The global spread of high-speed internet and increasing computer, tablet, and smartphone ownership has fueled online sex abuse and virtual prostitution.
[2] Today, Thailand's sex industry services roughly 3 to 5 million regular customers and is worth over 6.4 billion dollars.
[27] Once a person is transported to the destination country, they are forced into prostitution, sometimes serving locals and sometimes sex tourists, depending on the location.
In recent years, there have been numerous cases of Burmese, Cambodians, and Lao trafficked into Thai brothels in northern provinces such as Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, central and eastern provinces such as Trat, Samut Prakan, Samut Sakhon, Chonburi, and Chumphon, and Songkhla, Narathiwat, and Pattani near the southern Malaysian border.
[2] Academics and experts alike are unable to agree on one specific cause for people entering the sex industry through trafficking, but rather cite multiple economic and cultural factors.
Victims of trafficking that come from other nations are "easily deceived or lured because they face poverty, unemployment, broken families, and unstable governments" in their countries of origin.
Many suspect that people sell sex because they have been coerced, abandoned, kidnapped, or sold into virtual slavery to pay off parental debts.
Prostitution may represent a way for a girl to earn enough money to maintain and enhance her family's property and status in her home village.
These girls are especially at risk of being recruited and forced into sex trafficking, since, once in the city, they may not be able to get the job they envisioned, yet will be reluctant to return home penniless.
The eldest daughter within a Thai family usually stays at home to assist her parents in maintaining the house, farm, and younger siblings.
[32] According to Boonyarit Nipavanit, a local official in Mae Hong Son, teenage girls are often procured for superiors and VIPs in both the private and public sectors, in a practice known as “treat to food, lay down the mat".
[33] Common methods of trafficking include, but are not limited to, physical force, coercion such as debt relief for family, job, marriage, threats, and passport theft.
Girls can also be kidnapped or lured into the industry by promises of high paying work as dancers, waitresses, domestic servants, or sale representatives.
Advertised promises of youth, virginity, and innocence have led to increased demands for children in the global sex trade.
[30] Research has found that the characteristics that men find attractive in Thai women are "simplicity, loyalty, affection, and innocence.
Men and boys who are involved in the sex industry in Thailand generally work in massage parlors, show/KTV bars, or as "freelancers" in a variety of establishments.
[34] Studies have shown strong correlations between ethnic background and the area of the sex industry in which a given male works or is trafficked.
In Chiang Mai, for example, the majority of Burmese migrant men working in the commercial sex trade operate out of bars and nightclubs, while those from Thailand's hill tribes and other parts of the rural north tend to staff the city's massage parlors.
Many men and boys from these ethnic minority groups are drawn into the exploitative sex trade due to the low wages and discrimination found in other, more formal sectors of the economy (such as construction or factory work).
Media representations of masculinity and sexual dominance contribute to the idea that men cannot be victims, especially in regards to sex-related crimes.
Due to this belief, many female victims never used contraceptives or received medical checkups and thus were at a higher risk of contracting a disease or getting pregnant.
[29] While HIV/AIDS poses a major risk to victims of sex trafficking everywhere, some scholars[36] criticize the academic publications that exist specifically around men and boys in the sex industry for focusing too heavily on HIV/AIDS and presenting them as living health risks to society rather than victims who need the same legal, psychological, and social support services as everyone else.
In 1992, Thailand initiated a program to work with families and society to alter positive attitudes toward the sexual exploitation of children.
[27] Thai law has yet to formally recognize the adult male victim population, a highly stigmatized group that is often rendered invisible by local lawmakers and anti-trafficking advocates alike.
"[27] In addition, Thailand has a number of bilateral memoranda of understanding (MOUs) for anti-trafficking cooperation with the governments of Cambodia (2003), Lao PDR (2005), and Myanmar (2009).
[39] The Thai-Lao and Thai-Myanmar MOUs are executed through action plans as well as case management meetings to handle cross-border issues.
The Thai government partnered with the Pavena Foundation for Children and Women, a public benefit organization to assist the victims of sex trafficking and forced prostitution.