When Abuse Feels Like Love: The Hidden Grip of Trauma Bonding in Trafficking

This blog draws from insights provided by the Human Trafficking Expert Consultant Network, funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The Network includes professionals, many with lived experience, who advise on policies and strategies to combat trafficking both in the United States and worldwide.

What is Trauma Bonding?

In many trafficking situations, victims develop emotional ties to their traffickers—a phenomenon known as trauma bonding. Often referred to as “Stockholm Syndrome,” trauma bonding lacks a precise medical definition or official diagnostic criteria. Not all trafficking victims experience trauma bonds, and current research is limited, often focused mainly on sex trafficking of women and girls in the United States. This leaves significant gaps in understanding how widespread trauma bonding truly is across different forms of trafficking and global contexts.

Trauma bonding typically develops when traffickers alternate between cruelty and kindness, creating cycles of abuse and reward. By acting as both a protector and an abuser, traffickers foster confusion and emotional attachment, sometimes leading victims to feel loyalty or even love toward them. This bond can become especially strong when fear mixes with gratitude for moments of perceived care. Trauma bonding can also occur within families, where a trafficker might be a parent or relative.

The Biological Impact of Trauma

To fully grasp trauma bonding, it’s important to consider how trauma affects the brain. During traumatic experiences, the brain’s emotional center (the limbic system) goes into overdrive, while the logical part (the prefrontal cortex) can shut down. Repeated trauma alters brain development and thinking patterns, leaving victims feeling numb and disconnected. As a result, they may seek out intense experiences—even abusive relationships—to feel anything at all. A trafficker’s cycle of abuse can thus become a twisted source of familiarity and stability, sometimes even providing brief relief from fear and anxiety.

Psychological Coercion and Control

Psychological manipulation is a major factor in trauma bonding. When victims fear for their survival, traffickers may isolate them, threaten them, exhaust them physically and emotionally, and convince them that escape is impossible. Over time, victims might come to view any act of “kindness” from the trafficker as life-saving, fueling loyalty and attachment.

The absence of other support systems makes trauma bonding even more likely. As trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains, in the face of danger, people naturally seek care and protection—even from those harming them—especially when no other help is available. Poverty, lack of housing, healthcare, education, legal status, or job opportunities can push victims further into dependence on their traffickers.

How Trauma Bonding Affects Recovery and Services

Trauma bonding deeply impacts how survivors interact with services and authorities. A person affected by trauma bonding may act in ways that seem contradictory or puzzling—for instance, defending their trafficker, delaying reports, providing inconsistent stories, or being reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement.

For some survivors, the abusive relationship feels safer and more predictable than the uncertainty of leaving. The trafficker’s control can help the victim make sense of their chaotic world, while breaking free might bring overwhelming fear, sadness, or emotional numbness.

If survivors are denied support because they maintain contact with their trafficker, it can lead them back into high-risk situations to survive. Service providers need to plan for possible “relapses,” where survivors might return to the trafficker, and ensure their programs do not replicate the same dynamics of control that existed in the trafficking relationship.

Moving Forward: The Need for Research and Trauma-Informed Care

Understanding trauma bonding in human trafficking is still a developing field. More research is urgently needed to better measure how often it occurs and how it affects survivors. Key priorities include:

• Rigorous research to understand how frequently trauma bonding happens and to improve services and policies.
• Developing standardized ways to identify trauma bonding and respond appropriately.
• Studying how poverty and social instability contribute to trauma bonding.
• Exploring trauma bonding among adult trafficking victims and labor trafficking survivors, areas where little research exists.
• Use the term “trauma bonding” cautiously until clear criteria are established.
• Helping survivors build their sense of agency through patient, consistent, trauma-informed care which can increase their ability to break free from trauma bonds safely.