Sex trafficking
After members of Prostitutes Anonymous who were survivors of modern domestic sex trafficking spent 13 years doing TV, radio, public appearances, news interviews, etc. and calling out that this country needed to "'do something' about it" an internationally recognized definition for sex trafficking was finally established with the Trafficking Act of 2000. It was during the same year the Palermo Protocol was enacted, the United States passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) to clarify the previous confusion and discrepancies in regards to the criminalizing guidelines of human trafficking. Through this act, sex trafficking crimes were defined as a situation where in which a "commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age." If the victim is a child under the age of 18 no force, fraud, or coercion needs to be proven based on this legislation. Susan Tiefenbrun, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law who has written extensively on human trafficking, conducted research on the victims addressed in this act and discovered that each year more than two million women throughout the world are bought and sold for sexual exploitation. In order to clarify previous legal inconsistencies in regards to youth and trafficking, the United States took legal measures to define more varieties of exploitive situations in relation to children. The two terms they defined and focused on were "commercial sexual exploitation of children" and "domestic minor sex trafficking." Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is defined as "encompassing several forms of exploitation, including pornography, prostitution, child sex tourism, and child marriage." Domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) is a term that represents a subset of CSEC situations that have "the exchange of sex with a child under the age of 18, who is a United States (US) citizen or permanent resident, for a gain of cash, goods, or anything of value."
Human trafficking in California
If a person is convicted of obtaining forced labor through human trafficking, he/she faces either five, eight, your twelve years in prison, plus a fine of up to $500,000. If one is found to be committing human trafficking crimes connected to commercial sex trafficking, sexual extortion, or child pornography, he/she faces either eight, fourteen, or twenty years in state prison, a fine of up to $500,000, and the legally mandated responsibility to register as a sex offender. If a person coerces a minor under the age of 18 to engage in commercial sex acts, the persuading actor can receive five to twelve years in prison or a prison sentence of fifteen years to life if the relevant jury determines that he/she used "force, fear, violence, or threat of injury to the alleged victim"; a $500,000 fine; and the requirement to register as a sex offender.