Two stories today contending that something has gone wrong in all the attention to sex trafficking in the UK. I’d already been concerned that people were losing sight of the horrors of other sorts of trafficking. But I had pretty much uncritically accepted the high figures I read in the media about sex trafficking, and the reports of police crackdowns on it. Until I saw these (thanks, Sam!):
1. Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution.
2. Prostitution and Trafficking– The Anatomy of a Moral Panic.
Neither of these stories should be taken to suggest that there is no sex trafficking, or that sex trafficking doesn’t matter. But facts matter, and being right about the facts matters. These stories show that some of the things I took to be facts were not. The second story also draws attention to the views of prostitutes themselves, who have been vocal (though generally unheard) opponents of proposed laws penalising “men who pay for sex with women who are “controlled for gain” even if the men do so in genuine ignorance.
Repeatedly, prostitutes’ groups have argued that the proposal is as wrong as the trafficking estimates on which it is based, and that it will aggravate every form of jeopardy which they face in their work, whether by encouraging them to work alone in an attempt to show that they are free of control or by pressurising them to have sex without condoms to hold on to worried customers.”
I have yet to read those articles, but I think this article from feministe fits here. It’s about Sarah Kruzan who is sentenced for life without parole for killing her pimp at the age of 16, after 3 years of forced prostitution.
I don’t want to take away from what you’re doing in this post, which I think is important. But I think it is also extremely important to make it clear that these claims are restricted to the UK.
Globally, there are many well-documented cases of women who are forced into prostitution. Just one example (Israel):
This is the first part of a 6-part series on sex trafficking in Israel.
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Good point, Duckrabbit. Will make that clear.
We reported on one prostitutes group who oppose the Bill here.
Thanks, Monkey!
The UKHTC were positioned (Sheffield) and created by a track record of complete failure. What Nick Davies was writing about in one article was the fact the Brit police couldn’t catch a cold. A zero success rate is to be expected.
I did a survey over three thousand square miles of Britain, and the FBI at that point were doing *all* the child pornography arrests for the Brits. When 18 percent of the world’s child pornography was hosted in Britain, they convicted nobody.
The British tend to have strategic policing which is completely, and absolutely, no use whatsoever. It is uncanny, only the British could throw millions of dollars at something and come up with completely nothing, except a stack of bogus media reports.
In Sheffield, an idiot with a fondness for only working one day per week, could do a dozen prosecutions per annum.
Sheffield has a huge amount of trafficking, much of it related to work permits (based in Sheffield) or SBS, also Sheffield, or Jobcentre, which is called Pimpcentre Plus by feminists.
The Brits have an extraordinary talent for finding police officers who couldn’t find the phone in a telephone kiosk. It has to be a form of confrontational performance art or something.
One problem is that the distinction between trafficking and smuggling isn’t as clear-cut. For example: Mr-BTPS is a social worker in the Netherlands. Recently he came across a woman of Nigerian descent with a small baby. She had been raped in Nigeria, got pregnant, and due to prevalent rape taboos was ostracized from her community. In a vulnerable state, she had met some nice men who promised to transport her illegally to the Netherlands where she can find a good job and support her child. She got to NL and her child was used as a bargaining chip in order to force her into prostitution. (My understanding is that this isn’t an isolated case since much of prostitution in the NL is actually in the hands of few criminal gangs.)
Now, has she been trafficked or smuggled? According to the official UK definitions, it seems to me, she would have been smuggled because she was not brought into the NL against her will. But I’d still say this was a case of trafficking for prostitution.
Really important point, BTPS. I don’t know the specifics of the way that voluntariness is understood in the law, but you’re right that it matters.
The following links will give your more information about this:
Washington post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201401.html
Human traffic website:
http://traffickingwatch.org/node/18
Guardian newspaper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
The problems I see with the sex traffic idea is that suppose some of the women were not forced into this type of prostitution, but were willing and wanted to do this type of work, and went out of their way to do this type of work. (It is a lot of fast easy money, they don’t need a degree, or a green card.) All they have to do is lie and say that someone forced them into it. When perhaps, no one did.
If they lie here are their benefits based on the new anti-traffic laws:
1. They don’t have to go to jail or be arrested.
2. They get to stay and live in America for an indefinite amount of time.
3. The U.S. Government will provide them with housing, food, education and will cater to them since they will be considered victims.
The way I see it is that this system will encourage people to lie in order to receive all the benefits listed above.
Everything I heard about this problem was Americans complaining about it, but I never heard from the so-called victims themselves complaining about it. Why is that?
It is very difficult to force someone to be a slave, they would have to have 24 hour guards posted and be watched 365 days a year, 24 hours per day. Have the threat of violence if they refused, and have no one notice and complain to the authorities.
What hard evidence does the police have that these women were forced slaves? Were all the women that the police saw in fact slaves? Did the police prove without a doubt due to hard concrete evidence that the women were victims of being slaves and forced against their will? Did they account for all the benefits they would receive if they lied?
I find it very hard to believe that most women in this business are forced against their will to do it. It would just be too difficult. There may be some exceptions but, I believe this is an attempt to over inflate an issue in order to get more government money to fight this cause. As a tax payer, voter, and resident I don’t want the government to mislead me.
more Links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
On the US front:
The FBI announced today that over the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) they conducted a child prostitution bust across the US, which “led to the recovery of 52 children who were being victimized through prostitution” (according to the FBI’s press release, here).
Here’s the story about it on Broadsheet:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2009/10/26/child_prostitution_bust/index.html
The following links will give you more information about this
News night BBC video:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/glennsacks/2009/10/30/more-on-the-great-sex-trafficking-scam-in-the-u-k/
Guardian newspaper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/22/gov_proposals/print.html
Washington post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201401.html
Human traffic website:
http://traffickingwatch.org/node/18
The following links will give you more information about this
The numbers of sex trafficking sex slaves:
There is a lot of controversy over the numbers of adult woman who are forced sex slaves. The real factual answer is that no one knows. There is hard evidence that the sex slavery/sex trafficking issue continues to report false information and is greatly exaggerated by politicians, the media, and aid groups, feminist and religious orgainzations that receive funds from the government, The estimate of women who become new sex slaves ranges anywhere from 20 million a year to 5,000 per year all of which appear to be much too high. They have no evidence to back up these numbers, and no one questions them about it. Their sources have no sources, and are made up numbers. In fact if some of these numbers are to believed which have either not changed or have been increased each year for the past twenty years, all woman and children on earth would currently be sex slaves. Yet, very few real sex slaves have been found.
“If media reports on sex trafficking in Nepal are to be believed, there would be no young girls left in Nepal at this time”
A key point is that on the sidelines the prostitutes themselves are not being listened to. They oppose laws against prostitution. But no one wants to listen to the prostitutites themsleves. Only to the self appointed experts that make up numbers and stories.
This is a story that continues to give false information and is greatly exaggerated by politicians, aid groups, and the media.
It is not easy for criminals to engage in this acitvity:
Sex trafficking is illegal and the pentities are very severe. It is very difficult to force someone to be a sex slave, they would have to have 24 hour guards posted and be watched 365 days a year, 24 hours per day. Have the threat of violence if they refused, and have no one notice and complain to the authorities or police. They would need to hide from the general public yet still manage to see customers from the general public. They would need to provide them with medical care, food, shelter, and have all their basic needs met. They would need to have the sex slaves put on a fake front that they enjoyed what they were doing, act flirtatious and do their job well. They would have to deal with the authorities looking for the missing women, and hide any money they may make, since it comes from illegal activity. They must do all of this while constantly trying to prevent the sex slaves from escaping and reporting them to the police. This is extremely difficult to do, which makes this activity rare.
The Sex Trafficking/Slavery idea is a attempt to unlaw all prostitution around the world by saying that all women are victims even if they do it willing.
This is done by the media, aid groups, feminist, and religious orgainzations that receive funds from the government. There are very strong groups who promote that all women who have sex are victims even if they are willing, enjoy it and go out of there way to get it. These groups try to get the public to believe that no women would ever go into the sex business unless she was forced to do so, weather she knew it or not. They say that 100% of all sex workers are trafficking victims. They do this in order to label all men as sex offenders and wipe out all consensual prostitution. Which is what their real goal is.
There is almost no one who challenges or questions them about their false beliefs.
Therefore, the only voices you hear are of these extreme groups. These groups want to label all men as terrible sex offenders for seeing a willing sex worker.
No one stands up to say this is foolish, the passive public says nothing. These groups even say that all men who marry foreign women are terrible sex predators who take advange of these “helpless foreign women wives” Take a long look at the laws in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the new laws in the UK about this. The USA is not far behind, and in many cases we are already there, check out all the U.S. federal laws about this.
Here is a good link:
http://traffickingwatch.org/node/18
Remember my interesting commutes while tap dancing around pre-loan approval student poverty? One of the kind American tourists who picked me up hitchhiking (while he awkwardly told me he was married and I adamantly told him I was not-that-kind-of-girl) told me that a few U.S. states are in the process of creating and enacting laws that treat all hitchhikers as if they’ve been caught in an act of prostitution and treat anybody offering a ride as a sex offender. Has the panic really come to this? Can the religious right really get away with trying to enforce this?
Thanks for the link to that article, J.L. The unfortunate thing about religious extremists is that they only grasp the “abstinence” part of Thomas Malthus’ reasoning, not the economics. Last I heard, British escorts were making 150 quid/ hour. If there were 25000 of them being trafficked as well as how many that weren’t? 2x? 3x that number? they’d be beating each other down in the streets for a few euros. Nobody would be able to charge a decent rate because there’d be too many condomless 12-year-olds butt-blasting the prices down. That is what male control does to a “pink” anything industry. I’m serious–Compare the prices in Bombay to the prices in New York or Toronto if you want to test for male control.
More like “stop the rape” groups are pimping the public to the tune of 6 million a year (pardon my keyboard, it doesn’t do British money symbols) and the UK cops can’t catch anyone because the real number of human traffickers is in the 2 digit range, and very well hidden at that.
Prostitution, abortion and the “war on drugs” are platforms that conservative politicians fall back on when there’s an election pending and issues like terrorism and homosexuality no longer scare the public into voting for medieval legislative and social policy amendments.
And what do they do with the girls when they catch them? They send them to jail or they send them to church. In all my years of living in single-parent ghettos, and watching some of the less resourceful/well-cared for turn to what they turn to to cope, I’ve never seen any of these agencies offer mature student testing or any kind of re-training for the poor. Forget about sex workers.
The public doesn’t want to “help” them. What the public does want for them usually comes in the form of a few rounds of victim-bashing that leaves them so mistrustful of social-workers that they become self-fulfilling prophecies and perpetual scapegoats. And they’re supposed to do what to get out of that cycle? Marry a “good man”? Pray? Set up a website that says “Send $$$ to me &my church because I’m NOT a prostitute anymore”?
Having an Asian background and working in the Adult industry in a big city makes this world so small yet so big :-), your blog right up my street, “ Sex (Trafficking) Panic? Feminist Philosophers ” I will keep checking for interesting additions or follow-ups to your blog and maybe contribute a bit more.
Well written,
Thank you
xxx