Sex Trafficking Here at Home
August 22, 2010
by Karen
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Some people say the United States should solve its own problems with women’s issues before our country criticizes another country. I continue to believe our country is better for women than a lot of other countries are. After all, women are not stoned for adultery in the United States. Nor are they legally denied access to education, careers, and a single lifestyle. However, I admit our country does have a problem with sex trafficking.
The majority of prostituted victims are smuggled into this country through Mexico and Canada. Their oppressors often called “coyotes” or “polleros” smuggle them into the country without documentation to avoid encounters with the authorities. Some have documentation, which later expires. 20,000 of these victims are children. According to a 2001 report, human trafficking for prostitution has been occurring by then for twenty years but had obtained some national concern in the 1990s. Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho has spent decades battling the illegal smuggling of Mexican women and has written many books over the problem women face. In Cancun, she founded Centro Integral de Atención a las Mujeres to provide shelter for abused women. More recently, her concern has shifted to helping women who have been smuggled out of the country.
In 2004 New York, Mexican citizen Carreto Valencia and five others were indicted for twenty-seven counts of sex trafficking. Her victims had been forced to service customers twelve hours each day and “were subjected to beatings, rape and forced abortions” The New York justice department has stated:
…the women were forced to perform acts of prostitution at a rate of $25 to $35 per customer. Of that amount, the owners and managers of the brothels took half, and the other half was taken by the Carreto family trafficker, who had become the woman’s “husband” or boyfriend. These men wired the money back to Mexico, much of it being sent to CARRETO VALENCIA.
Lydia Cacho’s work started with her focus on organized crime in home country of Mexico. By investigating organized crime, she became aware of the much graver crime of sex trafficking. She has made considerable improvements for the lives of Mexican women. However, once they are smuggled out of the border, their fates are in the hands of that country’s law enforcement. “The more I looked, the more I understood it was an international network. I didn’t know how to handle that.”
In 2007, Union City, New Jersey, Jose Luis Notario was convicted of sex trafficking and received a four-year sentence in prison. He will be released next year.
U.S. District Judge Joseph E. Irenas called Notario’s building the “epicenter” of the prostitution ring, a “safe house” for several young Mexican women, all without legal status in the United States, who were shipped to Union City as sex workers.
Most women are deceived into prostitution through false promises of a better life. In the town of Tenancingo, pimps wander through public places such as parks, shopping centers, and public schools to search for new victims. Once the victims are caught, they are moved to Mexico City for a trial run before being shipped to the United States. An Associated Press article stated:
The pimps use a combination of threats, mistreatment, unkept promises of marriage and jobs, that send their victims on a slippery slope that usually ends in the filthy alleys near Mexico City’s La Merced marketplace or at a cheap apartment in metro Atlanta. There, the women are isolated and sometimes forced to service dozens of male clients a day.
Minneapolis Deputy Police Chief Valerie Wurster has said that a problem in finding and protecting victims of sex trafficking comes from the lies and distortions that their pimps tell them. “What we’re finding is people who are very frightened, who don’t have resources locally, being managed by someone who is telling them things that aren’t very true about the environment that they’re living in.” Another innocent victim told of her ordeal after Rugerio decided to pimp her and lied to her of a better life in the United States.
Rugerio told her he would send her to the U.S. and that he’d join her a bit later. After walking through the desert, she was sent to a nondescript apartment complex in suburban Atlanta, where she was met by two women and a man who, she was told, were related to Rugerio.
One of the women took her shopping for clothes. Even though it was September and starting to get chilly, the woman selected mostly short, tight skirts and tops and told her she’d have to start working the next day.
“I asked them what kind of work I would be doing,” the young victim said. “She took out a bag of condoms and then I knew.”
Her minders kept her in a small, sparsely furnished apartment, isolated from any other girls and mostly ignored her during the day. Around 4 p.m., a driver would come pick her up to take her to work. In the beginning, she had sex with between five and 10 men a night, but as time went on the number got as high as 40 or 50, mostly Latino men.
“I felt like the worst woman in the world,” she said, her voice cracking and tears welling up in her eyes during an interview with the AP three years later. “I felt that if my family found out, they would be so disappointed because of what I was doing.”
She thought about escaping many times, she said, but she was afraid because Rugerio had told her that if she left, the police would arrest her and toss her in jail. She also didn’t know anyone, didn’t have any money and didn’t know where to go.
Eventually, this innocent victim escaped. Instead of being arrested, the court protected her, and she testified against her pimp. He is now serving a five-year sentence. This sentence is too light a punishment for inflicting such psychological injuries. Lydia Cacho believes that the wealthier and more industrialized nations have become desensitized to sexual violence and abuse: “In the rich countries there is a big contradiction between liberal arguments for free speech and the moral outrage at child pornography and sex trafficking.” As for Mexico, she believes that the younger generations will become so disgusted with the corruption that they will create a newer and better Mexico: “If we don’t get a dictatorship — and the right is willing to go this way — I think the next generation, who are getting so angry, will invent a new way of being Mexican.”
But in our country, the United States, which woman is willing to speak out for the victims and raise the outcry that they deserve? Who will be their advocate in the United States to publicly speak out against this atrocity?
I take a couple of issues with the New York Justice department transcript and that is the use of the term “client” next to male instead of just simply “males” and then the specification that she was raped by mostly “latino” men and not simply raped by dozens of men. It doesn’t even use the term rape but the term “service.”
Anyway trafficking is a huge issue that needs to be confronted and exactly why we need more women in government. It’s a problem of men. White men from America are routinely eloping to other countries to rape 11 year old slaves in other countries such as Thailand.
What is trafficking but evidence of men’s need to rape?
I attended a health fair at a Latino Church recently. I hope Latino Churches and social services throughout the nation could band together to address this problem. But let’s not stop there. AA leadership should speak out against it since this essentially is a re-institution of slavery in our country.
Women groups absolutely should demand a complete investigation and end to this. In one way this malignancy demonstrates how inane it is to tie feminism to the single issue of abortion. Valencia was obviously in favor of abortion. Should I view her as a champion feminist?
Why are we as a nation becoming desensitized to domestic violence (seeing it instead as a partnership of violence wherein there is no clear victim), sexual harassment (nonexistent or a dirty issue no one wants to talk about), sexism (the question is usually whether it exists, and not about the vast instances of it), and sex trafficking? I think unfortunately the answer is the liberal left -male- crowd, which includes a lot of work done by psychologists (evolutionary psychologists and psychologists in general) and feel good propoganda books (men are from mars, women are from venus), and other propoganda books written by liberal males that desensitize the public and mask the reality of hte problems women face at the hands of men.
Yeah “Feminist” groups should definitely ask the progressive Democrat men if it is OK for them to work to eliminate this serious situation.
I too resent the gender neutral word of “client” when it is men who are creating the demand for this.
there are international and domestic victims of sex trafficking.
polaris is one of the organization who speak out. there is a anti trafficking walk in dc, see below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWJxkpg7zYc
you tube to register for polaris walk on oct 23 2010
anti trafficking, modern day slavery
there was an article in june 2010 on domestic trafficking in washington
http://www.washingtonexaminer......83679.html
Facebok Causes has a very good site describing the problems of providing shelter for the victims
http://humantrafficking.change.....ng_victims
An incredible good advocate is Tina Frundt. I have seen her lead a discussion after presenting the movie “very young girls” which describes a shelter in NY.
she is an ex victim and has started a shelter in the DC virginia area.
http://www.courtneyshouse.org/.....under.html
tina frundt DC/VA ex-victim working on shelter programs
incredible speaker
similar concept as gems in NY
netflix movie “very young girls”
strongly suggest to invite Tina Frundt if you have a group who wants to learn and get engaged.
Kiuku, agree. there is no client and services. there is rape, group rape and sexual violence in addition to slavery.
Tina Frundt described the way of 12 to 13 year old girls as meeting the pimp rich person in the community who throws great parties and invites large groups of kids. he slowly works on his victim, telling how mature she is, how she is not like the others, giving electronic gifts, suggesting not to let the parents know if they want to keep the toy. introducing the favorite pet, the future victim can come to visit and after a period of weeks when the pimp knows great details about the family, the final party invite comes somewhere else. this leads to the obduction to an area of teh country the girl has never seen, knows nobody, the gang-rape called conditioning and start of sex slavery. by that time the victim is demoralized, ashamed, helpless, has no way out. and if they run away they get imprisoned, don’t cooperate with the police and get threatened. they have seen so much violence, they feel guilty for betraying their parents, they don’t think anybody would understand..
Marille, thanks for the links.
exactly Marille. And look at how it tries to paint it as a Latino problem.
Monarch, your comment reminds me of this quote by Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
“When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”
Karen, I think my position on abortion can be described as pro-privacy. It is a medical procedure governed by HIPAA regulations on confidentiality and concerns only the woman, her physician, and if she is religious, her own spiritual guides. Everyone else on both sides of the spectrum can butt out. Given the complexity of each individual woman and her own circumstances, I don’t know how either side can make sweeping generalizations about having to be either pro-life or pro-choice, NO exceptions.
For me, that’s what pro-choice means — everyone but the woman and the people she chooses to involve can butt out. I don’t wait illegal OR legal, I want it off the books.
The numbers of sex trafficking sex slaves:
There is a lot of controversy over the numbers of adult woman who are forced sex slaves. The real factual answer is that no one knows. There is hard evidence that the sex slavery/sex trafficking issue continues to report false information and is greatly exaggerated by politicians, the media, and aid groups, feminist and religious organizations that receive funds from the government, The estimate of adult women who become new sex slaves ranges anywhere from 40 million a year to 5,000 per year all of which appear to be much too high. They have no evidence to back up these numbers, and no one questions them about it. Their sources have no sources, and are made up numbers. In fact if some of these numbers are to believed which have either not changed or have been increased each year for the past twenty years, all woman on earth would currently be sex slaves. Yet, very few real forced against their will sex slaves have been found.
“If media reports on sex trafficking in Nepal are to be believed, there would be no young girls left in Nepal at this time”
It is not easy for criminals to engage in this acitvity:
Sex trafficking is illegal and the pentities are very severe. It is very difficult to force someone to be a sex slave, they would have to have 24 hour guards posted and be watched 365 days a year, 24 hours per day. Have the threat of violence if they refused, and have no one notice and complain to the authorities or police. They would need to hide from the general public yet still manage to see customers from the general public. They would need to provide them with medical care, food, shelter, and have all their basic needs met. They would need to have the sex slaves put on a fake front that they enjoyed what they were doing, act flirtatious and do their job well. They would have to deal with the authorities looking for the missing women, and hide any money they may make, since it comes from illegal activity. They must do all of this while constantly trying to prevent the sex slaves from escaping and reporting them to the police. This is extremely difficult to do, which makes this activity rare. These criminals would be breaking dozens of major laws not just one. Kidnapping itself is a serious crime. There are many laws against sex trafficking, sex slavery, kidnapping, sex abuse, rape, sexual harassment etc. If someone is behind it, they will be breaking many serious laws, be in big trouble, and will go to jail for many long years.
While there are some women who may be true victims. And it is possible for this to happen in rare situations. This is a small rare group of people and that the numbers and scale of this crime is exaggerated. The very nature of someone pulling off a kidnapping and forced sex for profit appears to be very difficult. Since it would be difficult this makes this crime rare. Not impossible, but extremely rare.
A key point is that on the sidelines the prostitutes themselves are not being listened to. They oppose laws against prostitution. But no one wants to listen to the prostitutes themselves. Only to the self appointed experts that make up numbers and stories many of which have never met a real forced sex slave or if they did it was only a few. The media and government never ask the prostitutes themselves what would help them in terms of laws.
The Sex Trafficking/Slavery idea is a attempt to outlaw all prostitution around the world by saying that all women are victims even if they do it willing. This hurts any real victims because it labels all sex workers as victims. Everything I heard about this problem was Americans complaining about it, but I never heard from the so-called victims themselves complaining about it. Why is that? Many of the self appointed experts complaining about this have never even met or seen a real forced against their will victim.
The problems I see with the sex traffic idea is that suppose some of the women were not forced into this type of prostitution, but were willing and wanted to do this type of work, and went out of their way to do this type of work. (It is a lot of fast easy money, they don’t need a degree, or a green card.) All they have to do is lie and say that someone forced them into it. In order to receive victim benefits. When perhaps, no one did. While there are some women who may be true victims. This is a small rare group of people.
What hard evidence does the police have that these women were forced slaves? Were all the women that the police saw in fact slaves? Did the police prove without a doubt due to hard concrete evidence that the women were victims of being slaves and forced against their will? Did they account for all the benefits they would receive if they lied?
I find it very hard to believe that most women in this business are forced against their will to do it. It would just be too difficult. There may be some exceptions but, I believe this is an attempt to over inflate an issue in order to get more government money to these organizations. As a tax payer, voter, and resident I don’t want the government to mislead me.
== In the United Kingdom ==
In October, 2009 – The biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country. The failure has been disclosed by a Guardian investigation which also suggests that the scale of and nature of sex trafficking into the UK has been exaggerated by politicians and media.
Nick Davis of the Guardian newspaper writes:
Current and former ministers have claimed that thousands of women have been imported into the UK and forced to work as sex slaves, but most of these statements were either based on distortions of quoted sources or fabrications without any source at all.
== World Cup 2006 ==
Politicians, religious and aid groups, still repeat the media story that 40,000 prostitutes were trafficked into Germany for the 2006 world cup – long after leaked police documents revealed there was no truth at all in the tale. A baseless claim of 25,000 trafficking victims is still being quoted, recently, for example, by the Salvation Army in written evidence to the home affairs select committee, in which they added: “Other studies done by media have suggested much higher numbers.” Which has been proven by the German police to be completely false. Yet people still talk about these false numbers as if it were fact.
==World Cup 2010 ==
Again using the made up number of 40,000 prostitutes trafficked:
The behavior of fans in South Africa has run contrary to what was predicted prior to the start of the tournament after David Bayever told World Cup organizers in March it was feared that up to 40,000 extra prostitutes could converge in the host nation to meet the expected demand. Bayever, deputy chairperson of South Africa’s Central Drug Authority (CDA) that advises on drug abuse but also works with prostitutes, warned: “Forty-thousand new prostitutes. As if we do not have enough people of our own, we have to import them to ensure our visitors are entertained.”
But the tournament in 2010, if anything, has seen the modern-day soccer fan attracted to art galleries and museums over brothels.
A trend that has seen a drop in revenue across the board for the prostitution industry, which is illegal in South Africa. “Zobwa,” the chairperson of Sisonke — an action group representing around 70 street prostitutes in Johannesburg — said business had been down over the last month. “The World Cup has been devastating. We thought it was going to be a cash cow but it’s chased a lot of the business away. It’s been the worst month in my company’s history,” the owner and founder of one of Johannesburg’s most exclusive escort companies told CNN.
In recent years, every time there has been a major international sporting event, a group of government officials, campaigning feminists, pliant journalists and NGOs have claimed that the movement of thousands of men to strange foreign countries where there will be lots of alcohol and horniness will result in the enslavement of women for the purposes of sexual pleasure. Obviously. And every time they have simply doubled the made-up scare figures from the last international sporting event, to make it look like this problem of sport/sex/slavery gets worse year on year. Yet each year it is proved false.
== In the USA ==
On August 5, 2008
U.S. Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine uncovered discrepancies in a program dedicated to cracking down on human trafficking, McClatchy Newspapers report. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spent millions of dollars on combating the international trafficking of indentured servants and sex slaves, including by creating task forces across the U.S. that identified and helped victims. Over four years, the department paid $50 million to the task forces and other groups. Conservative groups, who pressured the administration to go after sex trafficking more aggressively, applauded his efforts.
Critics have questioned whether the problem was being hyped. Fine found in an audit issued that the task forces and other groups set up to help were ‘significantly’ overstating the number of victims they served. By examining a sampling of cases, Fine found the task forces had exaggerated by as much as 165 percent. Making matters worse, the inflated numbers were included in annual reports to Congress.
===In India and Nepal===
If media reports are to be believed, there would be no young girls left in Nepal. Oft-quoted figures such as 5,000-7,000 Nepali girls being trafficked across the border to India every year and 150,000-200,000 Nepali women and girls being trapped in brothels in various Indian cities, were first disseminated in 1986, and have remained unaltered over the next two decades. The report that first quoted these statistics was from the Indian Health Association, Mumbai, written by AIDS Society of India secretary general, Dr. I S Gilada, and presented in a workshop in 1986. Subsequently, a version of this report was published as an article in The Times of India on January 2, 1989. To date, the source of this figure remains a mystery. Unfortunately, such a lack of clarity is more the norm than the exception when it comes to reporting on trafficking in women and girls.
There needs to be a distinct separation of
1. Child sex trafficking
2. Adult sex Trafficking
3. Adult consensual
prostitution.
4. Sex Slavery
They are not the same. Adult Women are NOT children.
Media coverage of trafficking and adult women’s migration and sex work is confused and inaccurate. The media wrongly uses the terms ‘sex work’ and ‘trafficking’ and adult sex work and child sex trafficking synonymously, perpetuating stereotypes and stigmatization, and contributing to the violation of women’s right to free movement and livelihood options. They assume that if any woman moves from place to place for sex work that they are being trafficking. The media, politicians, aid groups, feminist, and religious organizations does not take into account that she may do this of her own free will. Too often women are treated like children. Adult women are not children.
Most migrant women, including those in the sex industry, have made a clear decision, says a new study, to leave home and take their chances abroad. They are not “passive victims” in need of “saving” or sending back by western campaigners.
Sex Trafficking/Slavery is used by many groups as a attempt to outlaw all prostitution around the world by saying that all women are victims even if they do it willing. This hurts any real victims because it labels all sex workers as victims.
This is done by the media, aid groups, NGO’s, feminists, politicians, and religious organizations that receive funds from the government. There are very strong groups who promote that all adult women who have sex are victims even if they are willing, enjoy it and go out of there way to get it. These groups try to get the public to believe that no adult women in their right mind would ever go into the sex business unless she was forced to do so, weather she knew it or not. They say that 100% of all sex workers are trafficking victims. They do this in order to label all men as sex offenders and wipe out all consensual prostitution. Which is what their real goal is. There is almost no one who challenges or questions them about their false beliefs. Therefore, the only voices you hear are of these extreme groups. These groups want to label all men as terrible sex offenders for seeing a willing adult sex worker. No one stands up to say this is foolish, the passive public says nothing. These groups even say that all men who marry foreign women are terrible sex predators who take advange of these “helpless foreign women wives”.
These groups believe that two adults having consensual sex in private should be outlawed. Since they believe that it is impossible for a man to have sex with a woman without abusing the woman in the process.
This is an example of feminists and other groups exploiting the suffering of a small minority of vulnerable and abused women in order to further their own collective interests. For example, getting money from the government into their organizations. Rather than wanting to find the truth.
The following links will give you more information about sex trafficking especially the Washington post article and the Guardian and BBC links.
Washington post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....01401.html
News night BBC video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtaEdI3aiwg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rvA60zdkD8
http://mensnewsdaily.com/glenn.....n-the-u-k/
Guardian newspaper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2.....uiry-fails
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2.....xaggerated
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2.....print.html
Human traffic website:
http://traffickingwatch.org/node/18
http://www.justice.gov/oig/rep...../final.pdf
India newspaper:
http://www.thehoot.org/web/hom.....alid=true#
Other sources:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/glenn.....n-the-u-k/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....laves.html
http://www.bayswan.org/traffic.....logist.pdf
http://www.spiked-online.com/i.....icle/2850/
http://www.misandryreview.com/.....king-lies/
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SP.....Ox1WH9NNpl
http://www.spiked-online.com/i.....icle/8324/
http://www.lauraagustin.com/de.....-world-cup
http://bristolnoborders.wordpr.....is-a-myth/
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opi.....16701.html
http://mensnewsdaily.com/glenn.....n-the-u-k/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....laves.html
http://www.angryharry.com/reHa.....Europe.htm
http://www.thescavenger.net/pe.....13456.html
Once again:
1) Ancient post resurrected by
2) Male who has never read a thing on this site, and
3) Picks worthless nits.
You fuckers are so sad. Go away until you become less boring.
Janis, I agree how these guys come here and present themselves as experts, having no idea what we’re talking about. never read anything by Nicholas Kristoff.
well there is an industry to gain huge profits. if the guy ever talked to police involved he would get the picture how these groups work.
but I guess his needs for prostitution or profit there of gets him to get active.
did i hear him say prostitutes are so happy to be prostitutes? and outlawing prostitution would infringe his personal rights?
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