The article presents results of an analysis on Polish courts' judgements passed in criminal cases between 1997 and 2009 concerning human trafficking, i.e. former Article 253§1 and 204§4 Penal Code, conducted with an aim to investigate the image of the party injured as a result of such crime. The research included 59 court cases concerning sexual abuse of women, in which a judgement of conviction (either final and binding or not) was passed. The aim of the research was to the reconstruct the process in which a victim of women trafficking is seen by judges, to analyse the language used by judges in dealing with the vic-tims, and to check if there is a specific model or models in the manner the victims' image is seen by judges. As part of this research, an analysis of semantic fields and qualitative analysis were conducted. The conclusions from the former show that the language used by judges when referring to the crime victims is highly diversified: ranging from formal, official registers ('the injured party', 'women', 'witness'), to vernacular and hardly formal, or even vulgar ('white slaves', 'roadside hookers'). As long as the first of the above registers does not carry any judgemental aspect in describing victims of human trafficking, the other style proves how negative the image is: one of a prostitute or a naïve, reckless girl. The semantic field analysis showed that among the expressions referring to the victims, the ones suggesting that the women got what they deserved were predominant. This language contains an element of the victim's causative involvement, suggesting that the women had some part of the blame for the circumstances, or that the circumstances were not as threatening or traumatising. It is often emphasised that the victims themselves agreed to trav-el, or had had prostitution experience before. Interesting conclusions can be drawn from analysis of semantic field equivalents, or in other words, the expressions used in lieu of the word 'victim'. Two groups emerge from among them: one, negative judgemental language used towards the injured party, and two, neutral. In the former group expressions such as: 'subject of trade', 'social outcast', 'property', 'human merchandise', 'merchandise subject to', 'a working girl', 'ladies of the evening', 'girls' are found. A considerable portion of these expressions indicates that the human trafficking victims are seen as de facto prostitutes ('prostitutes', 'roadside hookers', 'ladies of the evening'). Another thing that draws attention is the register of the language, with examples of colloquial or even vulgar words being used, which is certainly improper in documents of such importance. The fact that judges used inverted commas when they opting for some of these expressions in writing cannot serve as an excuse. The other collection of equivalents are those expressions that do not contain any judgemental shades of meaning: 'the injured party/parties', 'women', 'witness', 'young women', 'person'. Among these equivalents, several expressions were found related to sexual services being rendered by the human trafficking victims, characterised as seemingly neutral, yet in fact being disdainful or contemptuous ('ladies', 'working ladies', 'female artists', 'girls', ‘tarts’). The qualitative analysis enabled a deep insight into the source materials. The main conclusion drawn is that a human trafficking victim is in vast majority of proceedings seen by judges as a prostitute, while it must be stated that the facts of the case did not always warrant such opinion. In many cases, judges emphasised the voluntary nature of prostitution. On many occasions, the extenuating circumstances for the perpetrators was the fact that the victim consented to travel or/and to being abused, which remains in disagreement with the Polish or international doctrine, since a consent of the injured party to be abused bears no significance. In one of the researched judgements, the court explicitly stated that the extraordinary mitigation of penalty that was adjudicated stemmed from the fact that the in-jured party were 'professional prostitutes'. When providing the grounds for sentences, judges often referred to the attitudes or traits of character of the persons injured, which is considered illegitimate. Among the features of personality displayed by victims, judges most often quoted demoralisation and inappropri-ate behaviour (especially in case of minor victims), or them being naive or reckless. On some occasions, these were the premises upon which judges adjudicated more lenient sentences. In some of the analysed judgements, the judges explicitly expressed their opinion that the wom-en had fallen victims because of some particular traits of their personalities. Thus the conduct of the perpetrator was excused with audacious behaviour of their victims or demoralisation of the injured parties. Since in all the analysed judgements, the judges made reference to the injured parties' testimony, a portrait of the crime's victim as a witness in court may be reconstructed. In ma-jority of judgements, judges believed the victim testimonies to be true, which does not mean that in some cases the testimonies were not doubted or even rejected altogether. In one case, the court's argument for rejecting the victim's testimony was that she had a vested interest in presenting herself as a human trafficking victim. Unfortunately, very few cases in the analysed sample appropriate victim protection measures were employed (by applying relevant Penal Procedure Code provisions), such as ordering the defender to leave the courtroom for the time the victim gave her testimony. On these rare occasions, judges showed great empathy and proved, among other things, their understanding of the difficult situation in which the injured parties found themselves. Despite the specialised education and proper professional background that Polish judges have, their opinions and comments concerning women trafficking are not free of so-cially conditioned paradigms and stereotypes, which – as the article tries to prove – often translate into a predetermined approach towards the perpetrators, and influences the adjudi-cated sentences.