Harvard professor speaks about sex trafficking at UNC

Harvard professor Jay Silverman spoke Wednesday about sex trafficking, domestic violence, how the two are related and what the average person can do about it.

Donna Bickford, director of the Carolina Women’s Center, said Silverman is a well-published scholar who is incredibly passionate about research in sex trafficking.

Silverman said his discipline is one where standard research designs cannot be applied.

“These people are invisible,” he said.

“It is very, very hard to get reasonable data on these folks,” he added, blaming brothel owners who lie about the number and ages of the girls who work for them.

He said it is difficult for researchers to get in contact with victims themselves because they are hesitant to come forward.

Silverman defined trafficked workers as people less than 18 years old at the start of their “career,” or someone of any age who enters the business by force, fraud or deception.

He said the experiences they go through are traumatizing and bring them endless shame, as well as the risk of HIV infection.

He cited research that found that 38 percent of trafficked women are HIV positive. Sixty percent of these women are girls younger than 15.

Silverman said youth is more appealing in the business of trafficking, so they draw more clients, increasing their risk of contracting diseases.

After spending about 20 minutes discussing sex trafficking, Silverman moved on to the topic of domestic violence.

He cited a Bangladeshi survey regarding married women and their abusive relationships.

Of the 4,000 men who responded, 76 percent of them admitted to forcing sex on their wives or beating them.

“That is what they see the definition of a man as,” he explained.

He said the connection between the women in these relationships and the women being trafficked is the equally high risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

That is because abusive husbands are more likely to have extramarital partners, which increases their likelihood of contracting diseases and then passing them onto their wives.

“Women married to an abusive man are four times more likely to be HIV-positive than those who are not,” he said. “Among HIV-infected husbands, the abusive ones are seven times more likely to infect their wives.”

He said many Americans see the issues of sex trafficking as foreign problems, though the same problems occur in the United States.

Silverman specifically mentioned Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Boston as sex trafficking centers.

He urged the audience to get involved in work against domestic violence and sex trafficking.

He said that he first got involved with anti-trafficking research by working with men convicted of abusing their partners.

“We have to try to figure out how to do prevention so that we aren’t doing nothing,” he said.

The Coalition Against Sex Trafficking — a branch of the Campus Y — and an initiative through the Carolina Women’s Center both offer opportunities for students who wish to get involved on campus.

Silverman will give an additional lecture today at 1:30 p.m. in the auditorium at the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.