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Scam-Based Human Trafficking Through a Trauma-Informed and Intersectional Lens: An Integrative Narrative Review

Hsiang-Chen Yeh ; Siqi Liu ; Tamar Rodney (2026) — Trauma, Violence, & Abuse

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DOI: 10.1177/15248380261487139 (opens in a new tab)

Country:   Global
Tags:   Digital Literacy, Emotional Grooming, Pig Butchering Scams, Platform Accountability, Revictimization, Romance Scams, Scam Based Human Trafficking, Trauma
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Synopsis

            
This publication presents an integrative narrative review of scam-based human trafficking, examining how digital deception and exploitation intersect with trauma, vulnerability, and social identities. The authors frame scam-based trafficking as a trauma-informed and intersectional phenomenon that extends beyond financial fraud or cybercrime to involve coercive control, revictimization, and long-term psychological harm. They synthesize academic and gray literature to map how victims are drawn into large-scale online scams such as romance fraud and pig-butchering schemes, and they organize the findings into five domains: trauma as a vulnerability factor, linguistic and technological mechanisms of deception, intersecting sociocultural and structural vulnerabilities, trauma outcomes and revictimization cycles, and trauma-informed interventions. Key observations indicate that trauma may function both as a preexisting vulnerability and as an outcome of exploitation. The review highlights how perpetrators tailor messaging through grooming, emotional manipulation, and rapid intimacy, with linguistic and computational tools (including NLP) helping to identify patterns but also creating new risks when platforms enable scalable deception. Structural factors such as digital literacy gaps, geopolitical dynamics, and uneven regulatory environments shape risk and access to protection. Victim experiences of guilt, shame, isolation, and recurrent retraumatization are emphasized, alongside the need for responses that address trauma, cultural relevance, and coordinated, survivor-centered support. In terms of implications, the authors advocate for trauma-informed and intersectional policy and practice that span health care, law enforcement, financial services, and digital platforms. They argue for integrated care, emotional scam literacy, multilingual and culturally responsive resources, platform accountability, and cross-system coordination to reduce harm and support recovery, while cautioning against overreliance on automated detection or one-size-fits-all solutions. The review also notes the literature’s fragmentation and calls for more nuanced, cross-cultural research and ethically designed computational tools.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The literature is fragmented across trafficking, cybercrime, psychology, criminology, communication, and human-computer interaction. An integrated model connecting linguistic, psychological, and structural factors to trauma-responsive practice remains lacking. Direct evidence on childhood maltreatment as a predictor of scam-based trafficking is limited. Specialized clinical programs and directly evaluated interventions for scam-based trafficking victims remain limited, and existing treatment evidence is largely adjacent evidence from trafficking or violence contexts.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
This integrative narrative review used structured Google Scholar and PubMed searches, supplemented by citation tracking, coauthor-identified references, and targeted gray-literature review. It screened relevance-ranked search results using stated eligibility and exclusion criteria, documented selection with a PRISMA-informed flow diagram, and included 88 sources. Heterogeneous literature was synthesized thematically rather than quantitatively across five domains: trauma vulnerability, deception mechanisms, structural vulnerabilities, trauma outcomes and revictimization, and trauma-informed interventions.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
The review is integrative and narrative rather than a full systematic review, and it prioritizes conceptual integration over effect-size estimation. Included sources varied substantially by discipline, methods, populations, and terminology. Searches screened only the first 100 Google Scholar results and, for larger PubMed results, the first 50 relevance-ranked records. Much intervention evidence is indirect, drawn from trafficking, violence, or related populations rather than scam-based trafficking victims specifically.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Clarify conceptual boundaries between scam-based trafficking and romance fraud, financial exploitation, cyber-enabled fraud, labor trafficking, and forced criminality. Directly evaluate integrated, scam-specific interventions. Conduct longitudinal and survivor-centered qualitative research on grooming, emotional dependency, and revictimization. Evaluate ethical NLP- and AI-based prevention tools for autonomy, privacy, disclosure, psychological safety, and bias. Expand cross-cultural and transnational research linking micro-level grooming to structural conditions.

          

              

    
    

        
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