Domestic Human Trafficking
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Bacha Bazi: Afghan Tradition Expolits Young Boys
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The Myth of Initial Consent
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Mainstream Media Calls Teen Sex Trafficking Victim a Criminal
Report Exposes Egyptian Christian Women Forced Into Muslim Marriages
Published November 12, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
A new report released by Egyptian women right's activist Nadia Ghaly and anti-trafficking specialist (and guest blogger here) Michele Clark has uncovered an insidious system of the kidnapping of Christian (known as Coptic in Egypt) women. These women are forced to marry Muslim men and in many cases convert to Islam. It's a practice which meets the international definition of human trafficking, but is also a serious issue of violence against women.
Exemplary of this phenomenon is the story of a woman identified as “R.” At 17, she received a phone call from a polite young man who said his name was Amir and that he admired her. He asked her to meet him at a local church. When she arrived, however, she was drugged and kidnapped. When she woke up “Amir” told her she would have to marry a stranger, a Muslim man named Mahmoud. When she refused to have sex with Mahmoud, his family held her down while he raped her. As a result of the rape, she is now unable to have children.
Sex Buys Survival for Runaway Kids
Published October 28, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
Nothing calls attention to an issue like an article in the New York Times, and this time the media giant has deigned to shine its blinding spotlight upon domestic minor sex trafficking -- sorta. Never once in the article does the author use the term "trafficking victim" the describe the children in question -- American kids who run away from home and end up in prostitution either for survival or under pimp control. But legally in the U.S., any child under 18 involved in commercial sex is a trafficking victim. Semantics aside, though, the issue of American youth coerced and forced into prostitution by pimps is a significant and growing problem.
Author Ian Urbina gives prostituted runaway youth a face in Roxanne L., a 16-year-old girl from Queens who was picked up for prostitution. Dan Garrabrant, the detective questioning her, has only one hour before he must turn her over to social services. If in that hour he can get her to admit that she has a pimp, he can get her off the street and into victim services. He tries everything -- pushing, commiserating, talking about other stuff, offering safety -- but nothing can get her to admit that she has a pimp. His initials are tatooed on her body, but she denies he even exists overt and over. At the end of the interview, Garrabrant is forced to release Roxanne to a youth shelter. Her body is found several days later, killed by the pimp she insisted never existed. Roxanne is not the first, nor will she be the last, child to die at the hands of her pimp.
Out of the 1.6 million children who run away from home each year, about one third (or over 530,000) trade sex acts for tools of survival like food, shelter, warmth, drugs to feed an addiction, or the promise of protection and companionship.
Man Sells Foster Daughter Into Prostitution
Published October 26, 2009 @ 01:24PM PT
Pimps can be strangers to their child victims, but they are often someone the victim trusts, like a boyfriend, a parent, or a family member. In a case out of Maryland recently, Shelby Lewis sold his 12-year-old foster daughter, along with three other girls, into prostitution -- the price of the "rent" he charged them for living in his home. This case is an excellent case study of what domestic minor sex trafficking looks like in the U.S., since it has a number of very common factors present.
- First, the victim was a part of the foster care system. It's common for American girls who are eventually trafficked by pimps to have been in foster care at one point in their lives. The connection between foster care and trafficking is due to both the vulnerability of young people without stable homes and the dysfunction of many foster care systems in the U.S.
Second, the pimp was someone the victim knew as a protector. While pimps can be strangers, they often approach victims first as boyfriends, friends, stepfathers, family members, etc. They groom the victim to rely on them and then claim, as Lewis did, that the cost of their protection and love is prostitution.
Third, the victims started in their early teens. Lewis first began pimping his foster daughter out when she was 12. He also sold three other girls, who he began exploiting at 13, 14, and 16. The average age of entry into prostitution is 12-14 in the U.S., so the ages of the victims in this case are typical.
Fourth, one of his victims was registered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It's not unusual for children who are reported missing, either as runaways or as kidnapping victims, end up in the hands of pimps like Lewis.
Lastly, child pornography makes an appearance in this case, as it does in many others. Lewis had pictures of his victims tied to beds in sexual poses at his apartment. Pimps can earn money by selling pornographic images of the girls they exploit in addition to selling the girls themselves.
While one of these factors might not be present in all cases of domestic minor sex trafficking, they are certainly present in a number of them. This case is an example of how the issue of child trafficking in the U.S. is deeply connected to the need for reform of the foster care system and better education for girls. The questions this case begs are much broader than just those related to human trafficking: Why are foster youths so susceptible to trafficking? Why are men buying girls so young for sex? It's a reminder that we must always view trafficking within the context of social issues pimps utilize to help them traffic girls.
Photo credit: EOS Cameroun
Supreme Court to Hear "S&M Svengali" Sex Trafficking Case
Published October 16, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
When she took the job, Sotomayor might not have known she's be talking about whips and handcuffs at work. But that's what will happen when the issue of human trafficking with be put before the Supreme Court in early 2010. And how does human trafficking make it's first appearance at the SCOTUS? In the form of a case that involves S&M, slavery, and some other pretty unsavory sexual stuff. Glenn Marcus, the man dubbed the "S&M Svengali", was convicted of sex trafficking in 2001 and has appealed his case all the way up the legal food chain. It's a case that has potential ramifications for trafficking victims everywhere.
Here's what happened: Marcus had an S&M-themed website in the late 1990s which featured photos of women who were his "slaves" undergoing various levels of physical abuse. He met a woman who court documents just call "Jodi," and she agreed to be on the website. At this point, two stories diverge. Jodi claims Marcus took the relationship too far -- that he forced her to do things she didn't want to do and then write about them for the site. She couldn't escape, and was effectively a slave in real life, although she started out only portraying one on a website. Marcus, on the other hand, claims that everything was consensual and part of Jodi's employment contract. Apparently, even the parts where he carved the word "slave" into her stomach with a knife, shaved her head, and whipped her brutally were part of her contract.
The reason SCOTUS has agreed to hear this case is that the abuse Marcus inflicted on Jodi took place between 1999 and 2001. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the law under which Marcus was prosecuted and convicted, was passed in 2000. Marcus's lawyers claim that Marcus's behavior was so different before and after October 2000, that the jury may have only convicted him on evidence prior to the passage of the law. Even if that is the case, was none of his behavior illegal before? I'm pretty sure carving a word into someone's stomach against their will has never been ok.
I'm worried about the affect this case will have on the abolitionist movement for two reasons. One, I think the S&M connection will only confuse SCOTUS's understanding of sex trafficking. Human trafficking and S&M, with the notable exception of this case, are not really connected. Sex trafficking is not about the sort of activities which take place between the victim and perpetrator, but rather the victim's consent to the situation and ability to get out of it. I'm worried that the presence of S&M will bring the court's focus on the wrong set of issues. Secondly, this case could have an impact for victims who were trafficked before 2000. It is dangerous to set a legal precedent where being trafficked before 2000 and after 2000 (instead of just after) may weaken a case.
I'll be following this case closely and will keep you updated on what our good friends on the SCOTUS decide. Hopefully, they're be able to look past the chain-mail-and-leather packaging on this case and see the central issues beneath -- abuse, consent, and slavery.
Photo credit: laura padgett
Georgia Supreme Court: Let Teen Strippers Take It Off
Published September 29, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
Yesterday was a good day for Atlanta area men who like to see young women take their clothes off -- they're about to get to see a lot more of it. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously ruled that young women ages 18, 19, and 20 have a right to work in strip clubs that serve alcohol, overturning an Atlanta city ordinance raising the age to 21.
Legislators claim the law was created to discourage underage drinking, not to target adult entertainers. However, workers ages 18 to 20 in a number of other industries like convenience stores, concert venues, and stadiums would have been exempt from the law. Adult entertainment clubs where alcohol sales are a major source of revenue, were not. In the end, the court decided the case based on the argument that 18 to 20-year-olds have a right to handle alcohol in their jobs; their right to strip in public was never officially questioned.
This case may have an impact on a growing suggestion within the anti-trafficking movement: move the age of consent for commercial sex from 18 to 21. Some advocates have suggested this change should only apply to prostitution, but others have petitioned for the age increase to apply to young women in pornography, stripping, escort agencies, and other adult services as well. The argument for an age of consent increase is that it gives young women more time to mature enough to make an active decision to enter the potentially dangerous field of commercial sex. As a society, we feel young people are not mature enough to make responsible choices about alcohol until they are 21, how could we expect them to make responsible choices about commercial sex, which can be arguably more dangerous for women, before then? The argument against the age increase is that it unfairly limits 18 to 20-year-olds, who are legally adults, from choosing commercial sex. Young people are considered mature enough to consent to sexual activity at ages ranging from 15 to 18, depending on the state, why should they have to wait until they are 21 to consent to commercial sex? Young women can choose to join the army and put their bodies in front of bullets at age 18, why should they not be able to handle the dangers of commercial sex until 21?
I have no doubt that raising the age of consent for commercial sex to 21 might help some women who are stuck in prostitution get out, and might prevent other women from being tricked or coerced into the industry in the first place. But I also have no doubt it would take away the livelihood of some women who are in legal adult industries, like the Atlanta women who fought for their right to strip. It's a tough issue, but one we don't even need to tackle right now.
The fact is there are plenty of truly underage girls -- 11-17 years old -- in prostitution and other commercial sex industries. Before we even consider raising the age of consent for commercial sex to include a broader number of young women, let's focus on helping the children who are in commercial sex right now get help to get out. We don't have enough shelters, enough social workers, enough counselors, and enough lawyers for all the child trafficking victims in the U.S. as it is. Let's focus on increasing services for child victims, not the age of consent.
I hope Atlanta realizes that 18 is still the low-end cut-off age for teens to be allowed to dance nude or strip in clubs, because I've seen 15 and 16 year old girls who have been exploited in strip clubs in the city. Maybe they will use the resources they would have applied to 18-20 year olds to find and help the younger children who need it the most get out of the industry and on with their futures.
Photo credit: Thomas Hawk
Video: Stop Child Trafficking Walks Inspire Action
Published September 28, 2009 @ 06:12AM PT
This past Saturday, thousands of activists gathered in cities across the country for one reason: to walk to stop child trafficking. The walks were organized by Stop Child Trafficking Now to raise awareness about the reality of child trafficking, especially in the U.S., and to raise funds for local organizations. Walks took place from Oregon to Florida, Canada to Texas. I caught up with the Washington, DC walk to find out what had inspired so many people to wake up early on a Saturday morning and take a stand against child trafficking. Here's the Change.org original video:
The success of the DC walk was tremendous, and I hope it will inspire activists and organizers to do similar events in other cities. The issue of child trafficking touched the lives of so many people who participated in the walk -- in their churches, sororities, businesses, and even personal lives. At an event like this one, the children who live in and have survived slavery are no longer a distant concept of a child. They are present in every walker who says "It happened to my roomate ..." "to my sister ..." "to me ..." They are real.
Congratulations to everyone who made the Washington, DC walk and all the other walks across the country a success.
Children Are Sold for Sex in America's Capitol
Published September 17, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
Guest blogger Melissa Snow of Shared Hope International discusses their new public awareness campaign to address child trafficking in street prostitution in Washington, DC. Child sex trafficking happens all over our nation's capitol, sometimes only steps from the White House and blocks from a symbol of the end of slavery -- the Lincoln Memorial.
The words ‘sex', ‘children' and ‘13' are an unlikely combination for a campaign message, but this month in Washington, D.C., Shared Hope International confronts a shocking reality; American children are sold for sex in Washington D.C. This September, in collaboration with the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force, we're unveiling End Child Sex Trafficking: Kids are NOT for Sale in D.C., an awareness campaign to shed light on child sex trafficking in Washington, D.C. In Metro stations near hot tourist spots, on over 200 metro buses, within the Adult Classifieds and Erotic Sections of CityPaper, and on a bus shelter on 14th and K streets, bright yellow advertisements catch the eyes of D.C. residents and visitors that scream messages such as "13 is the average age children are forced into prostitution".
These advertisements, although shocking, reveal that human trafficking is not just an international issue -- it occurs in our nation's capital. Along intersections such as 14th and K Streets, famously populated by lobbyists during the day, and along New York Avenue, young American girls are exploited by a pimp and sold for sex many times a night. These young girls' lives are risked every day when they take to the streets to earn money for their pimp. The advertising campaign, Kids are NOT for Sale in D.C., will make D.C. residents and tourists aware of sex trafficking in Washington D.C. and warn off potential buyers of sex, that buying a child for sex can result in a life sentence.
The Kids are Not for Sale Campaign will run throughout the month of September and is in timing with D.C. Human Trafficking Awareness month. Sponsored by the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force, a collaboration of local governmental and nonprofit organizations, the Task Force hopes to engage the local community to stop Washington D.C. from becoming a breeding ground for traffickers.
The Washington D.C. area has been identified as a sex trafficking hub, and the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force is aggressively tackling predators who attempt to buy or sell children in the District. Just last week, Shelby Lewis was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. and charged with five counts of Sex Trafficking of Children and four counts of Interstate Transportation of a Minor for Purposes of Prostitution. Lewis, a Maryland resident, brought underage girls - including a 12 year old - into D.C. where he forced them into prostitution. If convicted, Lewis faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. Shelby Lewis' case proves that human trafficking is occurring in Washington, D.C.; however, his arrest proves that human trafficking is not tolerated in our Nation's capital.
Although sex trafficking is a difficult topic to face, for the young girls and boys who are trapped in this modern day slave trade we must confront and overthrow this organized crime. American kids are being victimized in our nation's capitol and we need your help to stand up to sex trafficking in Washington D.C. Not on our streets, not in our city, not in our Nations' capital - Washington D.C. will not allow the sale of American children for sex.
Photo credit: Ed Yourdon
