RESEARCH - Moral Panic - Sex Trafficking

There has been a lot of panic about the growing spread of sex trafficking. Political and pressure groups have been calling for investigations into this issue, they have presented facts detailing the depth of this problem. However, where did they get these facts from?

Newspapers reported that 'hundreds' of mail order wives were being shipped form Albania to the UK. However, is this sex trafficking? These women have come on their own accord and decided to marry these men. They also stated that women who were mail ordered within the same country were being sex trafficked. Another example of a slippery slope is the announcement that the true scale of the problem was between 2 and 20 times that was previously confirmed. The difference between these two numbers is huge and vague. Therefore, they don't have any idea. Also, a group called CHASTE claimed 1,420 women were being sex trafficked, this figure was then quoted in newspapers. In the end the figure turned out to be a lie. Finally, this group also announced that every foreign woman in Soho and every foreign woman in the UK was a victim of sex trafficking. This too, was a completely false, stereotypical assumption.

Therefore, this panic was spread through lies and assumptions.