I Am Priceless

EU launches campaign against human trafficking
TUESDAY, 09 OCTOBER 2012 00:00 FROM ITUNU AJAYI, ABUJA NEWS - NATIONAL

AS part of its efforts to create awareness among those vulnerable to trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants, the European Union (EU) in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is set to launch the ‘I am priceless’ campaign in Abuja today.

The EU has also set aside 4.8 million euros to fight the cause of victims of illegal human trafficking and smuggling of migrants.

At a media workshop organized   by the European Union in Lafia, Nasarawa State at the weekend, the duo of Godwin Morka, Assistant Director, Research and Programme Department   and Arinze Orakwue, Head of Press and Public Relations Unit, both of the national agency for the National   Agency for the Prohibition  of Traffic in Persons and other related matters (NAPTIP) painted a sordid picture of what victims of human trafficking are exposed to, most of the time out of ignorance based on empty promises of a better life  abroad.

According to them, “trafficking in persons involves more than forced sexual act which readily comes to mind as it involves other heinous crimes like harvest of organs, forced labour and in most cases death.”

They added that most trafficking cases were unreported because exploiters were mostly close family members of victims and they were made to swear to an oath of secrecy with threat of death or insanity should they divulge any information to anyone.

Training Amtrak Workers to Stop Human Trafficking

DOT, DHS to train Amtrak workers to stop human trafficking
Eugene Mulero, E&E reporter

Thousands of Amtrak employees will receive training to help them spot suspected human traffickers and their victims under a program launched today by the departments of Transportation and Homeland Security.
Speaking at Union Station in Washington, D.C., Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the opportunity to better educate the Amtrak workforce would dramatically assist law enforcement authorities tasked with tackling human trafficking.
"We cannot let the American transportation system be an enabler of these criminal acts," LaHood said. "Human trafficking is a hidden crime. We may not think human trafficking is happening around us, but it is. Trafficking is going on right now in cities and small communities around America."
The Transportation Department, LaHood noted, is training more than 55,000 of its employees on how to identify and report suspicions of human trafficking to law enforcement authorities.
Last year, Napolitano said, Immigration and Customs Enforcement started more than 700 trafficking investigations resulting in nearly 1,000 arrests, more than 400 indictments and several convictions. This included a recent arrest in Alexandria, Va., of a suspected gang leader charged with trafficking young women.
"As you well know, transportation workers, including Amtrak police, train conductors, ticket counter staff and others, come into contact with thousands of people on a daily basis, making them well-positioned to identify situations that don't seem quite right, including potential signs of trafficking," she said.
The partnership builds on a White House directive calling for a crackdown on trafficking. President Obama last month called human trafficking "modern-day slavery" and pledged to expand training and guidance throughout federal agencies and among law enforcement officials. He also said commercial transportation workers, such as Amtrak's crew, need to partner with federal, state and local law enforcement.
"The bitter truth is that trafficking also goes on right here," Obama told an audience at the Clinton Global Initiative. "It's the migrant worker unable to pay off the debt to his trafficker. ... This should not be happening in the United States of America."
Despite asserting that Amtrak trains might not be used for such trafficking, Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman said he recognizes the value in training nearly 8,000 employees. "Amtrak sees this as being a good corporate citizen and a travel industry leader that needs to partner with those who want to end this," he said.

Teen sex slaves: All too real in Florida

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-09-25/news/os-scott-maxwell-human-trafficking-sex-slavery-092-20120925_1_male-schoolmates-state-agents-human


Teen sex slaves: All too real in Florida
Scott Maxwell, TAKING NAMES
9:32 p.m. EST, September 25, 2012

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If I told you there was a place where 16-year-old girls are forced to perform sex acts on men old enough to be their grandfather, you'd be disgusted.

And if I told you some of these sexual horror stories start when girls are as young as 12, your stomach probably would turn.

Well, turn it should. Because that place is right here in Florida.

It's as close as International Drive and along the I-4 corridor.

It's called human trafficking. And it's a grotesque practice that state officials say is on the rise.

Need proof? Well, consider that, right now, the state is housing and protecting about 100 girls who were victims. And that represents just a fraction of those actually involved.

Nationally, experts say Florida ranks third in human-trafficking cases.

They are stories like the one the Sentinel carried just two weeks ago from our own backyard: "Palm Bay man forced 14-year-old runaway into prostitution, cops say."

Fourteen-year-old girls are supposed to be planning parties, reading teen magazines and gossiping with their friends — not being pressured into sex by men who threaten to kill them if they don't.

"People just don't think it's happening here — but it is," said state Rep. Erik Fresen, a South Florida Republican who has led the fight to combat this plague. "When I really started looking at this issue and the data, I was A) thrown back, B) incredibly saddened and C) wanted to know what I needed to do to help."

What the Legislature did was pass Fresen's Safe Harbor Act — which was a good first step. (More on that in a moment.) And this week, officials such as Attorney General Pam Bondi are raising awareness through a summit on human trafficking.

So why don't you already know more about this problem?

Well, for one reason, people don't want to think about it. It's hard to comprehend.

I also believe the phrase itself — "human trafficking" — is deceivingly sterile. It's simply doesn't connect with most of us.

I'm reminded of the scene from "Jaws" when the misguided mayor of Amity Island explains to Chief Brody the power of words, saying: "You yell, 'barracuda,' everyone says, 'Huh?' You yell, 'shark,' we've got a panic on our hands."

That's why we need to call this epidemic what it is: "Sex slavery."

Human trafficking also involves indentured servants, often immigrants who are forced to work for nothing or next-to-nothing. But the biggest part of the state's focus right now is sex slavery.

They are runaways, drug addicts and victims of abuse who are tricked into a nightmarish life by depraved predators.

But some of the girls also come from families like yours.

At a briefing I attended a few months ago, state agents talked of a local executive whose daughter was sneaking out of her bedroom at night to prostitute herself. The reason: A group of her male schoolmates had raped her, videotaped the incident and threatened to release the video if she didn't do as they said. Her parents had no idea.

A key part of Fresen's Safe Harbor Act is that it treats these girls as the victims they are, rather than the criminals.

It also bolsters penalties for the deviant dirtbags who abuse the girls.

The bill also calls for more safe places for rescued girls to stay — one of the greatest needs.

Unfortunately, the Legislature didn't include any funding for those safe houses. House analysts said $8 million might be needed. The Legislature designated nothing.

Fresen said he will work to fix that next session. And on Tuesday, DCF Secretary David Wilkins said he was looking for creative solutions.

Nonprofits also need to be in the mix.

We must all step up — and open our eyes to the horrors no one wants to see.

smaxwell@tribune.com or             407-420-6141    

Sex trafficking in the USA hits close to home

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012/09/26/human-trafficking-in-the-united-states-finds-a-home-in-the-schoolyard/57846054/1#.UGRCPMcF9dg.twitter


Sex trafficking in the USA hits close to home
by Yamiche Alcindor, USA TODAY Updated 6d 19h ago
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H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
Asia Graves, 24, is a survivor of human trafficking. She works for Fair Girls, a non-profit that helps human trafficking victims.
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WASHINGTON -- Asia Graves looks straight ahead as she calmly recalls the night a man paid $200 on a Boston street to have sex with her.
She was 16, homeless, and desperate for food, shelter and stability. He was the first of dozens of men who would buy her thin cashew-colored body from a human trafficker who exploited her vulnerabilities and made her a prisoner for years.
"If we didn't call him daddy, he would slap us, beat us, choke us," said Graves, 24, of the man who organized the deals. "It's about love and thinking you're part of a family and a team. I couldn't leave because I thought he would kill me."
By day, she was a school girl who saw her family occasionally. At night, she became a slave to men who said they loved her and convinced her to trade her beauty for quick cash that they pocketed. Sold from Boston to Miami and back, Graves was one of thousands of young girls sexually exploited across the United States, often in plain sight.
A plague more commonly associated with other countries has been taking young victims in the United States, one by one. Though the scope of the problem remains uncertain -- no national statistics for the number of U.S. victims exist -- the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says at least 100,000 children across the country are trafficked each year.
On Tuesday, President Obama announced several new initiatives aimed at ending trafficking nationwide, including the first-ever assessment of the problem in this country and a $6 million grant to build solutions.
"When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family, or girls my daughters' ages run away from home and are lured -- that's slavery," Obama said in an address to the Clinton Global Initiative. "It's barbaric, it's evil, and it has no place in a civilized world."
Schools in at least six states and the District of Columbia have turned their focus to human trafficking, launching all-day workshops for staff members, classroom lessons for students and outreach campaigns to speak with parents about the dangers American children face.
The efforts by high school and middle-school officials in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Connecticut, Oregon, Wisconsin, California and Florida come as experts say criminals have turned to classrooms and social media sites to recruit students into forced domestic sex and labor rings.
"They are as horrific and brutal and vile as any criminal cases we see," said Neil MacBride, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. "If it can happen in affluent Fairfax County, it can happen anywhere."
Across the nation, the stories arrive with varying imprints of the callousness and depravity of the sex traffickers. One girl was sold during a sleepover, handed over by her classmate's father. Another slept with clients during her school lunch breaks. A third was choked by her "boyfriend," then forced to have sex with 14 men in one night.
Young people at the fringes of school, runaways looking for someone to care and previously abused victims fall into the traps of traffickers who often pretend to love them.
The perpetrators -- increasingly younger -- can be other students or gang members who manipulate victims' weaknesses during recess or after school, law enforcement officials say. They often bait victims by telling them they will be beautiful strippers or escorts but later ply them with drugs -- ecstasy pills, cocaine, marijuana and the like -- and force them into sex schemes.
'Too pretty to stay outside'
For Graves, who grew up in inner city Boston, her troubles began early in life. Her mother was addicted to drugs, and a dealer molested Graves as a little girl. She bounced between living with an aunt, grandparents, an alcoholic father and a sometimes-recovering mother.
At 16, Graves was homeless and had been wearing the same clothes for months when a group of girls who had dropped out of school took her in and cleaned her up. "They said they were escorts and that they made $2,000 a night," she recalled. "I figured if I go out one night, I'll never have to do it again."
She followed the girls to the "track," a term used for streets where prostitutes gather. When a terrified Graves only brought back $40 from begging, the girls abandoned her. The next night, she says she was alone on a corner in Boston during a snowstorm when her first trafficker picked her up.
"He said I was too pretty to stay outside, so I ended up going home with him because he offered me a place to sleep and clothes to put on," she said.
The man said he wanted to take care of her but that she would have to earn her keep. "He showed me the ropes," she said. "How much to charge for sex" and other sex acts.
Then came the violence. Her attempts to leave were met with brute force. "He punched me," she said. "He stripped me down naked and beat me."
In one incident, her captor took a potato peeler to her face then raped her as she bled. Years later, the light scar remains just below her left eye. Other violent episodes left her with eight broken teeth, two broken ankles and a V-shaped stab wound just below her belly button.
She stayed, however, and found comfort in other girls -- called "wife in-laws" -- who went to area schools, got their hair and nails done together and then worked the streets for the same man. "You think what you're doing is right when you're in that lifestyle," Graves said. "You drink alcohol to ease the stress. Red Bulls kept you awake, and cigarettes kept you from being hungry."
For two years, she was sold from tormentor to tormentor, forced to sleep with men in cities like New York, Atlanta; Philadelphia; Atlantic City; Miami. She posed for Craigslist and Backpage.com ads and set up "dates" six days a week for up to $2,500 a night.
A captive Graves did what experts say others have done: she recruited others. "We'd go to malls, schools, group homes, bus stations and look for girls who were by themselves or looked very vulnerable," she said.
For some of the time, Graves herself remained in high school, attending classes sporadically in boy shorts, small tank tops and worn heels.
"In the schools, they thought I just dressed provocatively," Graves said of the teachers and staff who missed chances to help her. "Now, people are actually understanding that these girls are victims."
Raising 'the compassion bar'
Graves' journey eventually led her to work for Fair Girls, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C. One of several organizations working to educate schools and students about the issue, Fair Girls has designed a four-hour lesson plan called "Tell Your Friends" for high school and middle-school students.
"I want to raise the compassion bar so that any girl who becomes a victim is never seen as a girl who asked for it," said Andrea Powell, executive director of Fair Girls, which launched the curriculum in 2008.
The model reaches more than a 1,000 students a year at a dozen schools in Washington, as well as young people in homeless shelters and foster homes.
Polaris Project, a non-profit that runs the national human trafficking hotline, has received 58,911 calls since December 2007. At least 2,081 callers have identified themselves as a student and 341 callers identified as school staff members.
Globally, the International Labor Organization estimates that about 20.9 million people are trafficked and that 22% of them are victims of forced sexual exploitation.
The growing number of human trafficking cases handled by U.S. Attorney MacBride's office -- 14 in the last 18 months -- reflects the domestic trend, experts say.
In one case this year, Justin Strom, 26, a gang member in Fairfax County, Va., was sentenced to 40 years in prison for forcing girls from local high schools and a juvenile detention center to work as prostitutes.
The familiar echo of these crimes reaches the other side of the country, too, says Alessandra Serano, an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of California.
"You can sell drugs once," she said. "You can sell a girl thousands of times."
A search of Backpage.com's adult section reveals thousands of ads for young women claiming to be escorts, strippers and massage therapists. The women in suggestive poses and little clothing offer good times for a price. "Multiple Females Multiple Hours." "Sexy White Chocolate." "Delicious Petite Blonde Barbie."
Advocates such as Powell say such websites depict modern-day slavery. She scrolls through them often looking for new girls to help. Fair Girls works directly with victims to find them jobs, housing, lawyers and medical resources. They've gone from serving 20 girls in 2011 to 50 this year -- all with a limited budget.
"We just don't have the resources for all these girls," Powell said. "But we can't turn them away."
In classroom lessons, staffers define trafficking, show a video about experiences and ask students to react. As 50 Cent's "P-I-M-P" song thumps in the background, students are asked what they think traffickers and victims look like. They then talk about abusive relationships and how to avoid them, and they are presented with resources they can use if they are being exploited.
A few weeks ago, at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, nine girls sat around a long wooden table talking about trafficking with Graves, who teaches at 12 public high schools in the District of Columbia.
"If you want attention and you see that you're getting it, you just follow your feelings," senior Araceli Figueroa, 17, said. "It's sad."
Graves knows. She can still see the face of a fellow victim whose body she identified. The girl's body had been discarded in an Atlantic City drain pipe.
In Connecticut, Love146, another non-profit focused on trafficking, teaches Fair Girls' "Tell Your Friends" curriculum in 11 schools, said Nicole von Oy, the group's training and outreach coordinator. They've talked to more than 4,000 students in schools, shelters and other places using that curriculum and other initiatives.
Others hope to spread the message to more students.
Since 2006, the U.S. Department of Education has focused on the problem and worked on training with several schools, said Eve Birge, who works for the agency's Office of Safe and Healthy Students.
In doing so, they collaborate with the White House, the FBI, the Departments of State and Justice as well as other agencies.
"For a lot of these kids, school can be the only safe place they have," Birge said.
With their help, schools tell teachers, social workers, counselors and others to look for the signs of a possible victim:
-- Multiple unexplained absences from school.
-- A repeated tendency to run away from home.
-- Frequent travel to other cities.
-- Older boyfriends or girlfriends.
-- A sudden ability to have expensive items.
-- Appearing depressed or suffering physical injuries.
Escaping the 'invisible chains'
For Katariina Rosenblatt, who spoke at a recent training session for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the issue is personal.
Twenty-seven years ago, traffickers in Miami tried to sell her virginity for $505. She was only 13. She ran from them then but fell victim six months later when a classmate's father sold her during a sleepover.
From ages 14 to 17, she says she was drugged, abused, raped and trafficked by several people including that father's friends, a neighbor who ran a trafficking house, and man who offered her a role in a movie.
Rosenblatt, now an adjunct professor at Trinity International University, runs a non-profit called There Is H.O.P.E. For Me.
"They give you money, drugs and a fun time, but in the end they want your dignity and your self-respect," she said. "It's invisible chains that these kids are tied with."
Graves understands. At Fair Girls, she works directly with victims and unwinds her long, painful story with the hope that it will lift these tortured souls.
After she suffered a miscarriage during a beating in July 2005, Graves finally went to police and worked with the FBI and state attorneys to get six men charged with human trafficking. All pleaded guilty or were convicted of conspiracy or sex trafficking. They were sentenced to four to 25 years in prison.
The agencies helped her get housing, and officers even today check on the now poised young professional. She's earning a political science degree and says she wants to start a non-profit much like Fair Girls.
One recent afternoon, her low hazel eyes pierced through a busy Washington street and focused on a young woman's face she recognized from Backpage.com. She paused.
Graves sees trafficking when no one else can.
"My main priority is making sure no child has to go through what I went through," she said. "If I can save one girl from not going into it or one girl who has already been in from going back, then I'm already doing more than enough."
(Polaris Project's national trafficking hotline number:             1-888-373-7888      )

Slavery Still Exists

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/slavery-still-exists/262847/

Slavery Still Exists
(Please check the link to see the incredible photos)

Photographs of human trafficking and enslavement around the world


Lisa Kristine
It was 130 degrees when I was first introduced to the brick kilns of Nepal. In these severe temperatures, men, women, and children -- whole families, in fact -- were surrounded by a dense cloud of dust while mechanically stacking bricks on their heads, carrying them, 18 at a time, from the scorching kilns to trucks hundreds of yards away.

These are slaves. Deadened by monotony and exhaustion, they worked without speaking, repeating the same task 16 hours a day. They took no rest for food or water, no bathroom breaks -- although their dehydration suppressed their need to urinate.

Around the world human traffickers trick many people into slavery by false promises of good jobs or good education, only to find themselves forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence. Trapped by phony debt, these slaves are hunted by local police and private security guards if they try to escape. Sometimes slaves don't even understand that they're enslaved, despite people working 16 or 17 hours a day with no pay. They're simply used to it as something they've been doing their whole lives. Their bodies grow weak and vulnerable to disease, but they have nothing to compare their experience to.

For the last 28 years I have documented people in more than 100 countries on six continents. In 2009, at the Vancouver Peace Summit, I met a supporter of Free the Slaves, an NGO dedicated to eradicating modern-day slavery; weeks later, I flew down to Los Angeles and met with the director of Free the Slaves; thus began my journey into exploring modern-day slavery.

Oddly, I'd been to most of the locations where I started photographing slavery many times before. I even considered some of them homes-away-from-home. But there can be dark corners in familiar places.

These are not images of "problems." They're images of people. There are 27 million slaves in the world today: That's more than double the number of people taken from Africa during the entire transatlantic slave trade. A hundred and fifty years ago, an average agricultural slave cost over three times the average yearly wage of an American worker, about US$50,000 in today's money. Yet now, entire families can be enslaved for generations over a debt as small as $18. Slavery is illegal everywhere, but it exists all over the world.


Accra, Ghana: These gold miners have just come out of the shaft, their pants soaked from their own sweat. Most had spent all their money coming from the north hoping to strike it rich in legal mines. But legal operations require certifications. When they can't get a job, the men take high-interest loans or join groups of slaves in mines abandoned by legitimate operations.


Accra, Ghana: 200 feet underground, a man labors in an illegal gold mine. He and others enslaved like him are underground for as long as 72 hours at a time.


Accra, Ghana: Many of those enslaved had children with them while panning for gold, wading in waters poisoned by mercury that is used in the extraction process.


Kathmandu, Nepal: For this photo, I was escorted by women who had previously been enslaved themselves. They brought me down a narrow set of stairs leading to a green fluorescent-lit basement. This wasn't a brothel as such; it was a "cabin restaurants," as they are known in the trade -- venues for forced prostitution. Each has a small private room where slaves, some as young as seven, entertain and serve the clients, encouraging them to buy alcohol and food. These cubicles are small, dark, and dingy, each identified with a number painted on the wall, and partitioned by plywood and a curtain. The workers here often endure sexual abuse at the hands of the customers. Standing in the near darkness, I realized there was only one way out -- the stairs where I came in: no back doors, no windows large enough to climb through, no escape at all.


Kathmandu, Nepal: A worker blends in with the bricks at a Nepalese kiln. Workers mechanically stack 18 bricks at a time, each weighing four pounds, and carry them to nearby trucks for 18 hours a day without any payment or compensation.


Lake Volta, Ghana: Fhanaian NGOs estimate that between 4,000 and 10,000 trafficked children are enslaved on Lake Volta, the largest man-made lake in the world. At first glance this image appears to be a family fishing in the lake, two older brothers and some kids. I was alarmed to learn that they were actually enslaved, working in plain sight. These children have been lost to their parents and are forced to work endless hours in boats on the lake, though they're unable to swim.


Lake Volta, Ghana: Child workers usually work from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. on cold, windy nights to reel in nets weighing as much as 1,000 pounds when they are full of fish. Skeletal tree limbs submerged in Lake Volta frequently entangle the fishing nets, and and slave masters will throw weary, frightened children into the water to free the trapped lines, sometimes drowning them. I didn't meet one child who didn't know another who had drowned.


Lake Volta, Ghana: There are triumphs, too. Meet Kofi, a young boy who was rescued from slavery in a fishing village. I met Khofi at a shelter where Free the Slaves rehabilitate victims of slavery. He was bathing at the well, pouring big buckets of water over his head. Thanks to the efforts of organizations like Free the Slaves, today Kofi has been reunited with his parents, who were provided tools to make a living and to keep their children safe from human traffickers.


In the Himalayas I found children hauling stone for miles down steep mountain terrain to trucks waiting at the road below. These huge sheets of slate were heavier than the children themselves. The kids hoisted them with their heads using handmade harnesses made from sticks, rope, and torn cloth.


Uttar Pradesh, India: In India I visited a village where whole families were enslaved in the silk industry. This is a family portrait. The father (hands in black) and his sons (hands in red and blue) are held captive in a "silk dyeing house." The dye they work with is toxic. It's common for entire families to be enslaved for generations. My translator told me their story. "We have no freedom," they said. "But we hope, some day, we will be able to leave this house and make dyes in a place where we actually get paid for it."


Uttar Pradesh, India: Slaveholders burned down these people's villages after they declared their freedom. Many of the neighbors wanted to give up, they were so frightened -- but the woman in the center encouraged them to persevere. Abolitionists helped them get a quarry lease of their own. Now they do the same backbreaking work, but they at least get paid for it, and they do it in freedom.

To Combat ‘Modern Slavery’

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/opinion/to-combat-modern-slavery.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y


EDITORIAL
To Combat ‘Modern Slavery’
Published: October 1, 2012

Though much remains to be done, the Obama administration has begun meaningful new initiatives against human trafficking — a worldwide injustice that exposes more than 20 million poor and vulnerable individuals, especially women and children, to exploitation and degradation. The most notable of these is a strong executive order aimed at ending human trafficking activities by government contractors and subcontractors.
Related in Opinion

Op-Ed Columnist: In Obama’s Speech, Their Voices (September 27, 2012)

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The order, signed by Mr. President Obama on Sept. 25, contains an array of simple but potentially game-changing provisions that will help enforce the government’s existing zero-tolerance policy. These new rules forbid all contractors from charging new employees recruitment fees that often lead to indebtedness to loan sharks, misleading employees about living conditions and housing, denying access to passports or failing to pay transportation costs so employees can return home.

This should be the first of several steps to bolster the attack on a scourge that Mr. Obama described as “modern slavery” in a passionate address on the issue last week at the Clinton Global Initiative. Among other things, Mr. Obama should put the weight of his office behind a bipartisan bill in Congress, the End Trafficking in Government Contracting Act. The bill would strengthen the administration’s executive initiative by embedding into law safeguards against substandard wages, abusive working conditions and sexual and labor exploitation. It would also impose criminal penalties and create other enforcement tools beyond the scope of an executive order.

The legislation enjoys broad support among Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and its approval should be on the must-do list for the lame-duck session following the election.

That list should also include another critical measure to fight trafficking, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. This statute, which also has significant bipartisan support, was enacted in 2000 and reauthorized in 2003, 2005 and 2008. Central to the nation’s anti-trafficking efforts, it aids in the prosecution of traffickers, imposing stiff penalties. It also offers important services and benefits to help victims rebuild their lives.

Regrettably, the bill’s reauthorization has been stalled in the House by political wrangling over a separate issue of victims’ reproductive rights. Continued delay on this bill would hurt victims and send a terrible message to the world. If he is re-elected, President Obama will have the enhanced political muscle he will need to break the logjam.

A response to Ending the Demand Side

LETTERS, NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/opinion/ending-the-demand-side-of-prostitution.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Ending the Demand Side of Prostitution
Published: September 30, 2012

To the Editor:

I found the Sunday Review article by Noy Thrupkaew (“A Misguided Moral Crusade,” Sept. 23) to be profoundly troubling. Human sex trafficking is modern-day slavery, and many of the victims are young.

Experts estimate that each year at least 100,000 children in the United States are exploited through prostitution. Unicef reports that across the world there are more than a million children entering the sex trade every year. The average age of first exploitation through prostitution is 13.

To suggest that ending demand inflicts further harm on victims is misguided. We cannot dismiss any part of the triangle — victims, traffickers and buyers — and expect to address the problem.

While increasing social services and a firm commitment from law enforcement to investigate and prosecute abusers would certainly help trafficking victims, the abuse will continue as long as we fail to address the demand side of the equation.

CAROLYN B. MALONEY
New York, Sept. 24, 2012


The writer, a Democrat, represents New York’s 14th District in the House and is co-chairwoman of the anti-sex-trafficking caucus in Congress.

To the Editor:

Sex trafficking is a billion-dollar criminal industry operating on the principles of supply and demand. No customer, no business. While providing services is vital, preventing exploitation is key.

Similar to countless survivors, Donna, who was featured in the article, had a history of abuse before entering prostitution at 13. For the next 12 years, she had “no other way out.” Social services help after trauma, but a long-term solution requires identifying the core cause.

To combat trafficking effectively, we must shrink the market, holding buyers and traffickers accountable and supporting those driven into prostitution.

The Swedish law provides guidance. Ten years after it passed, an independent evaluation found Sweden to be an “undesirable” destination for traffickers because fewer men buy sex.

In the United States, women and girls are repeatedly victimized by prostitution laws that arrest them rather than help them. And yet the real perpetrators continue to fuel the demand for commercial sex with impunity.

LAUREN HERSH
New York Director, Equality Now
New York, Sept. 24, 2012

To the Editor:

Noy Thrupkaew’s critique of the “end demand” movement tries to polarize groups that are working toward the same goal: ending violence in the sex trade. Ending demand is not a moral crusade but a common-sense approach, as johns say being arrested and charged would deter them from buying sex.

In addition, End Demand Illinois advocates the very solutions Ms. Thrupkaew puts forward: better accountability for traffickers, and social services for survivors.

End Demand Illinois works with survivors to create and lobby for stronger human trafficking laws. As a result, prosecutors in Illinois have begun charging and convicting pimps and traffickers.

Ending demand means ending exploitation, holding people accountable when they benefit from the sale of other people’s bodies, and offering help to people who want to leave the sex trade.

RACHEL DURCHSLAG
Chicago, Sept. 24, 2012


The writer is executive director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation and a co-founder of End Demand Illinois.