Victims of human trafficking are protected under both Federal and Florida State statutes.  It is important to understand the definitions contained in these statutes.  Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act the following definitions apply:

    Severe form of trafficking in persons:   

    (a) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or

    (b) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery

    Definition of terms used above:

• "Sex trafficking" means the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act

• "Commercial sex act" means any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person

• "Involuntary servitude" includes a condition of servitude induced by means of  (a) any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that, if the person did not enter into or continue in such condition, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint; or (b) the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.

• "Debt bondage" means the status or condition of a debtor arising from a pledge by the debtor of his or her personal services or of those of a person under his or her control as a security for debt, if the value of those services as reasonably assessed is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined.

• "Coercion" means (a) threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; (b) any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform and act would result in serious harm to or physcial restraint against any person; or, (c) the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.

Florida Statutes 787.05, 787.06