Human Goods

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s blog recently posted commentary on the stalling of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act in the Senate, which Human Goods reported on earlier, with a focus on Chicago.

John Miller, former ambassador on slavery for the State Department and leader of the Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times. He boldly challenged the Bush Administration to account for the Justice Department’s opposition to new clauses in the bill that would intensify anti-slavery laws in the U.S.  Although the bill passed the House with weak opposition, the Senate stalling has been so pronounced that Sen. Joseph Biden reintroduced it with some of the controversial provisions eliminated.

Miller writes,

A culture clash, I suspect, is the real reason for the Justice Department’s opposition. This isn’t the usual culture clash of right and left, religious and secular. In this case, the feminist, religious and secular groups that help sex-trafficking survivors are on one side. And on the other are the department’s lawyers (most of them male), the Erotic Service Providers Union and the American Civil Liberties Union — this side believes that vast numbers of women engage in prostitution as a “profession,” by choice.

As one Justice Department lawyer put it at a meeting I attended, there is “hard pimping and soft pimping.” The department’s letter hints at this view. Adult prostitutes who are transported across state lines, in violation of the Mann Act, should not receive grants under the Victims of Crime Act of 1984 because they “do not meet the legal definition of ‘victim,’” the letter states.

…….
Put me on the side of those who have worked with the victims. I have talked with survivors all over the world, including the United States, and I share the view that these women and girls — the average age of entry into prostitution is 14 — are not participating in the “oldest profession” but in the oldest form of abuse. They are slaves.

…..

And Senator Joseph R. Biden, Democrat of Delaware, has introduced a bill that largely complies with the department’s views.

The president may never have seen the Justice Department’s letter. But Representatives Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York, and Deborah Pryce, Republican of Ohio, two of the leaders of the Congressional Caucus on Human Trafficking, have been unable to arrange a meeting with the president to express their concerns to him.

President Bush should meet with them — and his own Justice Department — before he loses his legacy and his leadership on the abolition of modern slavery.

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