Returning Migrants

To the Editor:

While “Can Privatization Kill?,” by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen (Op-Ed, April 2), reflected valid concerns about the human rights and the treatment of forcibly returned migrants, we are concerned that some readers may infer from this article that the International Organization for Migration is a party to, and profits from, forcible and sometimes fatal deportations delegated by governments to the private sector.

The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental organization composed of 146 member states, received $265 million in 2010 to provide voluntary return and reintegration assistance to unsuccessful asylum seekers, stranded persons and other migrants.

The money was also used to support victims of human trafficking directly and through nongovernmental organizations and government agencies as well as to offer training to government officials to improve national migration management.

Under the terms laid down in its constitution, the organization is not and never has been involved in forcible deportations.

WILLIAM LACY SWING

Director General, International Organization for Migration

Geneva, April 5, 2012

Women Enslaved by Spain’s Brothel Tourism Boom

By SUZANNE DALEY

LA JONQUERA, Spain — She had expected a job in a hotel. But when Valentina arrived here two months ago from Romania, the man who helped her get here — a man she had considered her boyfriend — made it clear that the job was on the side of the road.

He threatened to beat her and to kill her children if she did not comply. And so she stood near a roundabout recently, her hair in a greasy ponytail, charging $40 for intercourse, $27 for oral sex.

“For me, life is finished,” she said later that evening, tears running down her face. “I will never forget that I have done this.”

La Jonquera used to be a quiet border town where truckers rested and the French came looking for a deal on hand-painted pottery and leather goods. But these days, prostitution is big business here, as it is elsewhere in Spain, where it is essentially legal.

While the rest of Spain’s economy may be struggling, experts say that prostitution — almost all of it involving the ruthless trafficking of foreign women — is booming, exploding into public view in small towns and big cities. The police recently rescued a 19-year-old Romanian woman from traffickers who had tattooed on her wrist a bar code and the amount she still owed them: more than $2,500.

In the past, most customers were middle-aged men. But the boom here, experts say, is powered in large part by the desires of young men — many of them traveling in packs for the weekend — taking advantage of Europe’s cheap and nearly seamless travel.

“The young used to go to discos,” said Francina Vila i Valls, Barcelona’s councilor for women and civil rights. “But now they go to brothels. It’s just another form of entertainment to them.”

There is little reliable data on the subject. The State Department’s 2010 report on trafficking said that 200,000 to 400,000 women worked in prostitution in Spain. The report said that 90 percent were trafficked.

But police officials and advocates say that whatever the number of victims, it is growing. Thousands of women are forced to work — often for even lower pay now, because of the economic downturn — everywhere from fancy clubs and private apartments to industrial complexes and lonely country roads.

Europe woke up to the problem of trafficked women in the 1990s, as young women from the former Soviet Union began to arrive in large numbers, and it has spent much of the last decade developing legal frameworks to address the issue. But, some advocates say, this decade will test Europe’s commitment to enforcing its new laws.

“The structures, by and large, are in place,” said Luis CdeBaca, the ambassador who leads the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. “Now it’s time to take them out for a drive.”

Fueling the boom in the sex industry in Spain are many factors, experts say, including porous borders in many parts of the world and lax laws. Until 2010, Spain did not even have a law that distinguished trafficking from illegal immigration. And advocates say arrests of traffickers and services for trafficked women remain few. The State Department’s report on trafficking said that according to preliminary information, the Spanish government prosecuted 202 trafficking suspects and convicted 80 in 2010.

More important, some advocates say, is the growing demand for sex services from younger tourists. Of course, there is a local market. One study cited by a 2009 United Nations report said that 39 percent of Spanish men admitted having visited a prostitute at least once. It is widely accepted here for business meetings to end in dinner and a visit to a brothel.

But more recently, experts say, Spain has also become a go-to destination for sex services.

In La Jonquera, tucked behind an all-night gas station, is the newly opened Club Paradise, which, with 101 rooms, is one of the largest brothels in Europe. It caters in large part to young men from France, where many aspects of prostitution are illegal, and perhaps more to the point, buying sex is more expensive.

On a recent evening, one young man from Paris stood in the parking lot of Club Paradise, bragging about his sexual exploits while his friends looked on. The women, he said, did not talk about whether they were being forced to have sex.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I think they are having a good time.”

If any of them actually are, they would seem to be the exceptions. Thirty years ago, virtually all the prostitutes in Spain were Spanish. Now, almost none are. Advocates and police officials say that most of the women are controlled by illegal networks — they are modern-day slaves.

The networks vary enormously, and shift constantly. Some are “mom and pop” operations out of Eastern Europe, like the one that controls Valentina. Others have far greater reach, like the Nigerian organizations that first began to surface in Spain in the last decade. Deputy Inspector Xavier Cortés Camacho, the head of the regional antitrafficking unit in Barcelona, said the Nigerian groups moved women through northern Africa to Spain, and then controlled them by threatening to rape or kill their family members back home.

But Mr. Cortés said that people of maybe a dozen nationalities were involved in the trafficking. Until recently, for instance, the police in Barcelona did not even realize that Chinese mafias ran prostitution rings in the city. Then they began noticing more and more advertisements for Chinese, Japanese and Korean women — all of them, it turned out, Chinese — working in a network of about 30 brothels.

The working conditions were brutal, Mr. Cortés said. On wiretaps, he said, “we listened to them complain that they needed to rest, they were in pain. But they had to keep working. One woman committed suicide after finding out she was H.I.V.-positive.”

Some of the women are sold into the business by their families, Mr. Cortés said. The police came across one case in which Colombian traffickers were paying one family $650 a month for their daughter. She managed to escape, he said. But when she contacted her family, they told her to go back or they would send her sister as a replacement.

Of the 1,605 women identified in 2010 as victims of traffickers, the biggest number — about 30 percent — came from the Balkans.

Many tell a story much like that of Valentina, who hoped to earn enough money in Spain to build a house and live in peace with her children.

So far, she said, she has earned a bit more than $2,000. But she has not been allowed to keep any of it. “They say I eat too much,” she said. “They are angry if I buy something to drink.”

In the meantime, her cellphone kept ringing, and the threats from her former boyfriend kept coming, she said.

The visibility of prostitution has become an issue here. A battle has raged over whether to allow advertisements for prostitution in newspapers, but they remain legal and appear even in the most reputable papers.

After one Barcelona newspaper ran a series last year on sex acts conducted in plain view near a main tourist attraction, the boulevard Las Ramblas, the city council said it would ban street prostitution and expand services for the women.

In La Jonquera, Mayor Sonia Martínez Juli says the town, population 3,000, has few resources to help the women.

“We feel completely abandoned with this problem,” she said.

Some politicians would like to see prostitution outlawed in Spain, though that does not seem imminent. Many women’s groups say that this would only force prostitution underground, making it even harder to help trafficked women.

For now, prostitution is legal, though not regulated, in Spain. But pimping is illegal, so most brothels like Club Paradise operate more like hotels. It charges the women who work there about $90 a night for room and board.

José Moreno, one of the owners, said the women who worked there did so freely.

“Sometimes there is a problem with a boyfriend,” Mr. Moreno said recently, as scantily clad young women began to gather at one of the bars inside his club, readying for a night’s work. “But that is usually cleared up quickly.”

Some weeks after the interview, however, Mr. Moreno was convicted on charges relating to smuggling Brazilian women into Spain to work as prostitutes. He was sentenced to three years in prison and is appealing the decision. The authorities say the women can seek help, but many are reluctant. On a recent evening, Valentina, speaking a mix of Spanish and Romanian, said she was unsure where to turn. She said she had already been to the local police, but had been told she had to go to the regional police in Figueres, about 15 miles away.

A few days later, she stopped answering her cellphone and could not be found at her usual spot along the road. Inspector Cortés said that she had indeed gone to the police in Figueres. But at the last minute, she refused to go to a shelter and left on her own.

Indian Couple Deny Charges of Abusing Servant

By NIKHILA GILL and HEATHER TIMMONS

Published: April 5, 2012

NEW DELHI — The couple accused of abusing a 13-year-old maid and locking her in their apartment while they went on vacation, a story that has renewed attention on the exploitation of children in India, did no such thing, the couple’s lawyer said Thursday.

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The maid is not under age, has not been abused and was not locked in the apartment, said the lawyer, Shailendra Bhardwaj. Nor was she watched with security cameras, as her statement to a court asserted, he said.

The couple, Dr. Sanjay Verma and Dr. Sumita Verma, were arrested Wednesday after their return from a trip to Thailand and were being held by the police on preliminary charges of violating laws related to child labor and bondage.

The girl, who has not been publicly identified, was rescued from the house by a firefighter last Thursday and was being held in protective custody.

Her accusations of abuse have been front-page news in India since the case came to light a week ago.

Mr. Bhardwaj said that the Vermas treated the maid like part of the family. “She was treated like a child, and we will shortly be releasing videos of the girl playing Holi with the family and Dr. Verma’s daughter,” he said in a telephone interview. “We don’t know who prompted her to make the report.”

Holi is the tradition of dousing others with colored water and pigment associated with the Hindu spring festival.

Mr. Bhardwaj said the maid had told the couple that she was 18, not 13, as reported by child welfare officials. He said she was left in their home in the Dwarka suburb of New Delhi at her request. Before the couple left for their vacation in Bangkok, he said, they asked the girl to stay at the wife’s mother’s house, but she declined.

“They decided to leave her in their house at Dwarka because she said she was more comfortable there,” he said.

“She was given a key and 500 rupees,” a little more than $9, “to purchase daily groceries,” Mr. Bhardwaj said. “She was also asked to keep the door locked and not open it for anybody except the couple.”

The girl said the couple had locked her in their apartment, according to child welfare officials. She said she was paid nothing, barely fed and was beaten if her work was not satisfactory. She said her uncle had sold her to a job placement agency, which sold her to the couple, officials said.

Ravi Kant, the lawyer for Shakti Vahini, a nongovernmental organization that combats child trafficking, discounted the couple’s denials.

The girl’s statement, made in front of a magistrate, carries a great deal of weight in court, he said. “Even if the child goes back on her word, under coercion or for money, her statement will still hold,” Mr. Kant said. A medical report corroborates the girl’s assertions of being pinched and hit, he added.

He said that employers were responsible for verifying an employee’s age, regardless of what the employee may have claimed, and that only a birth or school certificate was considered legal proof.

Indian law allows children as young as 14 to work a maximum of six hours a day in nonhazardous work, but younger children are legally prohibited from working as servants, a provision that is widely flouted.

Mr. Bhardwaj, the couple’s lawyer, said he would request bail when the couple appears before a magistrate at the Dwarka district court, at a hearing expected on Monday.

Mr. Kant said his organization would strongly oppose the request. “Such people need exemplary punishment,” he said.

Financiers and Sex Trafficking

Financiers and Sex Trafficking

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

THE biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls in the United States appears to be a Web site called Backpage.com.

This emporium for girls and women — some under age or forced into prostitution — is in turn owned by an opaque private company called Village Voice Media. Until now it has been unclear who the ultimate owners are.

That mystery is solved. The owners turn out to include private equity financiers, including Goldman Sachs with a 16 percent stake.

Goldman Sachs was mortified when I began inquiring last week about its stake in America’s leading Web site for prostitution ads. It began working frantically to unload its shares, and on Friday afternoon it called to say that it had just signed an agreement to sell its stake to management.

“We had no influence over operations,” Andrea Raphael, a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman, told me.

Let’s back up for a moment. There’s no doubt that many escort ads on Backpage are placed by consenting adults. But it’s equally clear that Backpage plays a major role in the trafficking of minors or women who are coerced. In one recent case in New York City, prosecutors say that a 15-year-old girl was drugged, tied up, raped and sold to johns through Backpage and other sites.

Backpage has 70 percent of the market for prostitution ads, according to AIM Group, a trade organization.

Village Voice Media makes some effort to screen out ads placed by traffickers and to alert authorities to abuses, but neither law enforcement officials nor antitrafficking organizations are much impressed. As a result, pressure is growing on the company to drop escort ads.

After my last column on this issue, 19 U.S. senators wrote the company, asking it to stop abetting traffickers. On Thursday, antitrafficking campaigners protested outside the Village Voice newspaper (which is owned by Village Voice Media). A petition on Change.org criticizing the company has gathered 220,000 signatures.

In Washington State, the governor signed a bill into law on Thursday that could expose Backpage to criminal sanctions if it advertises under-age girls for sex without verifying their ages. (There’s some uncertainty about the constitutionality of the law.)

Village Voice Media has been able to resist pressure partly because, as a private company, it doesn’t disclose its owners. But I’ve obtained documents that, with some digging, shed light on who’s behind it.

The two biggest owners are Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey, the managers of the company, and they seem to own about half of the shares. The best known of the other owners is Goldman Sachs, which invested in the company in 2000 (before Backpage became a part of Village Voice Media in a 2006 merger).

A Goldman managing director, Scott L. Lebovitz, sat on the Village Voice Media board for many years. Goldman says he stepped down in early 2010.

Let’s be clear: this is a tiny investment by a huge company, and I have no reason to think that Goldman’s top executives knew of its connection to sex trafficking. Goldman prides itself on its work on gender: its 10,000 Women initiative does splendid work supporting women in business around the globe. Full disclosure: Goldman’s foundation was one of about 15 funders of a public television documentary version of a book that my wife and I wrote about the world’s women.

That said, for more than six years Goldman has held a significant stake in a company notorious for ties to sex trafficking, and it sat on the company’s board for four of those years. There’s no indication that Goldman or anyone else ever used its ownership to urge Village Voice Media to drop escort ads or verify ages. Elizabeth L. McDougall, chief counsel for Village Voice Media, told me Friday that she was “unaware of any dissent” from owners.

Several lesser-known financial companies also hold significant stakes in Village Voice Media, and one person close to the company says that there are about a dozen owners in all. One is Trimaran, an investment company in New York. It wouldn’t disclose the size of its stake but told me that it had “no influence whatsoever” on management and is now trying to sell its shares.

Two other companies, Alta Communications and Brynwood Partners, did not respond to my repeated inquiries about ties to Village Voice Media (Brynwood may be an asset manager rather than an owner). One thought: If the minority shareholders, Goldman included, worked together instead of rushing for the exits, they might be able to pressure Village Voice Media to get out of escort ads.

There are no easy solutions to sex trafficking. I think the most important single step is for prosecutors to focus more on pimps and johns. Closing down the leading Web site used by traffickers would complicate their lives, and after so many years of girls being trafficked on this site, it’s time to hold owners accountable.

Sex Trafficking and the First Amendment

For months now, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and its allies in the contraception and abortion wars have complained that the Obama administration showed anti-Catholic bias when it declined to renew the conference’s contract to aid victims of human trafficking. In fact, the contract was not renewed because the bishops’ group was unwilling to meet the needs of trafficking victims, many of whom have been sexually abused or forced into prostitution.

The group required its subcontractors to agree not to use any federal money they had received to pay for contraceptive and abortion referrals and services. (A federal rule, the Hyde Amendment, bars use of federal money for abortions but makes exceptions for rape, incest and when a woman’s life is endangered.)

A recent decision by a federal district court judge in Boston supplied another good reason for denying the bishops’ group a new contract: respect for the First Amendment. Ruling on a case filed three years ago, Judge Richard Stearns found that the group’s old contract, which expired in October, violated the Constitution’s bar on government establishment of religion because it allowed the bishops to impose religion-based restrictions on the use of taxpayer dollars. “To insist that the government respect the separation of the church and state is not to discriminate against religion,” Judge Stearns wrote. “Indeed, it promotes a respect for religion by refusing to single out any creed for official favor at the expense of all others.” The bishops are likely to appeal.

The sound ruling could have implications for the faith-based initiative begun by President George W. Bush and continued under President Obama by calling into question the dubious notion of giving churches and other groups wide latitude to use public money for their religion-based social service programs.

In the meantime, Congressional Republicans should stop obstructing legislation to reauthorize and strengthen the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the federal law central to the fight against human trafficking and slavery that expired at the end of last year.

Washington Is First State to Take On Escort Sites

Washington Is First State to Take On Escort Sites

By WILLIAM YARDLEY

SEATTLE — For more than three months, she was sold online for sex. She had run away at 15, gone back home, then run away again. Finally, an undercover police officer caught her, and her pimp. This time she went home and stayed, but she was not the same.

“She was a different child after that,” her father said. “It was like she was programmed. She spoke different. She looked different. They cut her hair, they dyed her hair, they bought her new clothes.”

Now 17, the girl is in counseling and in college, “on her way,” her father said.

She is also evidence. When one of the men who raped her was sentenced in February, one of the exhibits that prosecutors used was an advertisement selling her services as an escort on backpage.com. The ad said she was 18.

That same month, the Washington Legislature was debating a bill that would require sites within the state to obtain documentation that escorts advertised there are at least 18. On Thursday, Gov. Christine Gregoire signed that bill into law, the first of its kind in the country.

“It’s a start, and it’s a precedent,” the girl’s father said, “and it will make a difference.”

The Washington law was praised last week by groups working to stop child sex trafficking. Other states, including Connecticut, are considering similar legislation. Yet even some supporters of the law question how effective it will be — paperwork can be easy to fake, after all. And will shutting down one Web site simply prompt another to open? Some also wonder how it will fare against potential legal challenges that it limits free speech.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Andrea Powell, the executive director of FAIR Girls, which seeks out and helps girls who have been sexually exploited. “But I don’t think it’s going to be the solution they’re looking for. It might reduce the volume of ads, but the ultimate goal is to shut that section down. There’s no way with an escort section that pimps aren’t going to post there. They’re not going to just stop posting on backpage.”

After public and political pressure led Craigslist to remove its escort sections in 2010, experts say backpage became the biggest mainstream platform for similar ads. Yet unlike Craigslist, backpage, which is owned by Village Voice Media Holdings, says it has no plan to remove its escort sections and it has not ruled out challenging Washington State’s law. The company says that the role it plays is vastly overstated by critics and that it screens and reports ads to try to prevent exploitation of children.

“There’s going to have to be a challenge to it,” said Liz McDougall, general counsel for Village Voice Media Holdings. “Otherwise it would effectively shut down an enormous portion of the Internet that currently permits third-party content.”

Ms. McDougall said the law could potentially affect Web site forums and chat rooms that are unrelated to escort sites, but where illicit content might be reposted. She also made arguments that even some law enforcement investigators make, that some sites that promote child sex trafficking can lead investigators and advocates to victims and their abusers.

That argument falls flat for many advocates.

“That just doesn’t work because, of course, they’re causing far more harm than they’re helping prevent,” said Washington State’s attorney general, Rob McKenna, a Republican who is running for governor. “There’s no excuse for being part of the problem.”

Human trafficking has been a prominent issue in Washington State for at least a decade. Following a series of high-profile trafficking-related episodes beginning in the 1990s, Washington passed the first state law, in 2003, to criminalize human trafficking. In 2010 it significantly increased prison sentences for child sex-trafficking. Last year, Mayor Mike McGinn of Seattle pulled city advertising from The Seattle Weekly, which is owned by Village Voice (but requires age verification for escort ads that run in print). Mr. McKenna, the current president of the National Association of Attorneys General, made the issue the centerpiece of the group’s meeting here last week.

He and others say they want Congress to amend the federal Communications Decency Act. The act, passed in 1996, provides broad free-speech protections for Internet sites that opponents of trafficking say did not anticipate the way the Web is now used — but that could make the Washington law vulnerable in court.

State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, the sponsor of the new law, said she and others spent more than a year working on language that the American Civil Liberties Union and some newspaper groups eventually supported.

“We provide the means for them to have an affirmative defense,” Ms. Kohl-Welles said of the escort sites. “That is, if they can document they verified the age of the individual being portrayed. We think that’ll do it.”

Ms. McDougall, of Village Voice Media Holdings, said it “took some convincing” before she recently agreed to take her job, because she also had questions about backpage. But she also questioned the need for the new Washington law.

“If we’re not already the industry leaders based on what we’re doing, we are going to be the industry leaders in fighting trafficking online,” Ms. McDougall said. “My goal is to get us there.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 2, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the general counsel for Village Voice Media Holdings. Her name is Elizabeth L. McDougall.

Great Event Coming up in Miami on Avoiding Burnout

SAVE THE DATE!

“Avoiding Burnout When Working on Human Trafficking Cases”

St. Thomas University School of Law through its Graduate Program in Intercultural Human Rights’ Human Trafficking Academy invites you to the 2012 course on

secondary trauma and human trafficking**

WHEN: Friday, April 20, 2012, 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

WHERE: St. Thomas University School of Law, Moot Court Room,

16401 NW 37th Ave., Miami Gardens, FL 33054**

COSTS: Free

REGISTER: www.stu.edu/avoidingburnoutht

Professionals assisting victims of trafficking may experience one or many of the following symptoms and behaviors in their trauma exposure

response:

· Fatigue

· Depression

· Addictions

· Sleeplessness

· Hopelessness

· Hypervigilance

· Headaches

· Aggression

· Diminished creativity

· Anxiety

· Cynicism

· Inability to emphasize/numbing

· Irritability

· Fear

· Sense of persecution

· Guilt

· Grandiosity

· Inability to listen or deliberate avoidance

· Substandard work performance

· Feelings of inadequacy that lead to working relentlessly often sacrificing health and private life to devote more time to cases

· Minimizing or down playing traumatic experiences that seem less dire in comparison to other experiences

The St. Thomas University School of Law, through its Graduate Program in Intercultural Human Rights’ Human Trafficking Initiative will be having a half day program on the effects of working on human trafficking cases on first responders and volunteers, whether directly or indirectly involved on a case. This free of charge program will discuss physical and psychological impact of traumatic events that victims of human trafficking experience, the psychological and physical effects of being exposed to trauma and its impact on the delivery of services. Designed to help attorneys, prosecutors, judges, social service providers, mental health services providers, healthcare workers, religious institutions, volunteers and the community at large, the program will include discussion of trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, the signs of traumatic exposure response (also referred to as secondary trauma, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and/or burnout), and the possible negative impacts on their relationship to the injured person and their ability to perform the functions associated with their position. The program is scheduled from 9:00 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. on April 20, 2012 at St. Thomas University School of Law’s Moot Court Room, 16401 N.W. 37th Avenue, Miami, Florida 33054.

The program will feature two panels of distinguished speakers from different practice areas and disciplines.

*Pending Continuing Legal Education Credits with the Florida Bar,

**In addition to the live session, the conference will be streamed online.

For more information please contact: Human Trafficking Academy at humantrafficking@stu.edu