In most cases, traffickers spend months or even years building trust and creating emotional and economic bonds with their victims. They use a variety of coercion and control techniques such as emotional abuse, forced criminality, financial abuse, and physical and sexual abuse to entrap their victims. The story of Jeffrey Epstein is just one example of how traffickers use a combination of manipulation, economic dependency and coercion ' rather than physical captivity ' to entrap vulnerable people and slowly erode their autonomy. Many victims don't even realize they're being exploited due to the manipulations of their traffickers. Epstein's crimes have attracted the national spotlight due to the fame and power of his clientele. His case demonstrates the harsh reality that human trafficking is far more common and complex than most people imagine. We are criminologists who research human trafficking. In 2020, we founded the University of South Florida's Trafficking in Persons Risk to...
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