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MYTH: Only women and girls are trafficked.
FACT: While women and girls are disproportionately affected, men and boys are also trafficked—often in forced labor, agriculture, or sex trafficking.
MYTH: It only happens in poor or foreign countries.
FACT: Human trafficking happens in every country, including the U.S., U.K., and Canada. Victims may be citizens or foreign nationals, men, boys, girls and women.
MYTH: Victims are always physically restrained or locked up.
FACT: Many victims can move freely but are controlled psychologically or financially. Threats, fear, lack of money, or lies and manipulation keep them from leaving.
MYTH: You can always spot a trafficking victim by looking.
FACT: There’s no single way a trafficking victim looks or acts. Many appear “normal” and may attend school, go to work, or live at home.
Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Hotline has received nearly 3,800 contacts related to Kentucky. In 2022 alone, the state reported 344 cases involving 399 child victims —a 67% increase in reports and a 71% increase in child victims compared to 2020.
KY is 9th in the U.S. for human trafficking cases.
Many victims of this crime were abused as children and grew up believing the abuse was normal. Overlapping issues like addiction, mental illness, and homelessness complicate their chances of getting free from their predators. Grooming is a tactic used to lure the vulnerable into their grasp using online platforms, gaining access through parents, or supplying a particular need, such as a place to sleep, food, or a drug to survive. After they gain the trust of their victim, they force, manipulate, lie, and/or coerce them into trafficking.