Human Goods

Yesterday marked the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade, and UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura used the opportunity to remind the world how critical it is to remember that the slave trade is indeed still happening.

The UN News Centre quoted him saying,

While we should never forget the atrocities committed in the past, we should be equally vigilant in seeking to abolish the contemporary forms of slavery that affect millions of men, women and children around the world.

The Day commemorates the 1791 uprising when Caribbean slaves rebelled and sparked a revolution in Haiti.

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)

(Photo: Bullit Marquez/Associated Press)

As the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics kick off this weekend, William Sparrow for the Asia Times asks,
“China has the Games, doesn’t it expect the players to show up, too?”

In an article also featured on The Human Trafficking Project’s site, Sparrow refers to the inevitable influx of Olympic-going foreigners who double as sex tourists.

Anyone who studies human trafficking will tell you that wherever there is a congregation of people with money who are open to a good time, there is a market for prostitution.

Dissecting a published set of guidelines for admitted foreigners released by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, Sparrow writes,

Under the rubric “Which categories of foreigners are not permitted to enter China?”, the HRC-translated guide included, “Those who are believed to potentially engage in smuggling, narcotic trafficking or prostitution after entering China”, and “Those who are suffering from a mental disorder or insanity, sexually-transmitted disease, or an infectious disease such as active tuberculosis.”

How the Beijing government plans to enforce these policies, namely prostitution-seekers and those with sexually-transmitted disease, is impossibly unclear. Even for an authoritarian government as strict as Beijing, it seems an immense undertaking to pre-determine the health and intent of millions of expected tourists.

It is obvious, however, that the government has thrown down the gauntlet and will do whatever it must to crack down on vice in an effort to present China’s best face for the Games. In terms of stopping prostitution, and its alleged negative effects on society, this may be a laudable endeavor. But on the ground, let’s be honest, it’s laughable.

Sparrow references a Washington Post article by Maureen Fan that points to China’s economic boom as a major factor for rising numbers of sex workers. This will be undoubtedly exacerbated by the arrival of millions of tourists with money to spend on fun.

Sparrow concludes,

In the main cities where the Games will be held - Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai - any efforts to prevent or even tame prostitution will prove unmanageable. The confluence of history, economics and human nature - all in a carnivalesque environment - will simply be too much to overcome.

Dubai, by most accounts, is something of a fantasyland. Exploding with new money that begets uninhibited , almost Dr. Seussian, architecture and draws affluent business and pleasure-seekers from around the world, it has also, much like Las Vegas or Amsterdam, become what I like to call an exception zone. A playground of privilege, if you will, where things you might not do elsewhere become acceptable. Because, hey, it’s Dubai. The rules don’t apply in this surreal metropolis.

Except wherever money and power accumulate, exploitation almost always follows, flying under the radar and making both business and pleasure attainable. Night clubs pulse with military contractors, tourists, and Arab businessmen seeking easy sex with Iragi refugees. Filipina maids, obtaining jobs abroad so they can send money home to their children, are often abused (sometimes quite sadistically). There have been numerous cases of maids being thrown out the windows of lavish, otherworldly skyscrapers that peak up, Jetson-like, above the clouds on a foggy day.

But it makes a kind of sense– where there is excess, people become increasingly expendable. And easy to replace.

Glen Carey, for The Asian Sex Gazette, published an article on the trafficking of persons to Dubai:

Dubai has transformed itself from a trading village to the Persian Gulf’s financial and tourist hub with lower taxes and a more vibrant nightlife than other Gulf states. Bars heave with men drinking $10 beers and women in short skirts.

That’s attracted rich Saudis, US oil workers flush with cash after stints in Iraq, and bankers who are paid as much as 40 percent more than those in London or New York.

Affluence has increased the demand for laborers and housemaids, and the development of laws to protect them from exploitation hasn’t kept pace, the International Labor Organization said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Women from Asia and Africa often sign contracts to work as maids, waitresses, hairdressers and secretaries, only to have employers confiscate their passports and force them to work as prostitutes, the US report said. Others work excessive hours under the threat of mental, physical or sexual abuse until they can pay off recruitment costs.

According to the article, Dubai, which is ranked on the Tier 2 Watch List of the U.S. Trafficking in Persons report, is making an effort to curb the problem. Carey writes, “In July (2007), the UAE formed a committee of senior officials to combat human trafficking, and it has opened a shelter for abused women. In the past year it has closed 40 hotels and clubs that allowed prostitution, said Anwar Gargash, minister of state for Federal National Council Affairs in Dubai.”

Such efforts are well and good. But you have to wonder, as you do with Vegas, about how much the problem really can be eradicated when the whole culture of the place, the essence of it, what makes it saleable, what makes its market value shine, is precisely the fact that it assuages the guilt of the haves by promoting their entitlement to the labor and bodies of the have-nots and building on the delusion of the Western right to pleasure at all costs. Costs which usually remain invisible to most of us who can’t even imagine having to surrender the autonomy of our bodies and souls.

In the end, Dubai is an exception zone, yes. But only more obviously than the rest of the world we occupy.

A feature length documentary called Call and Response will be released this fall to rally action around modern-day slavery. Musician Justin Dillon decided to form a collective of musicians, including Imogen Heap, Moby, and Talib Kweli, to head this musical abolitionist movement. Also interviewed in the documentary are longtime anti-slavery activists Nicholas Kristof to Madeleine Albright to Julia Ormond.

According to the documentary’s website,

CALL+RESPONSE goes deep undercover where slavery is thriving from the child brothels of Cambodia to the slave brick kilns of rural India to reveal that in 2007, Slave Traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined.

You can check out the film’s blog and even share your response to increasing slavery awareness on the site’s interactive “respond” tab.

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.

(Source: Marie Claire)

Marie Claire published a piece by Danielle Pergament on the trend of Iraqi refugees engaging in survival sex (you can also see a video under an April entry on Human Goods called “Survival Sex: The Untalked-about Consequence of War”).

Pergament details the lives of a few women who formerly led middle class lives in Iraq, until “the Americans arrived.” Some of them were able to use their skills to work as translators for awhile, but when work in the Green Zone became too dangerous, they fled to places like Jordan.

In many countries, refugees are given sanctuary but are not permitted to work. Since war eliminates many means of male support because male family members are lost, killed, “disappeared,” often women, and children too, have no choice but to engage in sex work for survival.

Weirdly, and unnervingly, some of these women found themselves serving the same basic clientele (military, foreign contractors, etc) that they used to translate for, when they had the right to work.

Here’s the teaser to the article:

Imagine: One day you’re a nurse leading a quiet middle-class life; a few years later you’re in a strange country doing the unthinkable: selling yourself. For some Iraqi refugees, prostitution is the only trick they feel they’ve got left.

(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.”