I have been thinking about this thread over the last day and just wanted to share some thoughts.
I was trafficked as a teenager by a much older male who initially treated me like someone very special, along with gifts, including gifts of drugs, but who subsequently went on to blackmail me (threatened to send compromising photos to my parents) and to control me through violence and through threats of violence towards my family.
This is an incredibly delicate and sensitive issue.
As a child who grew up in an abusive, highly controlling and otherwise dysfunctional family, I was desperate for an older person who would show me love and guidance. The pimp was able to identify and target me because of my vulnerability, my wish to be grown up and my very strong desire to escape from my family.
Obviously not all trafficking victims / survivors came from families like mine. Some victims are simply adolescents going through the usual confusion and vulnerability that kids typically experience around puberty.
It is extremely difficult for a young person to believe that their new friend / boyfriend (in some instances girlfriend) is a pimp / predator.
The way that pimps (individually and in groups) groom young people is very similar to the ways that cults recruit followers / victims.
They start with love bombing and with claims that the victim is "special" in some way. The provision of gifts, which can take many forms, is a mundane and usual element of the modus operandi.
Little by little they become more controlling and move abusive and they always, always alienate the victim from anyone who genuinely loves them and cares for them and manipulate the victim into a relationship based upon control, dependency and fear.
One very common feature of both cults and pimps is that the "gifts" they offer in the honeymoon period are later defined as debts. The victims must pay everything back and usually this is impossible so the victim becomes enslaved.
This happens in many instances of sexual exploitation. Women who seek help from people smugglers to enable them to work in the sex industry overseas frequently end up enslaved by and in debt bondage to, criminals who charge them exorbitant fees for travel, forged documents, a roof over their heads and even clothes, shoes and condoms.
People are often lured into cults by retreats and courses on personal development, meditation, yoga etc. and may over time be exploited as a source of unpaid labour and may be pressurised and coerced into donating all their assets to the cult. People with sufficient resilience to leave are often served with invoices detailing extortionate fees for courses and retreats they attended (in some instances that they never attended) they they thought were free or already paid for. I know several people that this has happened to. The lives of vulnerable people are ruined by this kind of extortion.
Once a person is involved with a cult or a pimp, it can be too late warn them about anything. At that point the vulnerable person will be alienated from their loved ones and will have existed in a cultural vacuum in which whatever the pimp / cult leader says must be true.
One of the common features of pimps and cult leaders is that their modus operandi for exploiting vulnerable people starts with a period of “befriending”, this is often referred to as “grooming”.
I can personally testify to just how disheartening it is to try to warn people that they will be abused once they are involved with a cult or a pimp.
I have been treated with absolute contempt and derision by the very people I have tried to help. I no longer even try to persuade anyone of anything in regard to their cult or pimp. The Stockholm syndrome effectively means that, in such circumstances, I become the enemy, at least in the victim’s eyes.
The question remains - how do we educate vulnerable people about the perils of accepting “gifts” when the gift is not a gift?
We all know that, if we ask a Mafia Don for “help” with a sensitive issue, that there is a price to be paid, that later on we will need to return the favour in some way that may be compromising, criminal or otherwise dangerous and undesirable.
We have all heard of the warning “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” and the story behind the warning.
We will have read the story of Hansel and Gretel and understand why it is not a good idea to nibble at the walls of a gingerbread house in the woods, no matter how hungry we might be.
I am thinking of these examples as the police poster is focussed on the "bait and switch" element of the grooming process. The police have highlighted the fact that what a young person might reasonably consider to be a gift will be considered to be a debt that will lead to them being abused and exploited.
The words “price to be paid” are the problematic words, or so it seems to me. The poster could arguably be interpreted as saying that the victims of grooming groups / pimps are indebted to their exploiters. That when they accept the gifts they are entering into an unwritten contract that will enslave them.
I wonder whether a more nuanced message might be appropriate, for no other reason than that this unwritten debt contract is not worth the paper it is written on. The victims never were in debt to their exploiters, no mater what the exploiters claim.
I am wondering whether, rather than advising young people not to accept gifts from dubious persons (although the “don’t take sweets from stagers” and “don’t go off to look at puppies with a stranger” have long been narratives in pedagogy, it might be more effective to educate them about contract law? Maybe we need new fairy tales for children, where Hansel and Gretel tell the police and social services about the witch and her gingerbread house?
I am not really offering solutions here, just thinking aloud. I do think that we need to start educating children at an early age about the risks of exploitation and the forms that such exploitation might take, however this needs to be done with sensitivity and without traumatising children.
I can understand why the police have created this poster, however I feel it is badly worded.
I do not believe that it is victim blaming to try to warn young people about the modus operandi of pimps and traffickers, however buying into the idea that by accepting gifts that you really are in debt is unhelpful.