Many of the violence-against-women shelters have strong anti-sex-work policies. These policies not only create another barrier for access for survivors of human trafficking, who may be taking part in survival sex work, but also work to stigmatize survivors of human trafficking. Frequently these anti-sex-work policies are veiled as a no-recruitment policy. Although understandable, no-recruitment policies gloss over the possibility that some women within a shelter may be choosing to take part in autonomous sex work and may need to rely on the information or connections of another autonomous sex worker within the shelter.
These policies contribute to a highly policed environment that encourages a panoptic surveillance of survivors of human trafficking. These policies also ignore the nuances of experiences that survivors of human trafficking have. Many survivors of human trafficking will have recruited for their trafficker as a means of self-preservation and survival. By blacklisting a woman who has been accused of trafficking herself, shelters alienate some of the most vulnerable survivors.
The conflation of domestic violence with the violence specific to human trafficking works to undermine the distinct trauma survivors of human trafficking must navigate. Yes, there are many similarities between domestic violence and human trafficking, in that both survivors will have experience of manipulation, physical abuse, verbal abuse, financial control—the list could go on, but these survivors of human trafficking experience higher degrees of sexual trauma than most survivors of domestic violence. For this reason, survivors of human trafficking need to be able to access a housing model that incorporates and operates with trauma-informed support and best practices. Within violence-against-women shelters, because of the volume of clients and lack of available resources, this framework is often absent.