Lawyers Manual - Unified Court System

From Sex Trafficking to FGM: Emerging Issues 373
Even if your client’s experience as a victim of trafficking or prostitution is
irrelevant to her legal case, it will likely have an impact on your interaction with
her. She may feel mistrust, fear, and shame that will make it difficult for her to
disclose information about the exploitation and abuse. You should remind her of
your duty of confidentiality and reassure her that she is not to blame for what
was done to her. Your client may also have mental and physical health needs
triggered by the sexual exploitation. Research demonstrates that, cross-culturally,
people exploited in prostitution sustain exceptionally high levels of post-traumatic
stress disorder and other psychological harms, such as depression. Prostitution
often has a devastating effect on victims’ physical health, leading to sexually
transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, which can severely damage the
reproductive and immune systems. Many women and children who have been
sexually exploited become dependant on alcohol or drugs either because their
abusers sought their addiction as a tactic of control or because the victims used
substances to numb the psychic pain caused by sexual exploitation and abuse.
Identifying appropriate and available health services and substance abuse
programs can be quite challenging. 16 Just as few of these programs were
designed to address the complex needs of victims of domestic violence, even
fewer are capable of addressing the multifaceted needs — cultural, linguistic,
psychological, and medical — of victims of trafficking and prostitution.
Internet Marriages
Exploitation by internet marriage brokers is closely akin to exploitation by
the sex industry. Internet marriage brokers, many of whom double as sex tourism
promoters, recruit young, attractive girls and women from poor countries as
brides for comparatively affluent Western men. Most of these brokers promote
their human merchandise by employing racial and ethnic gender stereotypes that
portray the women as willing sex objects and happily submissive domestic
servants. 17 The women are often told that Western men are more understanding
and egalitarian than men from their own country. The result is a clash of
expectations that often results in domestic violence. In a 2003 conference for
domestic violence service providers organized by the New York State Coalition
Against Domestic Violence, half the counselors in attendance had assisted
internet brides who had become victims of domestic violence. 18 Advocates at
Sanctuary for Families have reported that husbands of their clients specifically
sponsored them because the men wanted their new brides to engage in sex acts,