Glossary of Terms

A

Age of Consent — The age at which a person is legally able to consent to sexual activity under a particular jurisdiction’s law. The age and applicable exceptions vary, including close-in-age rules and rules involving positions of authority. See also: Statutory Rape and Child Marriage.

Sexual Violence

Aftercare  —  The sustained care a survivor receives after rescue or escape: safe housing, counseling, medical treatment, education, and the long work of rebuilding a life.  See also: Reintegration and Long-Term Recovery Services.

Survivor Support

Attempted Rape — Conduct that meets the legal requirements for an attempt to commit rape but does not result in the completed offense. The elements, terminology, and penalties vary by jurisdiction.

Sexual Violence

B

Bonded Labor  —  Indefinite servitude tied to a real or invented debt, frequently accompanied by sexual violence. 
See also: Debt Bondage.

Forced Labor

Bottom (Bottom Girl) — Trafficking terminology sometimes used for a person whom a trafficker places in apparent authority over other exploited people, such as collecting money, enforcing rules, or recruiting, while that person may also remain under the trafficker’s control. The role and degree of coercion must be assessed case by case.

Tactics & Control

Branding  —  Tattooing or marking a victim to assert ownership and deter escape.

Tactics & Control

Buyer (John) — A person who purchases or seeks to purchase commercial sex. Laws governing buyers vary by jurisdiction. In child sex-trafficking cases under U.S. federal law, patronizing or soliciting a minor for a commercial sex act can fall within the sex-trafficking statute. See also: Demand Reduction and Sex Trafficking.

Trafficking

C

Catfishing  —  The use of fake online identities — often many, sometimes dozens, run at the same time — to deceive and lure victims into exploitation or abuse. A single predator may operate a web of invented personas across multiple platforms, targeting many victims at once.

Online Exploitation

Child Labor Exploitation  —  Illegal employment of minors that overlaps with trafficking and sexual abuse.

Forced Labor

Child Marriage — A formal marriage or informal union in which at least one party is under age 18. United Nations agencies describe child marriage, early marriage, and forced marriage as overlapping but not identical concepts. Whether a marriage is legally valid and what exceptions apply vary by jurisdiction. See also: Forced Marriage and Age of Consent.

Sexual Violence / Legal

Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) — Images, video, or other visual material that documents or depicts the sexual abuse or exploitation of a child. Child-protection organizations use “CSAM” instead of “child pornography” because children cannot consent to being sexually exploited. See also: Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC).

Online Exploitation

Civilization-Failure Framing — SAR framework term. Stop ALL Rape uses this phrase to describe the view that widespread sexual violence and trafficking can reflect systemic institutional and social failures requiring structural responses, not only individual case responses.

Prevention & Reform

Coercion  —  Use of threats, force, psychological pressure, or manipulation to compel sexual acts or labor. 
See also: Coercive Control.

Tactics & Control

Coercive Control  —  A sustained pattern of domination — isolation, surveillance, financial control, intimidation — used to strip a victim of independence over time.  See also: Coercion.

Tactics & Control

Commercial Sex Act  —  Any sex act exchanged for money, goods, shelter, or other value.

Trafficking

Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC)  —  The use of a child in sexual activity in exchange for anything of value, including trafficking, prostitution, and the production of abuse material.  See also: Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).

Trafficking

Complicit Provider  —  A descriptive SAR term for a healthcare professional who knowingly facilitates exploitation—for example, by concealing abuse, falsifying records, or providing services in a way that helps an exploiter maintain control. This is not a standardized legal or clinical term, and conduct must be evaluated under the law and professional standards that apply in the relevant jurisdiction.  See also: Medical Sexual Abuse.

Trafficking

Consent — Freely given agreement to sexual activity by a person who is legally and functionally able to consent. Consent can be communicated through words or actions and can be withdrawn. Legal standards and terminology vary by jurisdiction.

Sexual Violence

Control of Earnings  —  Confiscation of all of a victim’s income to maintain total financial dependence.

Tactics & Control

Crisis Intervention  —  Immediate, short-term support following an assault or an escape from trafficking.  See also: Aftercare.

Survivor Support

Cyberstalking  —  Electronic monitoring, harassment, or threats used to intimidate a survivor or trafficking victim. Offenders often operate through multiple accounts, numbers, and devices at once, so that blocking one does not stop the others.

Online Exploitation

D

Data-Driven Accountability — SAR framework term. The use of defined measures and reliable data to evaluate prevention, reporting, investigations, prosecutions, services, and survivor outcomes.

Prevention & Reform

Debt Bondage  —  Forced labor to repay a debt that is deliberately engineered never to be paid off — inflated with invented charges, and in some cases passed from one family member to the next across generations. Often paired with sexual exploitation.  See also: Bonded Labor.

Forced Labor

Demand Reduction  —  Strategies that target sex buyers in order to shrink the market driving trafficking.  See also: the Nordic / Equality Model and Buyer (John).

Prevention & Reform

Domestic Servitude  —  Forced household labor, commonly involving sexual abuse by employers or family members.  See also: Forced Labor and the Kafala System.

Forced Labor

Domestic Sex Trafficking  —  Trafficking that occurs entirely within a single country’s borders.

Trafficking

Drink Spiking  —  Secretly adding drugs or alcohol to a person’s drink to incapacitate them, often as a prelude to sexual assault.

Tactics & Control

E

Enabler / Facilitator  —  Those who make a trafficking operation possible without directly recruiting or selling: landlords, hotel and website operators, drivers, financial services, and officials who look the other way. Their cooperation — knowing or willfully blind — is what lets a network run at scale.  See also: Complicit Provider and Trafficker (Pimp).

Trafficking

Extraterritorial Jurisdiction  —  Legal authority to prosecute citizens for sex crimes or trafficking committed abroad.

Legal

F

Familial Trafficking  —  Trafficking in which a parent, guardian, or relative sells or exploits a child. Among the hardest forms to detect, because the abuser controls the child’s entire world.  See also: Rehoming.

Trafficking

Forced Labor  —  Involuntary work exacted under threat of penalty, with sexual violence often used as a tool of control.  See also: Labor Trafficking.

Forced Labor

Forced Marriage — A marriage in which one or both people do not give full and free consent, or are unable to leave the marriage, because of coercion, threats, deception, abuse of power, or other pressure. It is distinct from a consensual arranged marriage. Child marriage and forced marriage overlap, but they are not identical categories in every legal system. See also: Child Marriage.

Sexual Violence / Legal

Fraud  —  Deception used in the recruitment or ongoing control of trafficking victims.

Tactics & Control

G

Gang Rape  —  Sexual assault committed by two or more perpetrators acting together.

Sexual Violence

Gaslighting  —  Psychological manipulation that causes a victim to doubt their own memory or perception of reality.

Tactics & Control

Grooming  —  The deliberate, patient building of trust and emotional dependence — usually with a minor, and often with the adults and community around that child at the same time — to gain access and prevent disclosure. Groomers frequently work on several children in parallel, over weeks, months, or years.  See also: Online Enticement.

Online Exploitation

H

Harborer  —  The person who houses or holds victims — in a home, hotel, or brothel — controlling their movement and hiding them from public view. Named directly in U.S. trafficking law alongside recruiting and transporting.  See also: Trafficker (Pimp).

Trafficking

I

Incapacitated Sexual Assault  —  Sexual assault on a person unable to consent due to drugs, alcohol, or unconsciousness.

Sexual Violence

International Sex Trafficking  —  Cross-border movement of victims for sexual exploitation.

Trafficking

Intimidation  —  Threats or displays of violence used to instill fear and ensure compliance.

Tactics & Control

Isolation  —  Systematic cutting off of a victim from family, friends, and support networks.

Tactics & Control

K

Kafala System — A group of migrant-worker sponsorship arrangements used in parts of the Middle East in which a worker’s immigration or residency status has historically been tied closely to an employer or sponsor. The rules differ by country and have changed substantially in some places; for example, Qatar removed major employer-permission requirements for changing jobs and leaving the country. Sponsorship restrictions can increase vulnerability to labour exploitation when they limit a worker’s ability to leave an employer. See also: Forced Labor and Domestic Servitude.

Legal / Forced Labor

L

Labor Trafficking  —  Coerced labor or services obtained through force, fraud, or coercion, frequently accompanied by sexual abuse. 
See also: Forced Labor.

Forced Labor

Live-Streamed Sexual Abuse  —  Real-time broadcast of sexual exploitation, often of children, performed on demand for paying viewers — frequently many buyers at once, who may direct the abuse as it happens from anywhere in the world.

Online Exploitation

Long-Term Recovery Services  —  Sustained counseling, housing, medical care, and economic support for survivors.  See also: Aftercare.

Survivor Support

Loverboy Method (Romeo Pimp)  —  A recruitment tactic in which a trafficker feigns a romantic relationship to win a victim’s love and trust before coercing them into exploitation. This tactic can be used against people of any gender and may occur alongside other forms of grooming, isolation, fraud, or coercion.  See also: Recruiter.

Tactics & Control

M

Mandatory Reporting — A legal duty imposed on certain people or professionals to report specified suspected abuse, neglect, exploitation, or other harm. Who must report, what must be reported, and to whom vary by jurisdiction and by the age or status of the person involved.

Legal

Marital Rape  —  Non-consensual sexual acts committed by a spouse or intimate partner.

Sexual Violence

Measurable Impact — SAR framework term. Outcomes that can be evaluated using defined measures, such as changes in reporting, service access, prevention knowledge, case processing, or survivor-support outcomes.

Prevention & Reform

Medical Sexual Abuse  —  Sexual assault or misconduct by a healthcare professional against a patient under the guise of examination or treatment, exploiting the trust and physical exposure of the medical setting. It ranges from misconduct to assault and rape, and is often hidden for years because victims are unsure whether what happened was part of the exam.  See also: Complicit Provider.

Sexual Violence

Minor Sex Trafficking — Under U.S. federal law, causing a person under 18 to engage in a commercial sex act can constitute sex trafficking without proof of force, fraud, or coercion. International and state-law terminology may differ. See also: Sex Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC).

Trafficking

Multi-Agency Collaboration  —  Coordinated work across law enforcement, NGOs, health services, and communities.

Prevention & Reform

Mut’ah (Temporary Marriage Abuse)  —  The exploitation of temporary or “pleasure” marriage by specific individuals as a cover for prostitution or the sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and children. This is the abuse of a religious practice by particular actors — not a feature of any faith.

Legal

N

National Human Trafficking Hotline — A U.S. service that receives confidential reports of potential human trafficking and connects people with resources. It operates 24/7 by phone, text, and online channels. It is not an emergency service; immediate danger should be reported to the appropriate emergency authority.

Survivor Support

Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery (NCII) / “Revenge Porn”  —  The unauthorized distribution of private sexual images to harm, control, or humiliate the subject. Once posted, the images are copied across countless sites and devices and are nearly impossible to fully erase, so the harm repeats with every re-share. 
See also: Sextortion.

Online Exploitation

Nordic / Equality Model  —  A legal framework that decriminalizes the selling of sex while criminalizing its purchase, aiming to reduce demand and protect those being exploited. 
See also: Demand Reduction.

Legal / Prevention & Reform

O

Online Enticement  —  Use of digital platforms to lure minors into sexual activity or in-person meetings. Offenders commonly contact large numbers of children at once, treating it as a numbers game in which even a small response rate produces many victims. 
See also: Grooming.

Online Exploitation

P

Palermo Protocol  —  The United Nations protocol (2000) that defines human trafficking and guides global legal responses.  See also: the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).

Legal

Prevention Education  —  Structured programs teaching consent, healthy boundaries, and how to recognize grooming or trafficking.

Prevention & Reform

Protection Order — A court order intended to restrict specified conduct or contact in order to protect a person from abuse, stalking, harassment, sexual violence, or other harm. Names, eligibility requirements, available protections, and enforcement rules vary by jurisdiction.

Legal

Public Awareness Campaigns  —  Broad efforts to increase recognition of exploitation and encourage reporting.

Prevention & Reform

Q

Quota  —  A fixed sum a trafficker demands a victim earn each night, enforced through punishment when it is not met.

Tactics & Control

R

Rape — A form of sexual violence involving penetration without freely given consent, including situations in which a person is unable to consent or refuse. Criminal statutes use different terminology and elements across jurisdictions.

Sexual Violence

Rape Culture  —  A social environment in which sexual violence is normalized or excused and victims are blamed rather than believed.

Prevention & Reform

Recruiter  —  The member of a trafficking network who finds and lures victims in — through false job offers, fake romance (see Loverboy Method), social media, or manufactured debt. Often the only person a victim meets before being trapped, and a single recruiter may feed many victims into the same network. 
See also: Trafficker (Pimp).

Trafficking

Rehoming  —  The unregulated transfer of an adopted child to another household outside any legal or child-welfare oversight — a practice that can hand children directly to predators with no paper trail and no one watching. 
See also: Familial Trafficking.

Trafficking

Reintegration  —  The process of helping a survivor rebuild an independent life: housing, employment, education, and community after exploitation.  See also: Aftercare.

Survivor Support

Restitution  —  Court-ordered payment from an offender to compensate a survivor for harm, lost wages, or the value of coerced labor.

Legal

S

Safe Harbor Laws — Laws or policies intended to protect people—often minors—who have been commercially sexually exploited or trafficked from being treated solely as offenders for conduct connected to their exploitation. The protections and eligibility rules vary significantly by jurisdiction. See also: Vacatur Laws.

Legal

Sexting — Sending, receiving, or sharing sexually explicit or intimate digital content. The conduct is not automatically criminal in every circumstance. Laws involving minors, consent, coercion, possession, and distribution vary by jurisdiction; non-consensual sharing may constitute a separate offense. See also: Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery (NCII) and Sextortion.

Online Exploitation

Sextortion  —  Blackmail using sexual images or information to extort money, more images, or sexual acts. Offenders — including organized rings — frequently target many victims at once, and a single perpetrator may hold dozens or hundreds under threat at the same time.  See also: Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery (NCII).

Online Exploitation

Sexual Assault  —  A broad term for sexual contact or sexual acts without consent. The exact legal definition, covered conduct, and offense name vary by jurisdiction.

Sexual Violence

Sexual Assault Evidence Kit (SAEK) / Rape Kit  —  Standardized forensic collection of physical evidence from a victim.  See also: the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE).

Legal

Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE)  —  A specialized nurse trained in forensic evidence collection and trauma-informed victim care.  See also: the Sexual Assault Evidence Kit (SAEK) and Sexual Assault Response Team (SART).

Survivor Support

Sexual Assault Response Team (SART)  —  A coordinated multidisciplinary team handling investigation, medical care, and support.  See also: the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE).

Survivor Support

Sexual Coercion in Labor  —  Use of rape, threats of rape, or sexual humiliation to enforce compliance in a work setting.

Forced Labor

Sex Trafficking — Under U.S. federal law, recruiting, enticing, harboring, transporting, providing, obtaining, advertising, maintaining, patronizing, or soliciting a person for a commercial sex act when force, fraud, or coercion is used, or when the person induced to perform the commercial sex act is under 18. Movement across borders is not required. International definitions and national laws may differ.

Trafficking

Sovereign Immunity — A legal doctrine that can limit when governments, states, or certain government entities may be sued or held liable. The scope of immunity and its exceptions depend on the jurisdiction and the type of claim.

Legal

Statutory Rape — A commonly used term for age-based sexual offenses in which the law treats a person as legally unable to consent to the sexual activity at issue. Offense names, ages, close-in-age exceptions, and age-difference requirements vary widely by jurisdiction. See also: Age of Consent.

Sexual Violence

Survivor  —  A person who has experienced sexual violence or trafficking and is engaged in recovery or advocacy.

Survivor Support

Systemic Reform — SAR framework term. Changes to laws, policies, institutions, incentives, practices, or systems intended to reduce the conditions that allow sexual violence, exploitation, or trafficking to persist.

Prevention & Reform

T

“The Life” / “The Game”  —  Subculture terms used within trafficking to describe the world of commercial sexual exploitation. Recognizing this vocabulary can help identify a victim.

Tactics & Control

Trafficker (Pimp)  —  A person who engages in conduct that constitutes human trafficking under applicable law. Traffickers may act alone or with others, and their roles can include recruiting, transporting, harboring, controlling, exploiting, or profiting from another person. “Pimp” is sometimes used in sex-trafficking contexts, but it is not interchangeable with the legal definition of a trafficker. 
See also: Recruiter, Transporter, Harborer, Buyer (John), and Enabler / Facilitator.

Trafficking

Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) — The principal U.S. federal anti-trafficking law enacted in 2000 and subsequently reauthorized and amended. It established federal definitions and tools addressing sex trafficking and forced labor, victim protections, prevention, and prosecution.

Legal

Transporter  —  The person who moves victims between locations — across borders or within one country — using ordinary travel routes, fraudulent documents, or private vehicles to keep victims disoriented and far from anyone who might help. 
See also: Trafficker (Pimp).

Trafficking

Trauma Bonding  —  The emotional attachment formed through cycles of abuse and intermittent kindness that binds a victim to a perpetrator. 
See also: Coercive Control.

Tactics & Control

Trauma-Informed Care — An approach that recognizes how trauma can affect people, identifies signs and symptoms of trauma, integrates that knowledge into policies and practices, and seeks to avoid retraumatization. Trauma-informed practice emphasizes safety, trust, collaboration, empowerment, and choice.

Survivor Support

T-Visa — A U.S. immigration status available to certain victims of a severe form of human trafficking who meet statutory requirements. Eligibility depends on individual circumstances, including physical presence related to trafficking and, for many applicants, reasonable assistance with law-enforcement requests unless an exception or exemption applies. USCIS decides eligibility.

Legal

V

Vacatur Laws — Laws that may allow trafficking survivors to ask a court to vacate, set aside, or otherwise clear certain convictions or records connected to their trafficking. The offenses covered, evidence required, and procedures vary by jurisdiction. See also: Safe Harbor Laws.

Legal

Victim  —  The legal term for a person harmed by these crimes, used in justice-system processes.

Survivor Support

Victim-Blaming  —  Holding a survivor responsible for the violence committed against them.

Prevention & Reform

Victim-Centered Approach  —  A response model that prioritizes survivor safety, choice, and dignity.

Survivor Support

W

Whistleblower  —  A person who reports credible information about abuse, trafficking, or institutional wrongdoing, often at personal risk.

Legal / Survivor Support

Witness Protection  —  Security measures for victims and witnesses testifying against perpetrators.

Legal