Grooming to Violence: An Analysis of Pathways into Exploitation and Trafficking for Female Adult Victims and Survivors in South Africa

Understanding the pathways into sex trafficking, including the tactics used by perpetrators, is invaluable for practitioners and policymakers when designing intervention initiatives. This chapter examines the perspectives of survivors on their coerced journeys into trafficking. Purposive sampling was used specifically to tap into the victims’ lived experiences. Study participants were identified from shelters offering services to trafficked victims and survivors. Data was collected using individual face-to-face interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. This was complemented with vignettes from court testimony by sex trafficking victims, documented in a comprehensive analysis of successful prosecutions. The findings point to ecosystems of exploitation influence consisting of three distinct but not mutually exclusive components: the recruitment community context, individual, and family factors. Entry points into trafficking include both relational and aversive tactics. Collectively, these tactics contribute to and enable the arsenal of control methods employed by traffickers.