Human Goods

Few Americans will likely make human trafficking a deciding issue when they go to the polls this November. But nevertheless, the topic pops up now and then in speeches and interviews of the candidates. Paul Bernish, of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s Freedom Blog, broke down the candidates’ stances on slavery in a post titled, “Human Trafficking: What are McCain and Obama saying?”

“Most likely,” Bernish writes, “Trafficking will remain a secondary issue unless something happens to bring the matter into the public realm and prompt the political news media to raise questions with the candidates.”

Bernish highlights some of McCain and Obama’s references to human trafficking, including a May speech by McCain on defending the rights of the powerless worldwide:

While the past few years have seen increased efforts on the part of the State and Justice Departments and the FBI to combat the human slave trade, we must do more. As President, I’ll increase cooperation and communication between all agencies of the federal government by establishing an Inter-Agency Task Force on Human Trafficking, whose purpose will be to focus exclusively on the prosecution of human traffickers and the rescue of their victims.

During last weekend’s Saddleback conference, mediator and megachurch pastor Rick Warren questioned Obama on how he plans to address the problem:

RICK WARREN: OK. Another issue, the third largest and the fastest growing criminal industry in the world is human trafficking. $32 billion a year. A lot of people don’t know that there are about 27 million people living in slavery right now. Many of them in sex trafficking than any others. How do we speak out and how do you plan to do something about that?

BARACK OBAMA: This has to be a top priority and this is an area where we’ve already seen bipartisan agreement on this issue. What we have to do is to create better, more effective tools for prosecuting those who are engaging in human trafficking and we have to do that within our country. Sadly, there are thousands who are trapped in various forms of enslavement, here in our country.

Oftentimes young women who are caught up in prostitution. So we’ve got to give prosecutors the tools to crack down on these human trafficking networks. Internationally, we’ve got to speak out and we’ve got to forge alliances with other countries to share intelligence, to roll up the financing networks that are involved in them. It is a debasement of our common humanity, whenever we see something like that taking place.

(click here for full transcript)

The New York Times published an opinion piece on efforts to boost prevention of child prostitution in Atlanta. Atlanta stands apart as perhaps the major U.S. hub for the trafficking of American children for purposes of sex (see earlier Human Goods post on Libby Spears’ documentary, Playground). The problem rears its head in most cities, especially those that draw lots of tourists and convention-goers (the equation goes something like: men on holiday minus wives plus extra time and money to spend equals exploitation far too often).

But as the opinion piece points out, the laws against sexual exploitation are already tough, and what we need is a much more holistic response to tackling the problem:

The men who drive the sex trade by patronizing prostitutes rarely figure into discussions of the problem. Shirley Franklin, the mayor of Atlanta, has changed that through advertisements underscoring the damage that these men do to their communities.

The city is also considering legislation under which first-time offenders on adult prostitution charges will be required to attend classes where they would learn about the broader social harm associated with their activities. Restitution and community service may be required.

These measures are a good example to state officials. Lawmakers also need to encourage programs that train teachers, law enforcement officials, social workers and others to focus on children at risk and to recognize the signs of sexual abuse and prostitution. By spreading knowledge and devising plans to help at-risk children, the authorities can put themselves in a position to intervene before damage has been done.

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.

Arthur Fournier, on the Huffington Post, responded to Dan Harris’ investigation into child slavery in Haiti in a recent Nightline special (see previous post on Human Goods).

Slavery, he says, is only the “tip of the ‘consequences-of-poverty’ iceberg”:

Given how little most Americans understand about Haiti and how this lack of understanding during the early years of AIDS led to stigmatization of Haitians that persists to this day, this is no small point - exploitation of vulnerable people has nothing to do with ethnicity or culture and everything to do with poverty and the survival choices poor people are forced to make …

Solutions, therefore must address conditions that make rural life insufferable - poor agricultural productivity, lack of education, high maternal and child mortality and lack of health care. Such models do exist.

Fournier is correct in identifying the scope of the problem (a scope so large that it’s questionable that Harris could have covered it in that much depth in a brief episode about Haiti).

(Christa Hillstrom / Medill)

by Christa Hillstrom - Medill Reports

“She was like a walking dead person, not even a person.”

Jody Raphael struggled to describe a woman who had been trafficked into the sex trade. -

“There was no personhood, no personality, like the soul had been removed.”

Raphael, a senior researcher at the DePaul University College of Law who has worked with dozens of trafficked women, is not talking about someone from Russia or China. She’s talking about a girl from Chicago.

Controversy over the reauthorization of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act has stalled the bill in the U.S. Senate since it was passed in the House last December, with only two dissenting votes.

Lobbies on both sides are clashing over the inclusion of a new provision that eliminates the need to prove women were unwillingly forced or coerced into the sex trade, in order to penalize third parties who commercially benefit from the buying and selling of women: In other words, pimps.

“Our federal public policies have always focused on the woman’s willingness,” said Samir Goswami, director of policy and outreach for the Justice Project Against Sexual Harm.

“Forget about her willingness, whether she had a gun to her head or three guys who put her in a sack and shipped her off to Canada,” he said. “It’s about them: The guys out there who are preying on the most vulnerable people.”

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, first passed in 2000 to address the enslavement of people in the sex and other trades worldwide, has largely focused on international victims when it comes to enforcement. But the removal of the need to prove violence or coercion will open up a new can of worms for federal law enforcement: Domestic trafficking.

Under the provision, cases where violence and other coercive measures can be proved would be tried as cases of “aggravated” human trafficking.

If supporters are able to get the bill passed without the removal of the clause, their hope is that all people who commercially benefit from the sale of someone else’s body can be charged with human trafficking, a significantly serious felony and a major domestic problem in America.

This is something the bill’s proponents say the whole country has shied away from acknowledging until now.

“It’s not as sexy a topic as international trafficking, but we have a lot more trafficking going on domestically than we want to admit to,” said Goswami. “What this bill does is it finally addresses what’s really happening, not what we’d like to think is happening.”

Some studies have placed the number of women and girls involved in Chicago’s sex trade as high as 16,000, making it a major hub for traffickers.

The National Runaway Switchboard estimates that it takes an average of 48 hours before girls who have fled their homes are recruited into prostitution by a pimp, or are solicited for sex.

Raphael, who co-authored a study last month on the domestic trafficking of women and girls in Chicago, argues that recruitment tactics for internationally and domestically trafficked women are exactly the same, and it’s time to start giving young women from Chicago equal attention.

“You’re taking people that are totally needy, and you are promising a roof over their head and money,” she said. “The same thing that happens in developing countries, happens in our own low-income communities.”

According to the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, the average age of entry into prostitution in Chicago is 12 years old.

Girls typically become attached to a pimp through enticement and even love, which turns to violence and force only later, Raphael’s research showed. Because of the apparent complicity in the beginning, focusing prosecution on women’s willingness to participate is problematic and even detrimental to stopping traffickers, Goswami said.

While the study doesn’t measure the percentage of girls who came from sexually abusive backgrounds, Raphael said many participants shared staggering stories of abuse.

“Many of our sample came from horrible family backgrounds that they ran away from,” she said. “What hit me was that they were so disconnected, so isolated, they had this relationship with this pimp and that was it. They were just this sad little island.”

Raphael explained that young women without support systems are easily enticed into the sex trade by the recruitment tactics of pimps.

What Goswami said he hopes the much-contested provision in the new bill will do is recognize this enticement as exploitation and enable prosecutors to target pimps, whether the woman seemed complicit or not.

“They don’t necessarily kidnap you—knock you on the head and put a rag in your mouth,” he said. “They can talk you into it.”

Some sex workers’ advocacy groups fear the new law will be manipulated to arrest sex workers, rather than just third-party pimps.

Groups that view sex work as a viable option for women who are able to choose it say that tightening legislation may result in increased criminalization of already targeted women.

Jasmine Jewels, a representative of the Sex Workers Outreach Project in Chicago, whose East Coast counterpart is a major lobby against the proposed bill, is no stranger to the tension between law enforcement and sex workers: She is a sex worker.

She said she is unsure whether she opposes the bill, but recognizes the potential for the government to use it to crack down on women.

“It’s easier to arrest 10 of them [sex workers] than infiltrate a ring of traffickers,” she said. “And you always take the shortest distance between two points. The government will probably manipulate the law, because in history, that’s what they’ve done with us.”

Anti-prostitution groups and the media tend to skew and narrow what the sex trade looks like, according to Jewels, who said she doesn’t know any sex workers who report to pimps.

“You have to understand the difference between someone who is using sex as a legitimate income, and a 14-year-old girl who is being exploited,” she said.

Jewels spends her Friday nights on the street with a backpack full of condoms and business cards to seek out and educate young women who might be at risk of contracting sexually-transmitted diseases, or being harmed by pimps and customers.

Her own experience of sex work is quite different, she said, citing her expensive condo and self-run website, which allows her to screen customers.

Goswami said he understands why sex workers would be leery of increased legislation, since they have been traditionally stigmatized by the law. But to jump to such conclusions with this act would be a mischaracterization of something that is designed to protect women, especially the ones who don’t have the freedom to choose to be there, he added.

“The bill is very, very clear that it’s only going to prosecute third parties,” he said. “That’s the whole idea.”

The Department of Justice has also contributed to blocking the bill’s passage. It has expressed fear that the amendment goes too far by implicating all third-party participants in prostitution under the federal umbrella of human trafficking, regardless of the presence of force. This would obligate federal law enforcement to take on what previously fell under the jurisdiction of state and city law.

The Department issued an official statement in November, expressing doubt about the ability of the federal government to address so broad an issue as prostitution due to lack of resources.

But that’s not a good enough excuse, said James Wagner, executive director of the Chicago Crime Commission and 31-year FBI veteran. He said he understands that resources are strained and the FBI is already stretched thin with complicated caseloads that include counterterrorism and mortgage fraud, but trafficking must still be made a priority.

“I think lack of resources is a poor reason for opposing something that should be done,” he said. “You have to decide where you’re going to put the manpower to work.”

“So what if it’s difficult?” Goswami asked. “It’s difficult to go after gang bangers and international drug cartels. But we still have to do it.”

Part of the difficulty for law enforcement comes from the complexity and secrecy that shrouds the so-called “indoor sex industry.” Some studies have suggested that 85 percent of prostitution happens indoors, rather than on the street, and it is notoriously difficult for police to infiltrate these networks.

“The way we handle prostitution is we respond to complaints by districts,” Goswami explained. “People call 911 and say, ‘There’s a prostitute on my street, come and get her.’ The street is cheap, it’s 10 bucks a sex act. The real money is in these indoor venues.”

Frank Bochte, a representative for the Chicago field office of the FBI’s human trafficking task force, said police largely rely on tips to penetrate more hidden operations. But it’s rare to get them, he added, since men who patronize prostitutes aren’t likely to come forward, even when they suspect human trafficking might be occurring.

The problem is further compounded by the lack of general community awareness.

“These kinds of things, whether they’re gentlemen’s clubs or massage parlors, blend into the community they’re in and people don’t really recognize what’s going on,” Bochte said.

The crafty mobility of the trafficking industry also keeps it under the radar. When law enforcement is able to sniff out potential trafficking sites it is often too late, according to Dr. Mark Rodgers, dean of the School of Social Work at Dominican University in Oak Park, who has worked extensively both locally and internationally on the global trafficking crisis.

“As soon as things get hot, they [traffickers and pimps] have these vans, and they can pack up their people and they’re gone,” he said. “They are well-organized. We are the disorganized ones. They are years ahead of us.”

“I happen to know that when the police squeeze here in Chicago, pimps go right down to Joliet,” he added, emphasizing the need to make sure this issue is taken seriously everywhere, not just in the big cities.

Rodgers, who has coordinated programs to combat human trafficking in Latvia, Ecuador and Romania, said Chicago’s trafficking problems have similarities to those in many developing countries in that the city lacks the holistic services needed to assist victims of domestic trafficking once they are found.

“They need so much, they need everything,” Raphael said of the process of rehabilitating survivors. “They had no childhood, so they can’t go back home. What do you build on? Where do you start?”

In addition to the social and emotional challenges of addressing legacies like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, lack of services has a direct effect on prosecution, said Jessica Ashley, a senior research analyst for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.

“There’s no safe place in Chicago to put them,” she said. “There’s very little safe housing specifically for prostitutes. So a lot of times they leave the placement out of fear, and go back to their pimps. It’s not worth the risk for them.”

It is precisely because of this overwhelming danger that Raphael said she doubts that tightening provisions in the reauthorization act will make much of a dent in the trade.

“I don’t think law enforcement can go after the trafficker or the pimp,” she said. “I’m all for giving law enforcement every tool that they need to go after every wrong-doer, but I don’t think you can arrest and prosecute without the testimony of the girls that have been trafficked. And it’s a very dangerous thing for those girls.”

Instead Raphael suggests eliminating the conditions that drive young girls out of their homes and onto the streets, and the fundamental problems that prevent so many disenfranchised communities from ensuring safe homes for their young women.

“It’s about offering opportunity in these low-income communities, and getting it to all of these people at all levels,” she said. “The community, in turn, has to be the one to blow the whistle — they know who these traffickers are, and they have to turn on them.”

Goswami too said factors like poverty, inequality and violence against women, which enable trafficking to flourish in many cultures, must be halted with long-term solutions.

A state senate resolution passed on May 29, sponsored by state Sen. Jacqueline Collins, a Chicago Democrat, encourages U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama to support the bill’s passage in Washington.

Despite the outcome of the Senate vote, which may not take place before the session’s adjournment, at the very least proponents of the bill say the contentious clause has at least thrown the issue of domestic trafficking into the fringes of the spotlight — even if the provision does not remain in the final version of the bill that is voted on.

Rodgers said he hopes this self-examination will take root in the way Americans view their own attitude towards human rights. “If the domestic issues had been removed from the bill, it probably would have sailed right through,” he said. “As if trafficking is a problem out there, not in here.”

“These girls are not going to Mexico, they’re not going to Europe,” said Goswami. “They’re being shipped around this country. And that’s what I think is a huge step forward in this bill. The rest of the world has recognized this for years. We haven’t.”

For Raphael, it remains a personal issue with a very human face.

“Humiliation, degradation, and fear of death on a daily basis? I’d say that’s a human rights issue,” said Raphael of the experience of the trafficked women with whom she’s worked.

“We think our culture is better, we think we don’t exploit people the way they would be exploited in Thailand or Bangladesh. For most people, we just can’t go there, to say Americans do these things. We haven’t been able to accept that… yet.”

(Christa Hillstrom/Medill)

(Christa Hillstrom / Medill)

by Christa Hillstrom - Medill Reports

America likes to solve its problems after they’ve already occurred, if you ask Mark Rodgers.

“How do you put a plaque on prevention?” he asks.

Efforts to combat the problem of sex trafficking must take a strenuous look at why men purchase sex in the first place, he said, not just catch them at it.

The Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation is taking a close look at the complexities of this market and how demand can be curbed from the ground up.

“We as a society haven’t addressed the root cause of trafficking yet, which is the demand” said Rachel Durchslag, director of the Alliance. “And that’s why we haven’t been that successful.”

Durchslag headed a study, whose preliminary results were released last month, which asked 113 men in the Chicago area why they buy sex.

“A lot of this stuff, it’s really just sad,” she said.

Groups like the Sex Workers Outreach Project are questioning the study’s methodology and results, arguing that the study has inbuilt bias since it was designed by anti-prostitution groups.

Nevertheless, it’s getting people interested in understanding demand.

David, 27, who asked that his name be changed for this article, has participated in sex trades from Dubai to Mexico, including at home in the United States.

“We were always curious about if you call an escort, what really happens,” he said of his first experience, ordering an escort with some friends during college.

“In your head you perceive her as being an object,” he said, “But when she gets there, then she’s a regular person.”

Patronage of the sex trade became a regular habit for David until recently, he said, when he realized how unfulfilling it was.

“For me, it was like a splurge, an indulgence, like if you were on vacation somewhere,” he said. “Something you know is really bad for your health.”

Unlike the majority of men who participated in Durchslag’s research, David said he limited his physical contact with sex workers because of the risk of sexually transmitted diseases:

“My most common experience would be going to a massage parlor, which is usually Asian-run. They don’t offer full sex, they offer what’s called a ‘happy ending.’”

David, like many of the men Durchslag interviewed, expressed occasional remorse for his behavior.

“When this lady is performing whatever action, I’m thinking in my head that I don’t think she’s enjoying it,” he said. “But she’s doing it for the money. I regret it because that’s not something anyone wants to do.”

Regardless of what inspires demand, most opponents to trafficking agree that stopping it from growing is the surest way to gain more than a band-aid fix.

What we need to do is figure out why men feel entitled and drawn to purchase it in the first place and address it at an early age, Durchslag said.

“Inherently when you have ownership of someone as part of a culture, there’s a marginalization of the person who can be owned in the minds of the culture,” she said.

The Alliance is developing a curriculum that it hopes can be incorporated into sex education programs for young people in Illinois. The goal is to teach boys to value all women and recognize the social, emotional and psychological damage that prostitution can inflict.

Even David said he thinks this is a good idea.

“I feel like I have those values, but when I go to those massage parlors, those always go out the door,” he said, adding that he thinks more meaningful education about the dangers of objectification and trafficking could prevent men from developing the habit in the first place.

Recognizing objectification and changing the way we think about women are a good start to preventing exploitation, said Durchslag.

“You know, a hundred years ago, we didn’t think it was possible for a woman to be raped by her husband,” she said. “These frameworks do change.”

Looks like the FBI is really doing something about child prostitution. In a dramatic sweep across 16 U.S. cities, the Bureau, in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, rescued 21 children from prostitution rings and arrested 389 perpetrators.

Susan Saulny of The New York Times reported,

The sweep was part of an annual roundup to draw attention to the issue. It marked the fifth anniversary of the Innocence Lost National Initiative, which was undertaken by the F.B.I. to address child prostitution and has led to the conviction of 308 people on a variety of federal and state charges. In all, 433 exploited children have been rescued as a result of the initiative, federal officials said.

At a press conference, FBI director Robert S. Mueller III attributed the rise of children in prostitution in part to the popularity of social networking sites and the host of problems that ride in on the internet wave

According to ABC News, the government hopes that,

some of the girls and women who were arrested in the sweeps will provide more information to go after key organizers and pimps…

… which leads me to question why such girls were arrested, and what will happen to them if they don’t cooperate in prosecution. For women, especially those who have been controlled by pimps since childhood,
who are asked to testify against the men who have manipulated and terrorized them for years, that can be a lethal prospect. Hmmm….

The U.S. seems to be moving a little bit on slavery prosecutions this month.

• In Lexington, Kentucky, human trafficking suspect Calvin Walker has been indicted by a grand jury for forcing two domestically trafficked women into strip club work, as this video report on KKYT in Lexington shows. It’s usually difficult to prove cases of trafficking in the U.S., even when women are forced across state lines or national borders, and when law enforcement nails traffickers they often end up charging them with other offenses.  It’s relatively unusual to prosecute for human trafficking
• The Immokalee drama continues in South Florida.  Jose Navarrete pled guilty to human slavery, according to WINK News.  Navarrete is accused of forcing Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants to work without pay, sleep in box trucks and shacks, and pay for food and showers in Immokalee.

• Two owners of a Denver sushi restaurant are accused of holding workers in “indentured servitude” for years, ABC Channel 7 in Denver reports.

(Source: Children at Risk Foundation)

The word “restavek” means “stay-with” in Creole, and 300,000 children in Haiti (or, 10 percent of the population under 18 years old) are restaveks. Coming from impoverished rural areas in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, most of these children are given up by parents who cannot afford to take care of them. Families are often promised by middlemen that their children will be cared for and educated, but in most cases they are sold to families who are only a little bit better off: Households that cannot afford to employ real servants and so buy children as domestic slaves instead.  They frequently double as sex servants, too.

It is, well, normal, as Carmen Russel and Dane Liu uncovered last summer for MSNBC. The report also features a video about a restavek-owning household.

As inexcusable as such a practice is in Haiti, it seems all the more appalling when someone who has immigrated to the U.S. bring restaveks with them to slave away in their suburban homes. Not that the U.S. has such a great track record, of course.

The New York Times reported that Simone Celestin, who was adopted at 5 years old, was forced to work 15-hour days for Evelyn Theodore, 74, and Maude Paulin, her 52-year-old daughter. She escaped and pressed charges, resulting in the conviction of the women.

Lawyers for the defense accuse the girl of lying about her working conditions, claiming that Haiti and Haitian culture is simply old-fashioned.

We’ve heard about Darfur. We’ve heard about Tibet. But what about the slaves? How does their story fit into this summer’s controversial games?

“Whenever a big political event takes place, I don’t look at it through the same eyes anymore,” says Misha Glenny, author of the new book, “McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underground.”

Peter Edwards reported this in The Toronto Star in an article about the criminal underground and the Beijing Olympics. “China has already ordered a ’social cleansing’ to clear Beijing of beggars, hawkers, and prostitutes, but keeping crime groups from flooding the host city with hookers poses an Olympian task,” he writes.

In an article by Paul Legall, Ontario’s Hamilton Spectator reported that during every Olympic Games, women are imported from all over the world into sexual servitude.

“This is the ugly little secret people don’t want to talk about,” Clare Freeman of the Women Abuse Working Group told the Spectator.

The winter Olympics are just two years away for Canada, and as China faces the problem this year, on the other side of the world Canadians are already taking steps to curb the inevitable influx of trafficked sex slaves.