third party control Archives - Shared Hope International

September 3, 2021 by Guest

Some states limit victim identification, but that can change.

About our guest author:

As a Master of Social Work candidate at the University of Alabama and part of the University’s MSW Washington D.C. program, Susannah Ayers spent the spring 2021 semester in a Policy Fellowship with Shared Hope International. Through this fellowship, she worked closely with the Policy Team to analyze and advocate for legislation that is survivor-centered and evidence-based. She attributes her fellowship experience to increasing her understanding of the issues that contribute to the sexual exploitation of minors and ways to eradicate them.

One of the many issues driving human trafficking is the demand for commercial sex. A simple economics lesson will explain that when demand for a product increases, supply will also increase in order to meet that demand. Unfortunately, the same is true with child sexual exploitation. As long as there are buyers who are willing to purchase sex with minors, traffickers will continue to ensure their supply. This principle highlights the importance of addressing demand and holding not only traffickers but also buyers accountable for their crimes.

Far too often, men who buy sex are excused for their behavior, justified by a “boys will be boys” attitude. This response perpetuates the false narrative that if an individual has enough power and financial resources, he has the right to buy anything he wants- including another person. As an example, in 2013, the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation conducted a study of online buyers of sex in Illinois. In regards to the commonly used justification of men purchasing sex, the researchers reported that “overt and underlying assumptions about masculinity, femininity, sexuality, and prostituted women, in particular, inform men’s participation in the commercial sex industry.”[1] Without addressing these harmful, societal barriers, the problem of sexual exploitation will only continue.

The lack of buyer accountability is often evidenced in the legislation that addresses human trafficking. Currently, 19 states require evidence of third party control (or trafficker involvement) in order to establish the crime of sex trafficking. When proof of third party control is required to prosecute, it reduces or eliminates the culpability of the buyer and risks misidentification of victims who may be unable or unwilling to identify a trafficker. While any trafficker should be held accountable, the buyers should be held accountable as well. As long as there are people who are willing to purchase sex with minors, the opportunity to do so will always exist. Accordingly, legislation that requires third-party control fails to address one of the root issues that drive the sex trade.

Additionally, by necessitating evidence of third-party control, related state laws fail to identify minors engaged in survival sex as victims of sex trafficking for purposes of effectuating sex trafficking-specific responses. Survival sex is defined as an individual engaging in a sex act in order to meet a basic need. These situations could include a child who engages in sex in order to secure food or shelter. Although there may not be a trafficker who forces the child to engage in paid sex with a buyer, their need for survival forces them to make this choice. Such limited definitions of sex trafficking under state law are contrary to federal law, which includes any child engaged in commercial sex as a trafficking victim. When third party control is required, victims in this type of situation are excluded from legal remedies and connection with services given under human trafficking laws. It is also possible that the buyer is not held accountable for exploiting an individual’s basic needs in order to gain sex.

Currently, the 19 states that require evidence of third party control to establish the crime of sex trafficking are:

Alaska
California
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Indiana
Iowa
Maine
Maryland
Minnesota
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia
Wyoming

What can be done to address this continued injustice? Strong legislative action is needed to ensure that buyers are held responsible for exploiting those experiencing vulnerabilities. For more information on the importance of removing third party control requirements, see Shared Hope’s policy paper entitled “Eliminating the Third Party Control Barrier to Identifying Juvenile Sex Trafficking Victims.”

What can you do?

If you are a constituent in any of the 19 states that still require evidence of third party control, contact your legislators and educate them on the barriers that exist within current state law. Visit our campaign to learn more.
No matter where you live, you can educate the people around you. Share Shared Hope’s fact sheet on “Why Definitions Matter” and use your sphere of influence to bring these issues to light. Challenge the idea that purchasing sex is socially acceptable and help others get involved and take action.
Sign up to receive your state’s grade when released November 17, 2021.

For more information on ways to advocate for these and other legislative changes, visit Shared Hope’s Advocacy Action Center at https://act.sharedhope.org/actioncenter.

[1] https://icasa.org/docs/misc/caase%20report%20online%20buyers%20of%20sex%20in%20illinois.pdf

September 24, 2020 by Marissa Gunther

Announcing Report Cards on Child & Youth Sex Trafficking; grades based on an advanced legislative framework. Coming Nov 18, 2020

Many of you have met Brianna…

She was just 18 years old, a straight A student with dreams of becoming a nurse, when a trafficker made his move and began to groom her in preparation to sell her into the underworld of commercial sexual exploitation. Through the intervention of a high school friend and his father, the quick actions of a law enforcement officer, and Shared Hope founder and President Linda Smith, she was able to see that this friendship was not what it appeared to be. Her community recognized the red flags and prevented her exploitation.

Ten years later, Brianna continues to bravely tell her story, partnering with Shared Hope International to raise a voice of awareness so that other youth can be spared. Unfortunately, there are countless stories of children who suffer outcomes far less positive and end up falling victim to the evil in this world, with traffickers and buyers dragging them into the nightmare of commercial sex trafficking. The struggle of these survivors continues even after they leave their trafficking situation as many are often misidentified as criminals themselves, interfering with critical access to holistic care and services while the buyers suffer far fewer consequences.

Survivors like Zephi^[1]…

Zephi was a typical, happy, hard-working 16-year-old junior in high school when she met her trafficker. She was sociable, participating in community activities, including her church’s worship team, a select fastpitch softball league, and her high school drill team.

However, after an abusive boyfriend introduced her to drugs, her outlook and demeanor quickly changed due to the new emotional, mental, and physical challenges she now faced. She also would run away from home. As Zephi’s life continued to “spiral,” her community was unable to prevent what happened next.

In May of 2019, an adult acquaintance began grooming her for sex trafficking. Through use of coercive tactics such as drugs, violence, and death threats, Zephi’s trafficker forced her to participate in commercial sexual acts with other adults, resulting in her being repeatedly raped by buyers. This heinous cycle of commercial sexual exploitation ended after her trafficker killed one of the buyers. Because Zephi was present during the murder, however, she was arrested and charged alongside her trafficker for capital murder.

After enduring pain, suffering, and exploitation during her trafficking victimization, she is now being charged with a crime. How is this justice? Sympathizing with her situation is not enough; we must act.

We are committed to taking action until every survivor receives justice. Zephi’s case is another reason why Shared Hope’s work to change laws that bring justice and ensure protective responses to victims is so critically important. For the past decade, Shared Hope has graded states on their success in enacting fundamental laws to address child sex trafficking. The Protected Innocence Challenge project was our vision for mobilizing states to improve legislation that impacts the sex trafficking of minors. Ten years of grassroots mobilization, advocacy, technical assistance, and consistent collaboration has allowed this vision to largely become reality.

Now, we begin a new decade focused on achieving State Action. National Change. through the legislative changes that will result from guidance provided through Report Cards on Child & Youth Sex Trafficking. The advanced legislative framework for the Report Cards on Child & Youth Sex Trafficking will be officially released on Wednesday, November 18, 2020.

So what is the advanced framework for the Report Cards on Child and Youth Sex Trafficking? It builds on the Protected Innocence Challenge state report card projects, identifying 40 key points of law, grouped into six issue areas, necessary under state law to provide a protective response to child and youth survivors of sex trafficking. All states now have a child sex trafficking law, and most states have made significant progress in providing laws that protect victims and hold perpetrators accountable; collectively, the country has made significant progress in those policy goals. However, little has been done to address and fund specialized services for victims or to adequately address root causes, including demand.

The past decade has led to new research and opportunities to listen to survivors, bringing ever increasing clarity to laws and policies that must be in place to finally put an end to the sex trafficking of minors. Now is the time to raise the bar and challenge states to enact the policies encompassed in the advanced framework for the Report Cards, which will support the ability of survivors to access care, opportunities to heal, and protection against future harm. Now, we begin a new decade focused on achieving State Action. National Change. through the legislative changes that will result from guidance provided through Report Cards on Child & Youth Sex Trafficking.

The advanced legislative framework for the Report Cards on Child and Youth Sex Trafficking will be officially released on Wednesday, November 18, 2020

In the meantime, please join us for the JuST LIVE! State Action. National Change webinar series, which will run throughout October free of charge for anyone who wants to learn more about how to effectively fight child and youth sex trafficking. The webinar series aligns with six issue areas that hang on an advanced legislative framework.

Issue Areas Include:

Criminal Provisions: Clear criminal laws, including those that criminalize buyers of sex with children, are needed to ensure all sex trafficking offenders can be held accountable.
Identification of and Response to Victims: State laws must identify all commercially sexually exploited children as victims of trafficking and provide for a protective, rather than punitive response.
Continuum of Care: To break the cycle of exploitation, state laws must provide victims access to funded, trauma-informed services.
Access to Justice for Trafficking Survivors: A range of civil and criminal justice remedies must be available for victims under the law.
Tools for a Victim-Centered Criminal Justice Response: Criminal justice procedures for the benefit and protection of victims must be provided under the law.
Prevention and Training: To help prevent trafficking and promote more just responses to child sex trafficking victims, training for child welfare, juvenile justice, law enforcement, prosecutors and school personnel, and prevention education for students, must be required by law.

Please participate in this important experience — and share the registration information on all your channels!

To stay up to date on this exciting project, sign up here to guarantee the advanced framework will be delivered directly to you the moment it is released on November 18^th!

To support implementation of the advanced legislative framework for the Report Cards on Child and Youth Sex Trafficking, our Policy Team will remain available to provide rapid technical assistance to support legislators, advocates, and state agencies; technical assistance requests can be submitted here.

DirectlyTo, Zephaniah Trevinos Defense Fund, https://go.sharedhope.org/e/234702/phaniah-trevinos-defense-fund-/k4d74/307424383?h=WZ-miPH5rhOSTaJQE4-OkhEy2Q4WePnS3vBQjdxJtdk(last visited Sept. 23, 2020).

December 2, 2019 by Guest

Sex Trafficking: “A Supply Answer to a Demand Problem”

By Geoffrey Rogers

The United Nations’ estimate of nearly 27 million people around the world held in slavery through human trafficking is a statistic too mammoth for my mind to fully contemplate, so I’ll consider children…children in our own country.

I have been engaged with efforts to alert Christians to this day’s pressing social issues for 15 years, and I can truthfully say that the sex trafficking of America’s children is one of the most egregious.

It is believed that over 100,000 children under the age of 18 in the United States are trafficked for sex every day. What I have come to realize most of all, is that human trafficking—especially sex trafficking—is a “supply answer to a demand problem.” It exists because people, mostly men, are paying for sex. As a society, if we are to make a substantial difference in the fight against human trafficking in America, we must find ways to decrease and eradicate the demand for purchased sex.

We identify pornography as the #1 factor fueling the demand for sex trafficking. More than $13 billion per year is spent on pornography and commercial sex services—that’s $3,000 per second spent on pornography. It’s estimated that 50-70% of men regularly consume pornography. Last year, the largest porn website in the U.S. received over 28 billion visits; that’s almost 4 visits for every person on the entire planet, for this U.S.-based site. Studies are now showing the highly addictive nature of pornography, which leads a portion of addicts to eventually want to actualize what they have only been visualizing, hence creating the increasing demand for purchased sex. Linda Smith, the founder and President of Shared Hope International, makes this point so clear in the upcoming documentary on sex trafficking in America, BLIND EYES OPENED and she calls out the fact that we simply aren’t holding buyers accountable.

While the focus for awareness about the vulnerability of child sex trafficking victims and services for them has focused on girls and women, what many people don’t know is that demand for sex with boys is rampant as well. A U.S. Department of Justice study identifies that 36% of trafficked children are boys.

Services for all victims across the country are a critically important part of the fight against sex trafficking, and Shared Hope International has been one of the leading anti-trafficking organizations educating the masses and assisting safe home operators to learn from one another and improve their impact. Concerned with the void in services for boys, they recently partnered with one of the only boys’ safe homes in the nation, operated by the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking.

BLIND EYES OPENED is a first-of-a-kind Christian documentary that dives deep into the sex trafficking industry in the U.S. The film exposes the darkness that fuels demand, highlights survivors’ transformations through Christ, engages lawmakers, law enforcement, organizations, ministries and experts across the country committed to ending the atrocities, all while showing Christ as the hope for all involved. It is such an honor to have Linda Smith participate in this critically important documentary, being released in theaters nationwide on January 23. Visit www.BlindEyesOpened.com to learn more and find a theater near you.

Geoffrey Rogers is the co-founder and President of Ships of Tarshish, a nonprofit production company established to produce high-quality Christian programming that is relevant, exciting and entertaining, and is the co-founder CEO of the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking. After leaving a successful career in the corporate world as an executive with IBM, Geoff began Ships of Tarshish with his wife Kerri. Through their work on the upcoming documentary on sex trafficking in America, Blind Eyes Opened, they committed their lives to the fight against sex trafficking.

September 15, 2017 by Guest

Law Professors Weigh in on Amending the CDA – Part 2

Q: We keep hearing that passing these bills will end the internet as we know it? What do you think of these claims?

These claims are misplaced. For example, the Senate bill is a 4 page bill that simply clarifies how the CDA (passed in 1996) is affected by the TVPA, which was passed 4 years later. It retains the immunity provision for Good Samaritans and will not substantively expose any good actor to increased liability, stifle creativity, or affect free speech.

In 1996 Congress had many goals with the CDA, most of which are mentioned in the “Findings” and “Policy” sections of the CDA.[1] On the one hand, the Internet was in its infancy, and Congress wanted it to grow to its full potential. That being said, it also worried that this nascent industry might allow access to sexually explicit material on a new scale. Therefore, Congress struck a balance between these two concerns and passed the CDA as part of a wider system to limit the ability to access sexually explicit material online. Congress also wanted to prevent service providers from being sued for screening out this material. Thus, they created a Good Samaritan provision which protects Good Samaritan companies from being sued for their self- regulation to screen out explicit material. It was never intended to give immunity to bad actors not engaged in self- regulation, but engaged in illegal activity, but that is how the tech industry has argued the CDA should function.[2]

Over two decades later, the Internet is no longer fragile or in its infancy. Rather, it has developed significantly and is on very solid ground. It has also grown criminally and Congress has learned two important facts. First, the Internet is the largest marketplace where trafficking victims are sold. Second, that bad actors are misusing the Good Samaritan protection to insulate them from liability for their criminal activity, arguing that the CDA provides absolute immunity because they are service providers.

These legislative proposals are narrow. The Senate bill simply clarifies the CDA by including sex trafficking in the list of crimes Congress seeks to inhibit on the internet. All these proposals will do is clarify and update the CDA but they do nothing to limit the Good Samaritan exemption. Good Samaritans will continue to be protected just as they are now. Bad Samaritans will not.

Q: How do these bills hold some bad actors, like Backpage.com, accountable without chilling free speech on the internet?

The claim of First Amendment deprivations are also misplaced allegations designed to preclude any common sense discussion of clarifying the CDA. The First Amendment was intended to help a free and democratic society navigate these issues where criminality and speech can sometimes intersect. The Free Speech provision was never intended to have certain topics taken off the table never to be analyzed. These arguments that limiting internet service companies from partnering with bad actors to sell children online will chill speech are simply scare tactics designed to remove amending the CDA from any discussion.

The First Amendment is critical to our democracy, but has never been absolute. For example, it does not protect offers to engage in illegal transactions.[3] The CDA sought to address the problem of access to sexually explicit material online. Congress intended to encourage corporations to limit this material, by protecting them from litigation for their efforts to actively screen such information. Finding there was a disincentive to self-regulate, Congress explicitly stated one of its purposes was to remove this disincentive by encouraging limiting explicit material. As such, it drafted the CDA to balance these interests. As a result, §230(c)(1) recognizes that service providers cannot be treated like publishers of news and be held responsible for the third party content of news posted on their platforms. §230(c)(2) provides for immunity by protecting ISP’s from litigation for their actions to restrict access, NOT for other criminal actions. §230(e)(3) limits contrary state laws but does nothing to limit state efforts to enforce their laws consistent with the CDA.

Read Part 1 and Part 3 here.

By Mary G. Leary, Professor of Law, Catholic University of America, Shea Rhodes, Director of Villanova Law School’s Institute to Address Commercial Exploitation, Chad Flanders, Professor of Criminal Law and Constitutional Law Scholar, St. Louis University, and Audrey Rogers, Professor of Criminal Law and the Internet, Pace University.

—

[1] 47 U.S.C.A. 230(a) & (b).

[2] How Google’s Backing of Backpage Protect Child Sex Trafficking, Consumer Watchdog (May 2017).

[3] U.S. v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 297 (2008).

September 4, 2015 by Guest

Why wasn’t Jared Fogle charged with sex trafficking?

About two weeks ago, Jared Fogle, famous for his Subway sandwich diet, was indicted for two serious federal sex crimes: 1) receiving and distributing child pornography and 2) traveling to engage in illicit sexual contact with a minor. (Fogle has since pleaded guilty to both offenses).

Recently, public debate questioned, ”why wasn’t Fogle charged with rape?” But why not sex trafficking? The indictment alleges facts that would amount to sex trafficking under federal law, such as allegations that Fogle paid for sex acts with a minor in the Plaza Hotel and in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York City. The indictment also reports that Fogle offered to pay for sex with other minors and asked to be put in contact with other youth saying, “the younger the girl, the better.”

In May 2015 the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA) was enacted and clarifies that the federal crime of sex trafficking includes buyer conduct by adding “patronizes” and “solicits” as prohibited conduct. Importantly, force, fraud or coercion does not have to be proven when a minor is “caused to engage in a commercial sex act” to be sex trafficking. In fact, buyers commit sex trafficking offenses regardless of whether there is a third party or trafficker involved, as discussed in Shared Hope’s recent policy paper, Eliminating the Third Party Control Barrier to Identifying Juvenile Sex Trafficking Victims.

But what about New York’s ability to respond to this type of behavior and protect minors? The lack of appropriate state-level offenses is a glaring issue here. First, New York is an outlier as one of only 4 states that requires that force, fraud or coercion be used to identify a child who is bought or sold for sex as a victim of sex trafficking. Second, New York’s sex trafficking law does not apply to buyers, but only someone who “intentionally advances or profits from prostitution.” (Profiting from prostitution is defined to specifically exclude patrons.) Third, New York’s CSEC (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children) offenses only protect victims under 14. The criminal offense of “Patronizing a prostitute” in New York would apply to buyers of older minors – the same way it applies to adults who are patronized –in the third degree, which is a Class A misdemeanor with a possible sentence of up to 1 year imprisonment and a possible fine not to exceed $1,000. So, in essence when wealthy buyers travel to NYC and exploit minors for sex, it is potentially a low level offense under New York state law. Although “patronizing a prostitute” in the first and second degree apply when minors under the age of 11 and 14, respectively, are exploited, this simply exacerbates unfair, damaging stigmas that minors of any age who are sexually commercially exploited are considered “prostitutes.”

Regarding our cultural understanding and the language used to refer to the sex trafficking or commercial sexual exploitation of children, the public debate and sensitivity is rightfully attuned. The exchange of money does not sanitize predatory behavior or the resulting victimization and underlying exploitation of minors’ vulnerabilities. Laws must be enacted and enforced, on both the federal and state level that apply to buyers with penalties that reflect the seriousness of these crimes.