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If someone is forcing you to work or to sell sex

For people in the United States who are being made to work, or to have sex for money, by force, lies or threats. For people who got out. And for people who are worried about someone. The law calls it human trafficking; you don’t have to. What it is, in plain words. The signs. A hotline that answers at any hour, and what it keeps private. Staying safer, leaving, and what comes after, including if you are not a U.S. citizen. Take only what you need.

If someone checks your phone or computer: this page saves nothing, but your browser remembers that you opened it. The Leave quickly button in the corner, or pressing Esc twice, swaps this page for a weather site. It does not clear your history. A private or incognito window, or a library computer, leaves less behind.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No lawyer, advocate or survivor of trafficking has reviewed it, and it was not written by someone who has lived this: an AI has not, and cannot know what it is like. The facts come from pages read on October 6, 2026: the National Human Trafficking Hotline (humantraffickinghotline.org: what human trafficking is, myths and facts, recognizing the signs, labor trafficking, sex trafficking, get help, contact, report trafficking, the confidentiality policy, the chat page and safety planning information); the Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign (dhs.gov/blue-campaign: what human trafficking is, myths and misconceptions, how to identify and report, forced labor, exploitation and how to protect yourself, resources available for victims, and its law enforcement page); U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (uscis.gov: T nonimmigrant status); the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (missingkids.org: child sex trafficking, and the CyberTipline); and the contact page of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. The page says whose words it is passing on. We did not call, text or chat with any of the lines. We did not read any state’s laws, the federal statutes themselves, the immigration forms or their instructions, the U visa or Continued Presence pages, how long any application takes, what child protective services does after a report, or the websites of the other helplines the hotline lists, and the page does not speak to them. The line about 988 was read on October 1, 2026. Some lines are our own suggestions, and the page marks them as ours. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). It is deliberately left off our “save for offline” list, because a saved copy is a trace. Scarlet Beast is not a law office, a shelter or a government agency, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].