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ABSTRACT-The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) was passed to "combat trafficking in persons, a contemporary manifestation of slavery whose victims are predominantly women and children, to ensure just and effective punishment of traffickers, and to protect their victims."1 Since the passing of the Act, federal courts have construed the statute broadly to achieve this stated purpose. One way in which the TVPA has been underutilized, however, is in prosecuting pornography cases. Pornography enjoys wide latitude under the law, protected by a vast net of First Amendment protections. While these protections may preserve freedom of speech, they do nothing to protect adult victims who are trafficked to produce online pornographic media. To provide relief for these victims and better fight all types of domestic trafficking, prosecutors should use the sex trafficking provision of the TVPA, 18 U.S.C. 1591, to prosecute sex trafficking within the pornography industry. The pattern of victimization, other national and international human trafficking directives, plain language of the TVPA, prior cases, and broader policy goals all support the argument that the TVPA can and should be used to address the problem of trafficking adult victims for the production of porn.
Introduction
The law has traditionally treated pornography as a question of private virtue by focusing on balancing First Amendment interests with morals regulation.2 Many observers (and users) of pornography regard it as the harmless viewing of sexual acts between two consenting adults.3 As a result of these legal and social dynamics, the porn industry enjoys minimal regulation that does little to address harmful behaviors within the industry.4 When the harm involved in the production of pornography remains unknown, the assumption is that its production is a commercial venture based on free choice.5 But the unfortunate reality of pornography production is that, often, the production of pornography is neither harmless nor consensual.6 Rather, pornography plays a unique role in fueling the human trafficking industry by both contributing to the demand for more traditional forms of sex trafficking and creating another route to profit for traffickers who enslave victims for the production of pornographic media.7
Evidence shows that pornography increases demand for sex trafficking.8 Certain types of Internet pornography provide readily available sources of violent and exploitative imagery.9 This imagery normalizes these...