Hidden in Plain Sight

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Mainly, when people picture human trafficking, they imagine scenes from movies: strangers in vans, international cartels, women chained in basements, dramatic rescues by law enforcement.

Cathryn Lavery, PhD, wants her students to look closer.

A professor and department chairperson of the Criminal Justice and Security Department in Pace University’s Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Lavery studies officer wellness and resiliency, intimate partner violence, sex crimes and trauma, humane criminology, social media and violent crime, and human trafficking. Her work asks students and the public to move beyond Hollywood stereotypes and confront a more complicated truth: in the United States, trafficking often happens inside homes, relationships, workplaces, schools, and online spaces.

“It’s a boyfriend doing it to a girlfriend, a husband with a wife,” Lavery explains. “It’s happening in people’s homes.”

That reality, she says, is precisely what makes trafficking so difficult to identify and so important to study.

Beyond the Hollywood Myth

Lavery recently participated in Pace’s Annual Spring Conference Office of Research and Graduate Education on a panel exploring human trafficking through multiple disciplinary lenses, including criminal justice, public health, nutrition, community corrections, law enforcement, and victimization. That broad approach is essential, she says, because human trafficking is not a single, isolated crime. It intersects with law, psychology, economics, ethics, social media, trauma, organized crime, and public health.

“Criminal justice is probably the most multidisciplinary major or field that exists,” she says. “You cannot know criminal justice without knowing psychology or law or economics, history, philosophy, religion, and ethics.”

Human trafficking, in particular, is often a thread running through other criminal markets, including drug trafficking, gun trafficking, illegal mining, wildlife trafficking, labor exploitation, and even dirt trafficking. It is profitable and often hidden behind ordinary-looking relationships or transactions.

Coercion and Control

That is why Lavery pushes back against the idea that trafficking only involves large criminal enterprises or dramatic kidnappings. Those cases exist, but they are not the whole picture. In many situations, coercion is emotional, psychological, financial, or relational.

Victims may be groomed by romantic partners. They may be threatened with shame, deportation, violence, or retaliation against family members. They may be manipulated into believing they are making a choice when, in reality, their options have been carefully narrowed by someone else.

For Lavery, one of the most important things students can learn is that trafficking often depends on grooming. The process can begin with a promise of love, protection, money, opportunity, or belonging. Over time, trust becomes dependency, and dependency becomes control.

“Criminal justice is probably the most multidisciplinary major or field that exists.You cannot know criminal justice without knowing psychology or law or economics, history, philosophy, religion, and ethics.”

“It’s a phenomenal amount of emotional and psychological abuse,” she says.

That psychological dimension is one reason trafficking can be so difficult for outsiders to understand. Victims may not immediately identify themselves as victims. They may defend the person exploiting them. They may be afraid that seeking help will bring consequences worse than the exploitation itself.

The Digital Dimension

Her current and emerging research also examines how digital spaces shape trafficking, sexual violence, and exploitation. Social media has helped bring awareness to human trafficking, but it has also created new pathways for harm. Online platforms can make recruitment easier, normalize transactional relationships, and create anonymous spaces where exploitation is harder to trace.

For college students, Lavery says, the risks are not abstract. Apps, online marketplaces, “sugar dating” sites, and social media can all become sites of grooming or coercion. Young people may believe they are in control of an arrangement, especially when it is framed as entrepreneurial or consensual. Lavery challenges students to ask deeper questions: Who is profiting? Who is vulnerable? Who is being placed in danger?

Teaching Students to See the Patterns

For students preparing to enter fields such as criminal justice, law enforcement, social services, public health, victim advocacy, or policy, Lavery says that understanding matters. A survivor’s first response may not fit the public’s expectation of what a victim “should” say or do. That does not make the exploitation less real.

In her teaching, Lavery does not soften the realities of the field. Her students sometimes call her a “dream crusher,” she jokes, but the goal is not cynicism. It is preparation.

In courses that address human trafficking, Lavery brings in anti-trafficking professionals, law enforcement specialists, nurses, advocates, and others working directly with survivors. Students learn how trafficking connects to public health, digital platforms, campus safety, gender-based violence, trauma response, and criminal investigations.

“You fight back with the knowledge, the statistics, the data."

They also learn that awareness alone is not enough.

Lavery encourages students to arm themselves with research, statistics, credible sources, and strong media literacy. She warns against relying on TikTok, Wikipedia, or sensationalized true-crime content as substitutes for serious study.

“You fight back with the knowledge, the statistics, the data,” she said.

Lavery is also clear with students about the emotional toll of this work. Criminal justice professionals, advocates, nurses, investigators, attorneys, researchers, and educators may all experience secondary trauma when working with survivors of violence and exploitation. Preparing students for that reality is part of preparing them for meaningful careers.

“If you start to ask for help and learn to deal with it, you’re going to last a lot longer,” Lavery said.

Building a Broader Conversation at Pace

The recent Pace panel was one part of a broader conversation Lavery hopes to continue. In the fall, the Criminal Justice and Security Department plans to host a speaker series exploring trafficking and exploitation from multiple angles, with professionals working in human trafficking investigations, gun violence and trafficking task forces, and animal abuse or illegal wildlife trafficking.

For Lavery, the goal is not simply to make students aware that trafficking exists. It is to teach them how to recognize patterns, ask better questions, challenge assumptions, and support survivors with knowledge rather than stereotypes.

At Pace, she is preparing students to see what others miss.

And in a field where exploitation often hides in plain sight, that ability may be one of the most important tools they can carry.