Chapter IV
The numbers, and the ones that do not hold
Seven figures circulate widely in this field and cannot survive being checked. Marianco does not use them, and here is the reason for each.
A wrong number is not a harmless exaggeration in a good cause. It is the thing a journalist checks first, and when it fails everything else you said fails with it.
What circulates
What the source says
300,000
~300
What the source says: ~300
At risk across three countries in 2001, not victims in one country now. Estes later put those actually trafficked into sexual slavery in the hundreds.
13
no defensible figure
no defensible figure
Age at first sexual experience in a 1982 study whose respondents averaged 22, not age of entry. No defensible figure exists, national or global.
$150bn
$236bn
What the source says: $236bn
Profits from forced labour, not turnover and not trafficking. The ILO replaced its own 2014 estimate on 19 March 2024.
#2
no defensible figure
no defensible figure
No empirical study ranks illegal economies by size. The claim circulates in second- and third-place versions, which is itself the tell.
The sources that do hold each carry a limitation their own authors state and campaigners routinely drop. Detection is not prevalence. Reports are not incidents. A model is not a census. We publish the caveat next to the figure, because a number without its caveat is a different claim from the one the source made.