Victimized and Condemned

How Survivors Are Failed by the System

The year before the Covid 19 Pandemic brought the world to its knees, a very young woman found herself at the lowest point in her life. She was three months pregnant and trapped in an abusive relationship with a man who was supposed to protect her. Instead her trafficker shot her three times and left her for dead.

Miraculously, she survived, but the physical and emotional scars ran deep. Over the years, she watched him face what the State considered justice, being convicted of sex trafficking in federal court and sentenced to 30 years in prison. However, he is still facing charges for attempted murder for the brutal assault against her, and he and his legal team have somehow managed to exploit the criminal justice system’s penchant for bureaucracy, repeatedly delaying the trial where she was set to testify against him.

But her traffickers arrest, conviction and imprisonment did not bring the peace she hoped for. From behind bars, he continued to exert control over her life. He called her from jail, pressuring her to retract her testimony, and sent associates to her home to issue threats. Despite these terrifying attempts to silence her, she stood her ground, refusing to give in. But the fear intensified when her sister went missing in the fall of 2023. She received chilling messages from an anonymous number, claiming responsibility for her sister's disappearance and referencing the trafficker as the orchestrator. The police were involved, but the terror remained palpable, leaving her in constant fear for her life.

Through all of this, one harsh truth remained: her trafficker, even while incarcerated, held her hostage and tried to use the criminal court system against her. This power wasn't just rooted in threats and violence but in a system that had failed to protect her. As a survivor of sex trafficking, she was not only fighting against her trafficker but against a legal system that had criminalized her. After her release from federal custody in 2021, she was forced to register as a sex offender—a label that, for many like her, becomes a lifelong stigma, impossible to escape. She was frozen in fear and the obstacles in front of her were insurmountable. Advocates from the anti trafficking, sex worker rights and domestic violence spaces shook their heads in disbelief when confronted by the totality of the circumstance and law enforcement officials, looking into the face of someone who had been victimized by the very laws they enforced, rendered them speechless and without any resolution.

This is not an isolated case.

Many trafficking victims in the United States are prosecuted alongside their traffickers and placed on sex offender registries. The very system that should protect them instead entangles them further in a cycle of criminalization, poverty, and ongoing surveillance. According to K. Mogulescu and L. Goodmark in their article Surveillance and Entanglement: How mandatory sex offender registration impacts criminalised survivors of human trafficking, survivors of trafficking often face legal consequences that continue to punish them long after their victimization. For many, being placed on a sex offender registry creates an insurmountable barrier to rebuilding their lives.

The public nature of these registries makes survivors vulnerable to continued exploitation and harm. In some cases, scammers have targeted individuals on the registry, as seen in a June 2019 case in Pennsylvania where scammers posed as law enforcement officers to extort money from registered individuals. The registry databases provided the scammers with the information they needed to find their targets. While this is an obvious consequence of public registry information, the real harm extends much further, especially for survivors of trafficking who are subject to continued surveillance and restriction even after they have served their sentences.

The young woman in this story experienced firsthand the impact of being on the registry. After her release from custody, she tried to find safe housing but was turned away from countless residential programs and shelters because of her status as a registered sex offender. She was denied Victims Services or Compensation because she had been incarcerated during the 2 year period after which the window for victims services closed. In the late spring of 2024, she was accepted into a residential program in the Northeast, but upon arrival, she was informed that the previous resident had refused to vacate, leaving her homeless once again. She spent the next few months bouncing between temporary accommodations, hotels, and even the homes of people she barely knew, all while trying to evade those who sought to harm her.

Her status on the registry followed her everywhere. Despite numerous attempts to get her name removed from the public registry, the system continued to deny her safety. Every door she knocked on seemed to slam in her face, not just because of the crimes her trafficker forced her into, but because of a registry that refused to acknowledge her as a victim. 

This isn't just her story—it's the story of countless survivors across the United States. The zealous prosecution of human trafficking, often hailed as a bipartisan success, has had severe unintended consequences for many victims, who find themselves prosecuted alongside their traffickers.

As Mogulescu and Goodmark note in their paper for the Anti Trafficking Review Journal, Surveillance and Entanglement: How mandatory sex offender registration impacts criminalized survivors of human trafficking, these survivors often plead guilty to avoid draconian sentences, but even reduced sentences come with the heavy burden of sex offender registration. These registries, meant to protect the public from dangerous predators, often trap survivors in a system of perpetual punishment.

Sex offender registries have long been used to marginalize and control individuals deemed undesirable by society. Survivors of trafficking, especially those in the commercial sex industry, often find themselves caught in this web of control. Despite their exploitation and coercion, they are charged as the ultimate wrongdoers. When these survivors are placed on registries, they are subject to intense surveillance, restricted from owning cell phones, using social media, or even engaging in basic social interactions without oversight. In New York State, for example, individuals on the registry are prohibited from possessing a cell phone with a camera or video capability, owning pets, or hitchhiking. For survivors of trafficking, these restrictions make it nearly impossible to reintegrate into society.In some cases, survivors face parole conditions that invade their privacy and restrict their ability to build relationships. Individuals under supervision must inform their parole officers of any intimate relationships, provide contact information, and disclose their offense or conviction in the presence of their parole officer. This kind of invasive surveillance strips survivors of their autonomy and dignity, reinforcing the idea that they are criminals, not victims.

The public nature of sex offender registries puts survivors at risk of further exploitation.

Technology makes their personal information easily accessible, and as seen in the case of the woman targeted by her trafficker, public access to her address only made it easier for his associates to find her. The very system designed to track predators was instead used against victims.

For survivors of trafficking, the consequences of sex offender registration are devastating. It affects their ability to find housing, secure employment, and even maintain relationships with their children. The stigma of being labeled a sex offender follows them for life, and the digital mark of the registry ensures they are never truly free. The impact of this system on trafficking survivors demands a critical reevaluation.

The Human Trafficking Clemency Initiative (HTCI), which advocates for survivors convicted of crimes related to their trafficking, has highlighted numerous cases where survivors have been unfairly prosecuted and forced onto registries. In one case, a woman was convicted of sex trafficking shortly after her 18th birthday for engaging in prostitution alongside two younger teenagers. Despite being a victim herself, she was sentenced to 14 years in prison and placed on the registry.

This kind of punitive response to survivors is not only unjust but counterproductive. The registration system, as it currently exists, fails to protect the public and instead perpetuates the harm inflicted on survivors of trafficking. It traps them in a cycle of surveillance, punishment, and fear, making it nearly impossible for them to rebuild their lives.

It is clear that the system of sex offender registries in the United States requires a critical overhaul.

For survivors of human trafficking, criminalization and mandatory registration add to the trauma they have already endured. Courts should have the discretion to exempt survivors from registration, and mechanisms should be put in place to allow those on the registry to demonstrate that their inclusion is unjust. The voices of survivors must be heard, and their victimization acknowledged in sentencing and registry decisions.

Survivors of trafficking deserve protection, not persecution.

Our society must reexamine how we handle cases of human trafficking in the United States. Its current form has been . The current system, as it stands, fails to protect those who need it most and always has. Instead of punishing survivors, we must prioritize their safety, dignity, and right to rebuild their lives. Survivors of trafficking deserve protection, not persecution. They deserve to live free from the shadow of their past, and the system must be reform.