One of the first black women to be identified as a victim of human sex trafficking was Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman. 

She was mockingly dubbed the "Hottentot Venus" by Europeans because, during her brief life, her body was cruelly exposed and subjected to public scrutiny. Additionally, her experience confirmed Europeans' already present, highly harmful sexual obsession with the bodies of African women. At the Gamtoos River, which is now known as the Eastern Cape in South Africa, Sara Baartman was born in 1789.

Baartman and her family belonged to the Khoikhoi Gonaquasub tribe. Baartman was raised on a colonial farm, perhaps as a servant with her family. Her father, a cattle driver, passed away when she was still a young girl, and her mother passed away when she was just two. By the time she was a teenager, Baartman had wed a drummer from the Khoikhoi tribe. Together, they had a child who passed very soon after birth. Baartman's spouse was killed by Dutch colonists when she was sixteen.

Soon after, she was sold into slavery to a trader by the name of Pieter Willem Cezar. He took her to Cape Town where he later used her as a domestic slave for his brother Hendrik. 21-year-old Baartman allegedly signed a contract on October 29, 1810, with William Dunlop, a doctor who was a friend of the Cezar brothers, even though she was illiterate. Because slavery had been formally outlawed in Great Britain, this contract compelled her to travel to England and Ireland with the Cezar brothers and Dunlop to perform household work.

Additionally, she would be on display for amusement. After five years, Baartman would be granted permission to return to South Africa and receive a percentage of the proceeds from her shows. But the agreement was bogus in every way, and she was kept in servitude for the rest of her life.

On November 24, 1810, Baartman debuted in London at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly Circus. However, British abolitionists were quick to take notice of her public treatment and accused Dunlop and the Cezars of holding Baartman against her will. Pieter Cezar produced the contract that Baartman had signed, and the judge made a decision against Baartman. Moreover, Baartman affirmed in court that she wasn't being mistreated.

The court trial's media coverage raised Baartman's popularity as an exhibit. By 1812, she had traveled all over England and even as far as Limerick, Ireland. After spending four years in Britain, Baartman was transported to France in September 1814 and sold to S. Reaux, an animal exhibitor. He displayed Baartman to the general public in and around Paris, frequently at the Palais Royal. Additionally, he permitted customers who were willing to pay for her profanity to mistreat her sexually. Due to the public's obsession with Baartman's body, Reaux made a sizable profit.

She was the subject of several scientific paintings at the Jardin du Roi, where she was examined in March 1815: as naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Frédéric Cuvier, a younger brother of Georges, reported: "she was obliging enough to undress and to allow herself to be painted in the nude". This was not true: Although she appeared to be naked by his standards, she wore a small apron-like garment that concealed her genitalia throughout these sessions, by her own cultural norms of modesty. She steadfastly refused to remove this even when offered money by one of the attending scientists.

Sarah Baartman's Grave