Initially some traffickers befriend women in the guise of boyfriends and may exercise control through emotional attachment. Most trafficked women are entrapped by threats of violence, torture, rape, beatings and threats to family. Many are literally locked up or have their travel documents confiscated. Traffickers exploit their sense of isolation in a foreign country where they do not know the language, their rights and where they have neither friends nor family nor money.

They use the stigma of prostitution to keep women under their thumb by threatening to tell their families about what they do. The family may reject the women because of the shame that they have brought to their families. Many may have left a violent home and have no desire to return.

Traffickers may encourage women to develop a drug habit as a way of coping with the shock of their new life which then ensures their continued compliance and need to carry on working as a way of funding their habit. Drug addiction increases their sense of worthlessness and dulls their desire to run away. Many women have reported a system of debt bondage which has given them the false hope that they will be released once they have earned back the hugely inflated investment that traffickers claim to have made in bringing them to the UK. However, women never repay their debt because the cost of board and lodging is then added onto their ever ballooning debt.