Op-Ed: Chinese Virus Increases Vulnerability for Prostitution - Granite Grok

Op-Ed: Chinese Virus Increases Vulnerability for Prostitution

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In a stealth move the Vermont House of Representatives passed a proposal to “establish a study committee” to study decriminalization of prostitution without a public hearing. The vote on HB 568 was 126-19.  The bill is a precursor to HB 5659 which repeals all prohibitions on prostitution, including pimps, brothel keepers, facilitators, and buyers.

This is no time to be thinking about such a move. To normalize sexual exploitation during a world-wide pandemic, when so many people have lost their jobs, the economy is tanking: when people are most vulnerable is very disturbing.

The first part of the bill is a bi-partisan idea. Most people agree. Similar to a bill HB189 (2019)1 passed here in NH, it seeks to provide limited immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while the person was a victim of human trafficking. Since human trafficking, and sex trafficking in particular are traumatic experiences, vulnerable people should be properly cared for as victims of a crime, not prosecuted and further traumatized.

The intersection of victim/offender is definitely a problem. Shared Hope International has taken great pains to publish a guide2 for handling the delicate and potentially volatile situation law enforcement, courts, and stakeholders may encounter.

Certainly, when NH HB 189 came up in NH, I testified. “It’s not normal for kids to steal cars and break into houses. Something’s wrong,” I explained, “Childhood trauma can really mess with young minds.”

The part of the Vermont bill causing an uproar is the call for a study committee. No survivors of the sex trade or caseworkers, no human trafficking experts or service providers are to be appointed. There are, however numerous seats for those calling for full decriminalization, meaning everyone: Pimps, Brothel Keepers, Buyers. Exploiters of every kind would get a pass. Everywhere this approach has been tried, sex trafficking explodes.3

Most sellers involved are women. Many started well before they were adults, trapped in a system of subjugation.4 Most buyers are men. Men with money. Although the number of men who buy sex is relatively low, buyers actively degrade and dehumanize the people being used. They talk about them in terms of disposable implements for use, not as someone’s daughter, sister or cousin. “We become non-persons to buyers,” I often recall.

About 20% of men buy sex.5 Most won’t buy because it is illegal. The law is a teacher.

The measure would decriminalize prostituted people, those selling their bodies for sex. Survivors and service providers do agree, that would be best. The real problem is Vermont’s HB 568 is just a pre-curser for HB 569. Together they will clearly will escalate exploitation as written.

80-90%6 of those exchanging their bodies in commercial sex would gladly get out, if given the chance. It seems reasonable to decriminalize them and provide exit strategies, not increase the probability that they would succumb to sexual exploitation due to sudden, scary, and uncertain economic times like a global pandemic.

When people are arrested for prostitution, criminal records increase barriers to escape. They are more trapped in the exploitation. More vulnerable to pimps and traffickers. During the Chinese Corona Virus outbreak, should we consider giving pimps carte blanche? Should exploiters be able to sell people to be penetrated, used and abused as many times a day as they can, until those people are used up?

Since most people would get out, if they could, where would the replacements come from? Your children and mine will be their targets. Just look at the advertisements on the London and NYC metro.7 They are coming after our impressionable and vulnerable youth. They will draw them in, use them up, and toss them to the curb. Then, we will have even more damaged, drug-addicted, destitute people that need services and care.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We, reasonable adults, must think logically and critically through the natural conclusions to these kinds of policy decisions.

The push has been on many fronts. The people involved are largely funded by George Soros and the Open Society Foundation. “The Freedom Network” and “Give Way to Freedom” sound good, right? How often those who would destroy others cloak themselves in names that hide their true agenda. Just like Planned Parenthood: the inverse of their name is the wolf lurking beneath.

Prostitution is a terrible trap. Our legal system currently punishes victims and deepens the pit the poor, needy, and abused find themselves in. Many of those involved in prostitution were abused as children or shuffled around in foster care and continue the cycle of abuse as they age out.

Should these people be collateral damage of the agenda-driven by a few ultra-privileged. If one’s paradigm is that of a dominatrix: one who engages in pain during sex, what will normalizing that do to our concept of what sex is? We already have a huge problem with the porn industry going after our young people.

The content on Pornhub is not your grandfather’s porn. Incest, rape, and violence are the main fare. Decency laws have been ignored and pornographers have pushed the envelope to devastating degrees. Numerous young girls have been brutally raped for profit and their videos uploaded. Those consuming such content are left reeling. A natural increasing need for novelty means things will only get worse.

Those who buy sex are often doing what they would never do to their girlfriends or their wives. Torture and pain, degradation and emotional battering is commonplace in prostitution. For the few who have not experienced it, it is just a matter of time. There is a thin and fragile veil between prostitution and sex trafficking. One more rape, one more STI, one more degrading comment, one time when she cannot fully dissociate… The veil will be pierced.8

Is this what we want for our civilization?

In case you think, “Why not study this?” It’s been done. The London School of Economics led a study of 150 countries9 and found increased sex trafficking. Sex trafficking is a severe form of trafficking.

There is ample evidence that normalizing the sex trade exponentially increases sexual exploitation and abuse. Germany has had legal brothels since 2002. An estimated one million men a day buy women’s bodies for sex there each day.10 Think of the supply needed for that to occur. Berlin has over 500 brothels. Where do they find enough women who want to engage in sex acts 20-30 times a day with as many men? Sex trafficking cases increased 70%, that’s where.11 In the Netherlands where prostitution was legalized in 2000, estimates are that 50-90% of women are trafficked for the purposes of prostitution -against their will.

In the USA, a few counties in Nevada have opened this ugly can of worms. Nevada’s illegal sex trade, aka trafficking, is 63% higher than the next highest state.12 This video makes it clear.13 This is not what most people think of when they think of prostitution. They think it’s a sexual encounter. It is rarely that simple. It is most often degrading and violent.

A 2018 study found 61% of women suffered traumatic brain injury.14 Another study found 68% suffered PTSD.15 The mortality rate is 200x that of the general population.16

While many agree that some change is needed, repealing the state’s prohibitive prostitution laws altogether is not the answer. We must not decriminalize exploiters. We must protect vulnerable populations from traffickers, pimps, brothel owners and buyers. If there is no prohibition, there is no reasonable cause for law enforcement to investigate. They won’t be able to find our children, our sisters, our cousins. They will be trapped in slavery of the sex trade. Many will suffer horrendously and some will die there.

 

by Darlene Pawlik

  1. https://www.concordmonitor.com/Sex-trafficking-bill-in-house-would-vacate-charges-for-juvenile-victims-22792518
  2. https://sharedhope.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/SH_Responding-to-Sex-Trafficking-Victim-Offender-Intersectionality2020_FINAL.pdf
  3. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/prostitution-decriminalisation-new-zealand-holland-abuse-harm-commercialisation-a7878586.html
  4. https://exoduscry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/human-trafficking-statistics-sheet.pdf
  5. https://www.demandabolition.org/who-buys-sex/
  6. https://www.globalcenturion.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/The-Health-Consequences-of-Sex-Trafficking.pdf
  7. https://nypost.com/2020/03/16/mta-slammed-for-promoting-sex-workers-pop-up-ad/
  8. http://www.thedarlingprincess.com/2018/04/04/pimping-distinction/
  9. http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/GeographyAndEnvironment/neumayer/pdf/Article-for-World-Development-_prostitution_-anonymous-REVISED.pdf
  10. https://business.time.com/2013/06/18/germany-has-become-the-cut-rate-prostitution-capital-of-the-world/
  11. http://www.cap-international.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ewl_article_-_regulation_vs_abolition_-_impact_on_trafficking-2.pdf
  12. https://www.scribd.com/document/379531366/Nevada-sex-trafficking-study
  13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVFMAYGuqTA&fbclid=IwAR3rwczUGo9CqQkPhRJMnZGFxSo9nFIky1eW6uZjgEGS63nYgNyS9EUDOCc
  14. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol3/iss2/5/
  15. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdf/Prostitutionin9Countries.pdf
  16. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15051587

Note: an earlier version of this post was missing links for footnotes 4-16.

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