The Dynamics of Sex Trafficking: Victims, Perpetrators, Solutions

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The Dynamics of Sex Trafficking Victims,
Perpetrators, Solutions
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
Prostitution Sex Trafficking Dignity
House October 5, 2006
Donna M. Hughes, PhDProfessor Carlson Endowed
ChairWomens Studies ProgramUniversity of Rhode
Island
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The Trade in Women and Children

• Based on supply and demand from sending and
  receiving countries, regions, or cities

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Supply of Victims

• Sending/Source countries, regions, or cities
• Kidnapping and raids during armed conflict
• Traffickers target cities, regions based on the
  ease of recruiting/capturing victims

Lords Resistance Army UgandaPader, giugno 2005
- Centro di riabilitazione per l'accogllienza di
vittime del conflitto - Disegni di bambini - (c)
Contrasto
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Supply of Victims

• Easy recruitment of women and girls
• Poverty
• Unemployment
• War
• Lack of opportunity or a promising future
• Love and security
• Eager for Western lifestyle

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Domestic Victims in the U.S.

• 25 grew up without a mother in the house
• 59 grew up without a father in the house
• 40 someone died in their home while they were
  growing up
• 22 the person who raised them leave for more
  than one year
• 33 someone in the household incarcerated

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Domestic Victims in the U.S.

• 27 someone in the home had a major illness or
  disability
• 62 someone in the home was frequently hit,
  slapped, pushed
• 40 someone in the home was kicked, beaten,
  raped, threatened and/or attacked with a weapon

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Domestic Victims in the U.S.

• 83 drug or alcohol abuse in home
• 86 used drugs or alcohol themselves
• 56 ran away from home at least once, mean age 13
• 28 were told to leave home by parent or
  guardian, mean age 15

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Domestic Victims in the U.S.

• 33 someone in home in prostitution regularly
• 71 people in the neighborhood or friends in
  prostitution regularly
• 71 someone suggested to them they should become
  a prostitute

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Domestic Victims in the U.S.

• 65 - 80 victims of child sexual abuse, rape, or
  incest
• 50 - 75 victims of physical abuse as a child

Memories of a Child Prostitute, Judith
Schaechter, 1994
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Recruiting the Supply of Victims from Abroad

• Offers for jobs abroad
• Friend, family member, boyfriend or
  acquaintance
• Operate though employment and tour agencies
• Previous trafficked woman return to recruit new
  victims
• Marriage agencies
• Most crucial factor Activity of traffickers
• Traffickers take advantage of poverty and desire
  for a better future

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Recruiting the Supply of Domestic Victims

• Pimps prey on emotionally vulnerable girls
• Groom girls with attention, gifts, and
  affection
• Give them drugs, alcohol
• Create an emotional bonding/loyalty
• Become violent when girls resist

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The Demand Side of Sex Trafficking

• Receiving/destination countries, regions, cities
• Legal or tolerated sex industries and
  prostitution
• Sex trafficking process begins with the demand
  for victims
• Few women will enter prostitution if they have
  other choices
• Pimps cannot recruit enough local women

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Political Criminal Nexus

• Extends from the highest levels of government to
  lowliest criminals
• Government officials, law enforcement personnel,
  legal and illegal businesses, individual
  criminals, organized crime groups, foreign
  governments, nongovernmental organizations

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The Global Sex Trade

• Turnover of victims is high
• Steady supply of victims needed

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Demand for Victims

• Victims have a limited useful life
• Poor physical health disease, infection, or
  injury emotional collapse addiction

 
St. Petersburg Florida Police Department
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Demand for Victims

• Victims are murdered

 
Tiffany Mason, San Francisco, murdered by john
at age 15 (August 2001)
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The Global Sex Trade

• Victims are deported

Nigerian deportees from Italy
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Demand for Victims

• Victims are lost due to illness, loss of
  appearance, and death from AIDS
• Mortality rate is 40 times that of persons of
  similar age and race

Myrna Balk
Ador , 23, Akha Hill tribe in Thailand
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Demand Factors

• 1) Men who purchase sex acts
• 2) Exploiters who make up sex industry and
  supporting services Profiteers
• 3) States (countries) that profit, particularly
  the destination countries
• 4) Culture that glamorizes, eroticizes
  romanticizes the sex trade

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Men Who Purchase Sex Acts

• Usually faceless and nameless
• The ultimate consumers of trafficked women and
  children
• Many myths about men who buy sex acts
• They are seeking sex without relationship
  responsibilities
• They do not respect women
• Seeking power and control over those they
  purchase for a short time

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The Exploiters

• Traffickers, pimps, brothel owners, mafia
  members, corrupt officials, support services
  hotels, taxi drivers
• They make money from the sale of sex acts,
  providing rooms, transportation, services
• Can be a significant part of the tourist industry
  of a country

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The Business of Trafficking

• Goal is to make money
• Low risk, high profit enterprise
• Criminal penalties are relatively low compared to
  the amount of profit made and the harm done to
  victims

 
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Profit from the Global Sex Trade

• 75,000 to 250,000 per victim/year (INTERPOL)

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Profit from the Sex Trade Southeast Asia

• Thailand Estimated income from prostitution from
  1993 to 1995 was 22.5 billion - 27 billion/year
  
• Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines 2
  14 of the Gross Domestic Product

 
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Profit from the Global Sex Trade - Japan

• Japan 10,000bn (US83 billion/year
• Estimated 150,000 foreign women in the sex
  industry
• Many trafficked from the Philippines, Korea,
  Russia, and Latin America

 
Hostess Clubs
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Profit from the Sex Trade - Germany

• Germany Annual turnover of 14 billion (US18
  billion)
• Estimated 400,000 women serve 1.2 million men a
  day
• Majority is trafficked from Eastern Europe

 
Berlin Window Brothels
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Profit from Domestic Sex Trafficking

• 2002, Oakland, California
• 218 minors prostituted by 155 pimps
• Girls were 11-15 years old
• Quota of 500 a day
• 218 girls multiplied by 330 days a year at
  500/day 35,970,000/year
• - Oakland fights to turn tide of rising child
  prostitution, Oakland Tribune, July 31, 2004

 
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The State

• By tolerating or legalizing prostitution, the
  state helps create a demand for victims
• Thailand and the Netherlands sex tourist
  industries
• Some governments tax sex businesses to make money
  from it, i.e. Germany
• Strategies are created to protect sex industry
• Canadian exotic dancer visa

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The Culture

• Culture, mass media play a role in normalizing
  prostitution

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The Culture

• Pimp culture in music video
• Pimp celebrities

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The Culture

• Internet increased availability and amount of
  pornography, marketing of prostitution, online
  live sex shows

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Approaches to Prostitution Impact on Sex
Trafficking
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Is Prostitution Harmful?

• No View of those who support legalization or
  decriminalization
• Oppose forced prostitution only
• Yes View of those who see prostitution as form
  of violence against women, abolitionists, Bush
  administration
• inherently harmful and dehumanizing

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Trafficking Prostitution Are They Linked?

• No View of those who support legalization or
  decriminalization, Clinton administration
• Yes View of those who see both prostitution and
  trafficking as form of violence against women,
  abolitionists, Bush administration
• Prostitution and related activitiescontribute
  to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons

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Approaches to Prostitution

• Four approaches to prostitution
• Prohibition
• Regulation
• Decriminalization
• Abolition

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Prohibition
 

• Prostitution is a criminal activity vice
• All activities are criminalized soliciting,
  procuring, pimping, and brothel keeping
• All persons engaged in these activities are
  criminals

Russian women
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Prohibition, cont.

• Prohibition in practice
• Prohibition in law, but tolerance in practice
• Gender neutral laws, but women arrested the
  majority of the time
• Children are arrested treated like criminals
• Less than 1 of arrests are pimps, brothel
  keepers, traffickers

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Regulation/Legalization

• Prostitution is legalized
• Redefined as sex work
• Regulations control when, where, and how of
  sexual services

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Regulation/Legalization

• The state collects tax revenue
• State approach in the Netherlands, Germany, and
  some states of Australia
• Counties in Nevada

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Regulation/Legalization, cont.
 

• Redefinition
• Prostitutes sex workers
• Purchasers of sex acts clients
• Pimps managers
• Brothel owners business people
• Traffickers employment or travel agents who
  assist migrant sex workers

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Results of Legalization

• The Netherlands illegal prostitution went
  underground, expanded
• In Germany criminals have not been turned into
  tax payers
• Big profits for exploiters
• Organized crime activity continued
• No reduction in prostitution or trafficking

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Decriminalization

• All laws and regulations concerning prostitution
  are removed
• Most popular approach supported by sex work
  advocates
• In reality A transition to regulation or
  abolition
• New Zealand

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Tolerance, Decriminalization Legalization

• Legitimizes prostitution and the sex trade
  allowed to advertise, grow, expand, market their
  services
• Creates a demand for victims
• Legal sex trade increases illegal sex trade, i.e.
  the Netherlands, Australia

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Abolition

• Prostitution a harmful activity
• Distinction is made between victims and
  perpetrators

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Abolition

• Persons used in prostitution or sex trafficking
  are victims offered services
• Johns, pimps, brothel keepers traffickers are
  perpetrators criminalized

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Swedish Abolitionist Law, 1999

• Redefined prostitution as a form of violence
  against women
• one of the most serious expressions of the
  oppression of discrimination against women
• Purchasing a sex act became a crime
• Disruptive effect on men seeking to buy sex acts
• Reduced street prostitution by 80 percent

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US Trafficking Victims Protection Acts

• Federal laws passed in 2000, 2003, 2005
• Supported by broad coalition of feminists,
  conservatives and faith-based groups
• Victim-centered approach
• Opposed by those who wanted to regulate
  trafficking and legalize prostitution

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Abolition National Philosophy

• Sweden Prostitution is seen as a form of
  violence against women (1999, Redefined
  prostitution)
• US at Federal level (TVPA 2000) Sex trafficking
  of minor or using force, fraud, coercion is a
  form of slavery
• Different conceptualizations violence against
  women or slavery -- but the impact is similar

 
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U.S. Government Action

• 2001-2005 DOJ opened 480 new investigations
• Assisted 766 victims remain in US to assist with
  law enforcement efforts continued presence
• 926 victims from 55 countries eligible for
  benefits under TVPA 2000
• Unaccompanied minors
• Already have legal status
• Self petitioners

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U.S. Policy on Prostitution

• Congress voted to deny funding to groups that
  advocate for the legalization or regulation of
  prostitution or support prostitution as a
  legitimate form of work for women
• Bush administration supported enacted this
  policy

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U.S. Government Action

• March 2001 AG Ashcroft made trafficking a top
  civil rights priority
• 2002 President Bush signed NSPD made combating
  trafficking a priority for all governmental
  departments
• 20012005 DOJ prosecuted 287 traffickers
• A 260 increase - 1996-2000 80 prosecutions
• 228 traffickers charged with sex trafficking

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Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization
Act 2005

• Passed unanimously by U.S. House and Senate, Dec
  22, 2005
• Signed into law by President Bush, Jan 10, 2006

Deborah Pryce, Sam Brownback, George Bush, Chris
Smith, Carolyn Maloney
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TVPRA 2005, Title II

• Combating Domestic Trafficking in Persons
  provides funding for research, conferences, and
  programs relating to sex trafficking as defined
  in the TVPA 2000, not just severe form of
  trafficking involving commercial sex acts
• Provides funds to local and state authorities to
  enforce anti-pimping, pandering, procuring laws.
  These laws do not require force, fraud, coercion

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Future Work of Abolitionist Approach

• Distinguish between victims and perpetrators
• Reduce demand factors
• Criminalize and penalize the demand purchasers
  of sex acts exploiters
• Eliminate state practices that facilitate
  trafficking
• Education and awareness for cultural change
• Increase awareness of harm caused by prostitution
  and sex trafficking
• Men who purchase sex acts
• Pimps, traffickers states who profit

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Global Abolitionist Movement

• Abolitionist movement growing around the world
• Feminist issue
• Human rights struggle of our time

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Surviving Sexual Slavery
It is no small achievement to survive sexual
slavery. Survivors are split into pieces,
fragmented, broken, filled with despair, pain,
rage, and sorrow. We have been hurt beyond belief
But we endure. We survive We stay alive
because we are women in search of our lives we
are women in search of freedom - Christine
Grussendorf, 1997
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Contact Details

• Donna M. Hughes
• 316 Eleanor Roosevelt Hall
• University of Rhode Island
• http//www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes
• dhughes_at_uri.edu