What is clear is that the conditions surrounding trafficked women and children include all the classic elements traditionally associated with slavery: abduction, false promises, transportation to a strange place, loss of freedom, abuse, violence, and deprivation. Those involved are isolated, controlled by various emotional and physical techniques, made dependent on drugs and alcohol, duped and terrorized into submission. Smuggling of migrants, with which trafficking is too often confused, is fundamentally different: smuggled people have consented to travel, and when they reach their destinations they expect to be free; the trafficked, even if they have initially consented, remain victims of continuing exploitation at the hands of their traffickers. Sold on from owner to owner in a long cycle of abuse, women make excellent commodities: the profits are immense, the chances of being caught small, the penalties derisory, and the women can also be forced to pay back the costs incurred in their purchase and transport, their supposed "debt" a further device to enslave them. A CIA report has estimated that traffickers earn an average of $250,000 for each trafficked woman. But there is no reliable information about how much is paid out at each stage on the long road from enticement to prostitution, who gets what cut, and how much is paid to the men and women who act as "chaperones" and "couriers" along the way.
