Human trafficking is force, deception, or compulsion to gain labor or commercial sex acts. Millions of men, women, and children are trafficked every year worldwide, including in the United States. It may happen in any society, and victims of any age, ethnicity, gender, or nationality can be victims. To attract victims into trafficking situations, traffickers use violence and deception such as well-paying jobs or personal relationships.
When a wealthy man offers pay and position for what appears to be honest work, victims do not always realize they are being targeted for trafficking and exploitation. It is well known that Jeffrey Epstein used tens of girls from high schools and shopping malls in Florida, but in New York City, Epstein’s recruiters used dance studios for his hunting ground. Over several years, Lisa, at seventeen years old, was asked by a fellow dancer to provide private exercise classes to Epstein; Priscilla was solicited to give Epstein a massage; and Marlo was requested as a personal trainer. Epstein had a network of recruiters in New York dance studios that led to the trafficking and exploitation of young dancers.
Like massage parlors and strip clubs, dance studios are a major source of human trafficking globally. Sadly, the potential for underage victims is high, as Epstein’s case demonstrates.
How Human Trafficking Occurs in Dance Studios
To entice victims, traffickers claim that they want to develop an intimate relationship with a person—in the end, only to win trust. Once that trust is established, they often turn on their victim, using force and deception to keep them in a vulnerable position.
The Jeffrey Epstein Case
The high profile Jeffrey Epstein Case serves as one of the clearest examples of trafficking in dance studios in recent years. Epstein, for instance, would utilize his wealth and position to establish relationships with dancing students to benefit himself. According to The New York Times, the billionaire financier expressly directed his recruiters to bring him underage dancers and, in some cases, had dancers smuggled across state borders.
As The New York Times reports, while Epstein was on a thirteen-month sentence in 2008 for soliciting a minor for prostitution, he could leave jail for twelve hours per day, six days per week. During that time, Epstein flew New York dancer Priscilla Doe to Florida, whom he had already been exploiting for two years. To start, Priscilla accepted his offer to be a masseuse, and after two visits, he began sexually exploiting her with a promise of upward mobility in dance. With repeated encounters over several years, Epstein threatened Priscilla’s safety if she told anyone what she knew about him.
Priscilla was one of many girls who Epstein recruited from dance studios. In these and other situations, Epstein used money and status to lure victims into dangerous situations. Former dancer Nadia Vostrikov explains that the dance community carries an “inherent trust,” and Epstein exploited that community’s trust to traffic and exploit young women.
Why Dance Studios are Human Trafficking Targets
Generally, people dance because it is something that they enjoy doing. For children, as the National Dance Education Organization advocates, dance encourages physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development. Specifically, dance can also have significant effects on self-image, self-worth, and self-confidence. These effects, however, do not always occur in healthy ways, and to adult audiences, dancers can seem sexually appealing, despite their young age. Having children dance sexually is what the National Center on Sexual Exploitation has called “Pornification of an Art.”
Sexualization of Dance
Developmentally, children in dance are often placed in contexts that move them well beyond their maturity levels. Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited (DA:ANCE) summarizes the problem with dance and sexualization:
Children are becoming increasingly sexualized through dance at younger and younger ages. Studios, dance teachers, and even parents often unknowingly model their movement choices on what they see in the media and pop-culture outlets. The ramifications of this are alarming. A 2012 study conducted by the Canadian’s Women’s Health Network research shows that most girls – as young as 6-years old – are beginning to think of themselves as sex objects.
Pop culture reinforces the sexploitation of children in dance. Angela Russel, George Shaefer, and Erin Reilly recount a benchmark in sexualization of children in dance:
The audience should think that you are nude.” These were the words of the dance instructor to a group of pre-teen girls as she introduced them to their newest competition dance routine, a burlesque-style dance with showgirl-inspired costumes designed to make the girls appear topless. She went on to coach them on the style of the dance and demonstrated the arm movements while shouting, “I’m hot! I’m mean! You can’t have me! You can’t afford me!” Despite the girls’ discomfort and objections from their moms, the girls went on to perform their showgirl routine, “Fantastic,” at a competition. The routine was featured on the television show Dance Moms in an episode titled “Topless Showgirls” (Stinson, 2012), which was later pulled by Lifetime for generating too much controversy (Chan, 2012).
Prepubescent children in sexualized circumstances struggle with body image, depression, shame, anxiety, eating disorders, and other serious physical and mental barriers. A study in 2014 by Marika Tiggeman and Amy Slater sampled 815 mothers of 4-10-year-old girls to find that young girls actively engage in teen culture with focuses on beauty products and self-objectification but without sexual behaviors. If the sexual behaviors are reinforced in extracurricular activities like dance, then little will prevent prepubescent children from fully taking on later developmental levels, including sexuality.
For the viewers of these dances, children can become the objects they are instructed to become. Viewers may see a showgirl, stripper, or other another kind of sex object on stage, and that objectification of children and dancers is the same kind of objectification that traffickers have for their human commodities.
Family and friends are the primary audience for child dancers, though, right? If 90% of child sex abuse victims know their perpetrators and 68% of them are abused by family members, then those friends and family members watching a dance performance are not necessarily safe. In addition to those statistics, familial trafficking was responsible for 41% of human trafficking in 2017.
Combatting Human Trafficking with Dance
Although dance can be a source of objectification for some, it has also been used to raise awareness for important causes like human trafficking. July 30 is the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, a day dedicated to raising awareness about human trafficking and human rights. To “shine a light and bring awareness” to the harsh reality of human trafficking, Derek Hough, a Dancing with the Stars alum, produced and directed a powerful dance, which he shared with his social media. Like Hough’s performance, dance can be used to combat trafficking and as a source of healing for victims of human trafficking.
Dance Therapy and Movement Therapy
According to the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA), Dance and Movement Therapy (DMT) is the “psychotherapeutic use of movement to promote emotional, social, cognitive, and physical integration of the individual, for the purpose of improving health and well-being.” This therapy operates on four main premises:
- Movement is language.
- Mind, body, and spirit are interconnected.
- Movement can be functional, communicative, developmental, and expressive.
- Movement is both an assessment tool and a primary mode of intervention.
DMT establishes an atmosphere where people feel free to express themselves and strengthen or heal the mind, body, and spirit.
The charity Kolkata Sanved Research surveyed fifty female survivors of trafficking and found that DMT helped to ease anxiety, depression, anger, and post-traumatic stress when combined with traditional counseling and rehabilitation. Founder and director of the charity, Sohini Chakraborty, claims, “Often, in the rehabilitation of victims of trafficking and sexual violence, the impact on the body can be overlooked.” People who are victims of human trafficking often feel like their bodies are useless and feel low self-worth, but dance and movement therapies help them to appreciate their bodies and love themselves again.
Awareness Helps to Prevent Trafficking and Exploitation
While dance has been used as a hunting ground for traffickers and sexual exploitation, movements are using dance as means of healing for trafficking victims. For those outside the dance community, there is still much work to be done in raising awareness about trafficking, and that awareness can protect potential human trafficking victims.
Fortunately, in the Epstein case, some dancers recognized what was going on before it was too late. As The New York Times reports, Marlo Fisken, a dance instructor, said a recruiter approached her in 2006 when she was in her early twenties and asked if she was interested in working as a personal trainer for a wealthy man. When she showed up at Epstein’s mansion, he supposedly kept trying to coerce her into sexual massages but let her go when she refused.
Similarly, Nadia Vostrikov was twenty-six years old when a woman spoke to her in the bathroom at Steps on Broadway dance studio in 2013, asking if Vostrikov would teach one of her private ballet clients. When Vostrikov agreed to a Skype interview, she was surprised to find Epstein on the other end, wanting to fly her to Florida but warning her to look him up online because he admitted to being a sex offender. She did not speak to him again.
If more dancers, coaches, and parents are aware of the warning signs and the prevalence of trafficking in dance studios, then the dance community can become a safer environment. Groups like Soul to Sole Choreography and DA:NCE are leading the way to awareness and safer choreography within the dance community.
Outside of the dance community, The Asservo Project continues its call to educate people on human trafficking in all contexts. Reach out to us for training, our tip line, and support through the donation center.
References
Chandran, R. (2016, February 24). Classical Indian dance helps trafficking victims to heal, study shows. Retrieved from Reuters : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-trafficking-dance/classical-indian-dance-helps-trafficking-victims-to-heal-study-shows-idUSKCN0VX0XK.
DA:NCE. (2022). Retrieved January 11, 2022, from https://www.danceawareness.com/.
NCOSE. (2016, August 3). Pornification of an art: Sexualization of dance. National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Retrieved January 11, 2022, from https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/pornification-art-sexualization-dance/.
Russel, A., S. Schaefer, & Erin Reilly. (2018). Sexualization of prepubescent girls in dance competition: Innocent fun or ‘sexploitation’? Strategies, 31.5, pp. 3-7, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08924562.2018.1490229.
Stone, N. (2020, July 31). Derek Hough Directs Powerful Dance to Bring Awareness to World Day Against Trafficking In Persons. Retrieved from People: https://people.com/human-interest/derek-hough-directs-powerful-dance-world-day-against-trafficking-in-persons/.
Soul to Sole Choreography. (2021). Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://www.soultosolechoreography.org/.
Tiggeman, M. & A. Slater. (2014, September). Contemporary girlhood: maternal reports on sexualized behaviour and appearance concern in 4-10 year-old girls. Body Image, 11.4, pp. 396-403. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2014.06.007. Watkins, A. (2019, September 4). Epstein’s recruiters found his masseuses in city dance studios.New York Times, A.21. Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-dance-victims.html