal state laws enable victims of human trafficking to secure monetary damages from institutions that financially benefit from the misuse. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) allows human trafficking victims to file a civil lawsuit against any individual or business that knowingly benefits from the trafficking venture.
Victims of human trafficking are entitled to compensation for the exploitation. They may sue any institution or persons who financially benefit from their exploitation. Working with a seasoned personal injury attorney allows you to secure fair compensation.