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Home>Latest News

September 8, 2014 by Guest

Hazards of Demand-Side Research: A Perspective from the Front Lines

Researchers tend to be both curious and risk-averse. Curious because we’re always looking for unanswered questions, and risk-averse because we don’t want to make mistakes as we try to answer those questions. These are generalizations, of course…but we researchers tend to be fond of generalizations, too. I believe it is the push and pull of curiosity and risk-aversion that gives many researchers heartburn about digging into the subject of sex trafficking.

On the one hand, there are many unanswered questions about sex trafficking in the United States and beyond. On the other hand, empirical studies on sex trafficking are difficult to design and carry out at the level of rigor with which most researchers are comfortable. As an applied sociologist (that means I conduct social research to help clients answer real-world questions), this kind of heartburn is par for the course. The way I think of it is this: is it better to sit back as a researcher and point out why a study cannot be done perfectly, or is it better to work around limitations and try to answer the question? When lives are at stake, I believe there is greater net risk in avoiding research just because the methodological limitations might preclude you from publishing the results in an academic journal.

I’ve been involved in quite a few studies over the years to better understand child sex trafficking, but things changed for me the first time I studied demand. Back when online classifieds sites were mostly unknown to the public, traffickers were some of the first to figure out that you could post an ad for pretty much anything you wanted to sell — including a person. You still can today, by the way. Once every couple of months I would review and sort thousands of crudely pornographic images collected from online sites. The images were far more grotesque back then compared to what they are today. It was nauseating to see four or five naked young females, each in different ads but obviously photographed in the same person’s garage. I went through this routine for several years and watched as more and more females were being offered for sale online.

Then one day a client asked how many people were buying these females. It seemed an important question because “supply” was clearly increasing online, so demand obviously was to blame in one way or another. But measuring demand was even more challenging than measuring supply, because as a U.S. society we seem to be more tolerant of seeing females sold for sex than males buying them. Instead of reviewing thousands of images of exploited females at a time, I was now listening to men as they were calling in and attempting to buy a female advertised online.

Suddenly I struggled to get to sleep at night. I was cold and distant with my wife. I was yelling at my kids. I got fed up with little things at the office that normally wouldn’t bother me. This lasted for weeks before I even noticed it was happening, at which point I blamed it on stress and vowed to be less of a jerk. That didn’t work, though.

It wasn’t until several weeks after we finished our first demand study that these symptoms started to go away and I realized what was really going on: I was experiencing secondary trauma as a result of having studied the direct traumatization of so many other people. Today I understand that trauma affects everyone differently, and that it can be insidious. While I could somehow withstand viewing thousands of dehumanizing photos of abuse victims, I responded quite viscerally to the sound of a man ordering up a child, like she was a box of pizza.

Today there seems to be much wider interest from the social research community in studying all forms of human trafficking than there was several years ago. Yet studies on demand are still few and far between—particularly empirical studies. I believe there are a few reasons why this is still the case.

First, it is important to realize that most research on social issues comes from either academic or governmental institutions. I suspect one day our federal government will invest in large-scale ongoing data collection on sex trafficking, just as it does today with gun trafficking, drug trafficking, and many other criminal activities. Today it does not, though we seem to be headed in the right direction.

If an academic researcher gets funding to research demand for sex trafficking, he or she then must face the realities of human subjects review boards. These boards are well-intentioned, but they can also stifle research innovation. I have seen boards require jargon-filled informed consent passages longer than this very article to be placed at the beginning of completely innocuous surveys. Now imagine what a board would want to see from a researcher who seeks to ask questions of a male engaged in trafficking. More often than not, my academic friends and colleagues say that their review boards would not allow such research to happen.

The other reason why I believe we don’t see more empirical studies on demand is that we aren’t yet comfortable as a society with who the perpetrators are. We often talk about child sex trafficking perpetrators as if torches and pitchforks are in our hands, right up until the perpetrator is Lawrence Taylor. The day she turns 18, and often earlier, we openly ponder whether or not she chose to prostitute herself. We essentially ignore the situation where a homeless adolescent male or female “stays with” a newfound acquaintance because the streets are just too damn cold to sleep on that night.

Here’s the thing: in order for there to be thousands of victims on the “supply” side, there must be many, many more perpetrators on the “demand” side. That means we know these perpetrators because they live in our neighborhood, go to our church, are friends with us on social media, and work in the same office as us. We’ve gone to dinner with them, celebrated holidays with them, and helped them when they needed it.  We give them identities outside of their actions as perpetrators, yet we often fail to extend the same courtesy to those on the supply side whom we know by their labels as “prostitutes,” “whores,” and worse. The truth is, “we” as a society give perpetrators of sex trafficking the protection of anonymity, and that is the very reason why demand-side research is both challenging to conduct and terribly needed.

September 2, 2014 by Guest

What The Johns Don’t Want To Hear

In this, the 21st Century, tens of millions of women and children are slaves in their homelands throughout the globe to be used solely for sex.

And every year hundreds of thousands of women and children are trafficked to foreign lands and throughout the United States as fodder for the sex trade.

As I investigated the causes behind this global sex slave calamity, I quickly discovered the main reason for this – MEN – men who feel that because they have cash, they have the right to rent and invade a woman’s body.

Through all my research, I witnessed the very worst of men who rent the bodies of women and children.  I witnessed their complete indifference toward another human being; their profound disregard and disrespect for the prostituted ; and their grand sense of entitlement and the kingdom of delusion in which they hold court.

And I quickly learned that the Johns don’t want to hear a peep about the incredible human suffering they are causing worldwide.

What I found was they only want, and need, to believe in the myths; the lies and the propaganda that help them get through the night.

Today men who step out into the night seeking purchased sex defiantly cling to the myth that all prostituted persons are in the sex trade by CHOICE and are making money the easy way – on their backs.

Johns don’t want to hear the tragic stories of how the vast majority of women and children were forced into the world of prostitution.

They don’t want to hear about five- and six-year-old girls and boys being sold by their desperately poor parents to brothel owners in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam to be used and abused by men on international sex tours.

They don’t want to hear that most prostituted women and children are recruited into the flesh trade throughout the Western World at ages as young as 12, 13 and 14 – teenage girls who have been made vulnerable by the violence of their surroundings; teenage girls who are victims of shattered and abusive families where they had been sexually abused and raped by their fathers, grandfathers, uncles and trusted family friends and where their innocence and self esteem has been destroyed.

Johns don’t want to hear that the vast majority of prostituted women and children are controlled by violent pimps and crime gangs; that most are addicted to drugs, oftentimes forcibly addicted by their drug-dealing pimps as a form of control, and that most prostituted women and children suffer from serious mental health issues.

Johns don’t want to hear how traffickers are hunting down and ensnaring more and more unsuspecting young women and girls for the seemingly insatiable global sex market.

They don’t want to hear how these young women and girls are taken to “breaking grounds” where they are “seasoned” for the flesh trade.  Places – out of sight – in cities like Moscow, Belgrade, Milan, Berlin, Miami and New York – where they are beaten, gang raped and forced to comply with every demand made by their new owners, where they are depersonalized until they are no longer capable of acting or thinking for themselves.

The only avenue of survival for these destitute women and girls is prostitution.  In essence, what they are forced into is an act of desperation and there is never a choice in desperation.

This is the cold, hard reality for the vast majority of women and girls in prostitution, and the Johns don’t want to hear any of this.

What Johns want to believe is the lie that somehow, magically, a woman is suddenly struck with the idea that prostitution would be a rewarding and wonderful career path!

That these young women and girls enjoy servicing a half dozen or more strange, doughy, smelly, sweaty, middle-aged, bozos on Viagra because it’s a good paying job!

And it’s because of all the lies, the propaganda and absurd myths perpetuated by the prostitution legalization lobby that the situation for tens of millions of impoverished and vulnerable women and children worldwide is getting worse.

The fact is that over the past decade, the demand by men for purchased sex has gone off the charts.

There is no complicated or complex explanation for what is going on. It’s very simple.

In economic parlance, women and girls are the commodity; the supply side of the coin. And imbedded on the supply side are the push factors—extreme poverty, lack of education, and the eternal yearning of desperate human beings to improve their lot in life.

Flip the coin and you get the demand side of the equation with the emphasis on three key letters: “m…a…n.”

Without the demand, there would be no supply.

It would not be profitable for the criminals and pimps to stay in this business if endless platoons of men weren’t prowling the side streets for purchased sex.

The clandestine activities of men on the prowl for sex with prostituted women and girls are forever dismissed with glib comments like: “Boys will be boys … they’re just sowing their wild oats.” It is precisely this bizarre entrenched attitude that has led to the global explosion of men buying sex.

All these crazy and widely-accepted myths about men “needing sex to release tension” “the natural drive of men for sex” “prostitution protecting nice women and girls from rape” and “the rite of passage by initiating boys into manhood.”

No matter which way you examine the issue of buying sex, you cannot escape this one conclusion: this entire global human rights debacle is totally man-made!

The cold, hard reality is little will be done to stop this worldwide sexual carnage until men start taking responsibility for their behavior.

Men hold the key to putting the breaks on this sexual insanity because unlike the tens of millions of women and girls ensnared in the flesh trade, men have a choice.

Men can make different choices and those with a moral compass do.

 

August 25, 2014 by SHI Staff

USA Today – Study: Soliciting Sex from Minor Nets Little Prison Time

By: Megan Cassidy, The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX — The crime of soliciting sex from a minor in Arizona carries a sentence of up to 24 years behind bars, but a Phoenix suspect convicted of the crime should more realistically expect a term of three months, according to a new study released by anti-sex-trafficking group Shared Hope International and Arizona State University.

The outcome for a Phoenix convict hovers around the average when compared with the sentences of counterparts nationwide. The median actual time served in D.C.-Baltimore for soliciting sex from a minor was 180 days, 14 days in Portland and 88.5 days in Seattle.

None of those studied was charged with a sex-trafficking crime.

The study’s results indicate judicial leniency for a crime that is responsible for fueling the sex-trafficking market, said Linda Smith, president and founder of Shared Hope International.

“The research shows that when they’re arrested … at state level, that they’re not facing the full force of the law,” Smith said.

The study’s results were presented Monday in Phoenix.

The study was the first of its kind to focus on the criminal outcomes of the demand side of sex trafficking, the “johns” who are arrested for soliciting sex from a minor or an undercover decoy claiming to be one.

It has only been in the past three to four years that most states have enacted severe penalties for the buyers of minors, Smith said, and the study had limited subjects with which to work. So researchers tapped into 134 cases from four sites whose agencies have devoted extensive resources to anti-demand law enforcement: those in the D.C.-Baltimore corridor, Phoenix metro area, Portland metro area and Seattle metro area.

The Phoenix-area results align with those of the more highly publicized cases, many of which were pleaded down to lesser offenses.

Michael Gilliland, former Sunflower Farmers Market CEO, was sentenced to two 15-day terms after pleading guilty to misdemeanor pandering.

Jerry Marfe, a former high-school chemistry teacher who was caught in a December teen prostitution sting was sentenced to 15 days in jail followed by 10 years of probation.

Marfe was one of 30 who were netted in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office operation. All were initially charged with one or two counts of class-2 felony child prostitution, but of those sentenced to date, 18 ended up pleading to lesser counts of pandering, class-6 child prostitution or child/vulnerable adult abuse. Three others pleaded to charges of class 2 or class three felony child prostitution.

Researchers focused on the criminal justice outcome of each of the 134 cases and found that they resulted in 119 arrests, 118 of those arrested prosecuted and 113 of those prosecuted eventually found guilty.

Of those found guilty, 26 percent served no time and 69 percent of the sentences were suspended by an average of 85 percent.

Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, director of the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research at Arizona State University, said she was particularly troubled that only 66 of the 113 cases were registered as sex offenders. The outcome, she said, would have been different if there wasn’t a dollar amount involved.

“How we categorize them is going to be very important for our culture moving forward,” she said.

Former sex-trafficking victim and survivor advocate Rebecca Bender encouraged law enforcement to focus on the buyers rather than the traffickers, as it is extremely difficult to break a victim’s bond with her trafficker.

“One thing that’s not difficult is to get the victim to to turn on her buyer,” she said. “They are less than scum to us.”

In a separate portion of the study, researchers found 99 percent of 407 buyers studied across the country were male, the median age was 42.5 years, and 21.6 percent of the total buyer cases where a profession was identified involved someone in a position of authority or trust, including law enforcement, attorney or military personnel.

Smith said it is up to police, prosecutors and judges to enforce the laws to their fullest extent, but said a culture of tolerance for buyers is pervasive.

The study operates on the notion that tougher, enforced penalties will act as a deterrent for buyers. So researchers view the issue in terms of economics: Shrink the demand, reduce supply.

“If there’s no market because the buyer stayed home with his own family, then the traffickers would not be out there preying on the children in our neighborhood,” Smith said.

Researchers point out that the buyers are often overlooked by police in favor of extracting minor victims from a dangerous situation or arresting traffickers. The amount of time and resources it takes to investigate buyers is often disproportionate to the penalties, which are substantially higher for traffickers.

“The problem on the law-enforcement end is making it a priority to go back and do the buyer end of it,” Sgt. Clay Sutherland of the Phoenix Police Department’s vice unit says in the report. “Our emphasis on going back after the buyers is limited. We have our hands full.”

Defense attorneys and several suspected buyers involved in these cases have rebuked the “predator” designation due to the method police use for arrests.

Law enforcement agencies often rely on decoys to sweep the streets of would-be buyers. Undercover officers post ads on 18 and over websites but later make it known that the “girl” is underage. Many defendants say they were seeking an of-age prostitute—a misdemeanor offense that turns into a serious felony when the girl is underage.

“Ninety-nine percent (of johns) — they’re looking for an adult,” said defense attorney Mark Nermyr in an earlier interview with the Arizona Republic. “At some point, the officer sneaks age in the conversation, and that changes it from a misdemeanor — 10 days in jail — to a felony. It’s not doing anything to combat child prostitution.”

Smith argued that there are signs of intent from many of the defendants, but said intent should be irrelevant.

“You’re not allowed to run over somebody while under the influence of alcohol and say, ‘Oops, I didn’t know I drank too much,'” she said. “You should stand and take the punishment for hurting the child.”

Researchers say while state laws are catching up to the reality of the business, work needs to be done as a culture. The study says anti-trafficking push could benefit from a public-awareness campaign like those of MADD and texting-and-driving, to make the practice more shameful in the public eye.

“When people start seeing that this is the crime of a man or a person who is buying an innocent child, it will change,” she said.

FULL STORY  – USA TODAY –  Study: Soliciting Sex from Minor Nets Little Prison Time

Visit Demanding Justice Website 

August 22, 2014 by Guest

Demanding Justice in Congress

While we often talk about human trafficking, there’s one important aspect that we often ignore: the man who solicits sex on the street or on the internet. These individuals are also criminals, and they live among us every day, preying on young women and girls. They are the demand that drives this business, because that is what it is, just business, not human lives. To them, these girls are property. In order to end modern day slavery in our society, we must end demand.

If the guys who buy sex from young girls merely get a slap on the wrist (that is, if they receive any punishment at all), this horrific crime will continue. These men are not “johns,” they are child abusers and must be treated as such.

That is why the House of Representatives unanimously passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, a bipartisan bill I introduced with Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) that, among other things, ensures that buyers can be prosecuted under federal law. The legislation strengthens and clarifies the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) by making it absolutely clear for judges, juries, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials that criminals who solicit or patronize sexual acts from trafficking victims can and should be arrested, prosecuted, and convicted as sex trafficking offenders.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals got it right when they determined that buyers commit the crime of sex trafficking under 18 U.S.C. § 1591 in U.S. v. Jungers and U.S. v. Bonestroo. JVTA clarifies and strengthens the law so that more prosecutors will decide to aggressively go after buyers and so law enforcement will be encouraged to arrest them. In addition, the bill calls for the U.S. Attorney General to ensure that all task forces and the Innocence Lost National Initiative working groups get involved by engaging in activities and operations to increase investigations and prosecutions of buyers. It is time for the Senate to pass the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act.

Most of these abusers are never prosecuted; many are not even arrested. We cannot continue to let predators go free. It’s time to get serious and end demand.

And that’s just the way it is.

August 22, 2014 by webdesigner

#DemandingJustice – Help us Share the News

On August 25, Shared Hope International is releasing the Demanding Justice Project Report and an interactive website featuring our research on demand. The Demanding Justice Project is a research and advocacy initiative designed to promote deterrence of demand for commercial sex with children through increased attention and advocacy on demand enforcement. The research report documents the outcomes of federal and state arrests, charges and prosecutions of buyers of sex acts with children.

The findings of this research will inform advocacy efforts to strengthen anti-demand legislation and enforcement and will be featured on our new website at www.demandingjustice.org. The Demanding Justice Project website will allow you to read this groundbreaking research, see who is buying sex with children in your state, and exposes high profile buyers who are celebrities, athletes, and politicians, among others. This is where you come in. Please consider announcing the release of www.demandingjustice.org with us. This page contains a press kit and social media badges so you can join us in a show of overwhelming solidarity against demand for commercial sex with youth in the United States.  Please join us to Demand Justice! Here’s what you can do:

  • Display a #DemandingJustice badge on your Facebook/Twitter/Instagram profiles for a day on August 25.
  • Use your social media to announce the Demanding Justice Project and join hundreds of other voices across the anti-trafficking movement by supporting our Thunderclap, a social media crowd-speaking platform that helps us proclaim in a unified voice that demand must be stopped.
  • Forward our press release to your news contacts.
  • Share www.demandingjustice.org when we go live on August 25th!

Thank you for being an ally in the effort to eradicate the market force that fuels sex trafficking and victimizes the vulnerable. Together we can defeat demand. We are #DemandingJustice. Are you? 
[clear-line]

Display #demandingjustice badges & suggested text for social media on August 25[clear-line]

Download All Images [clear-line]

[one-third-first]Demanding Justice Profile Badge[/one-third-first][one-third]Buyer - Peter Privateer[/one-third][one-third]Buyer - Lawrence Taylor[/one-third]

[clear-line][one-third-first]Who is buying sex with children in your state? Are we doing enough to stop them? Are we #DemandingJustice?[/one-third-first][one-third]Make the buyers known! They can no longer remain anonymous. Bring their crimes into the light and end sex trafficking. #DemandingJustice[/one-third][one-third]Should someone who paid for sex with a trafficked child be in the NFL Hall of Fame? Isn’t @LT_56 a criminal? #DemandingJustice[/one-third][clear-line]

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