Several years ago, when I was a full-time faculty member at the Naval Postgraduate School, faculty were required to undergo a variety of training. One of them was about how to detect sex trafficking and bring traffickers to law enforcement.
I’m the type of person who usually reads materials during such training. That time was no exception. My memory is hazy, but I remember one slide in the presentation equating being an adult prostitute with being a victim of sex trafficking. “That can’t be true,” I thought. I thought sex trafficking involved some degree of coercion, or at least involved minors. If it had been a live presenter I would have raised an issue. But it was a video online. Finding someone to talk to was a challenge.
But this experience made me wonder if there are many other examples of adults who voluntarily engage in capitalist acts being called sex traffickers.
I was right to wonder. today’s reason site, reason‘ Elizabeth Nolan Brown interviews sex work researcher Tara Burns. The item title is “What everyone misunderstands about sex trafficking laws,” reasonOctober 14, 2024.
Important excerpts are:
burn: So I thought, maybe there are people out there who are being helped by all of this anti-trafficking rhetoric and anti-trafficking laws. At that point, I knew of two sex workers who had been arrested for sex trafficking, even though it wasn’t sex trafficking, but I felt like, “We’re just collateral damage, we’re not really in need.” I thought, “Good things are actually happening for some people.” What we learned when we filed a records request to examine all cases prosecuted under the new human trafficking law: At that time; only Sex workers prosecuted. And every sex worker charged with sex trafficking was also charged with prostitution in the same case in which they were charged with sex trafficking.
When I was planning my survey, I designed several questions to find out if people met the federal definition of a sex trafficking survivor. And when we filtered out people who met the definition of sex trafficking victims, they were two to three times more likely to be sexually assaulted by police. And all the other bad things that are in the study, like being turned away from shelters or counselors, or being turned down when you try to report a crime, are two to three times more common than other sex workers. It was happening to them.
So, while I thought some victims were being helped, in reality, it was the victims who were being harmed the most by the laws and rhetoric. I think the same kind of marginalization that makes people vulnerable to abuse within the sex industry can also make people vulnerable to abuse by police officers, discrimination by shelters, etc.
Note the disgusting irony. People are being told to be wary of sex traffickers as fewer people are forced into prostitution. But if we work together, we may help police use force against innocent people.
of whole It’s worth reading.
