RI: Full House OKs ban on indoor prostitution

11:29 AM EDT on Thursday, October 29, 2009
Lynn Arditi, Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill to outlaw indoor prostitution Wednesday night, paving the way for a final debate on the Senate floor Thursday.

The bill’s passage followed an hour of impassioned debate from both sides of the issue. Supporters said the bill would provide the police with the tools they need to conduct sting operations at brothels where, they said, pimps and sex-traffickers degrade and enslave women and children. Opponents argued that it would harm vulnerable women, drive prostitution underground and cost the financially strapped state more money by sending women to prison. .

Ignored by society, Afghan dancing boys suffer centuries-old tradition

By Atia Abawi, CNN
October 27, 2009 — Updated 1721 GMT (0121 HKT)

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — A young boy dressed in women’s clothing, his face caked in make-up, dances the night away for a crowd of men.

The bells on his feet chime away, mimicking the entertainment and sexual appeal of female dancers. But there is no mistaking his pubescent body and face as he concentrates, focusing on every step in order to please his master and his master’s guests.

This all played out in a video that CNN obtained from a person involved in the parties.

The boy is but one youth among many throughout the country forced into an age-old underground tradition known as “bacha bazi,” or “boy play,” in which young boys are taken from their families, made to dance and used as sex slaves by powerful men. The number of boys involved is unknown — the practice has been going on for centuries, in a country where such practices are overshadowed by conflict and war.

For Runaways, Sex Buys Survival

Running in the Shadows
October 27, 2009
By IAN URBINA

ASHLAND, Ore. — She ran away from her group home in Medford, Ore., and spent weeks sleeping in parks and under bridges. Finally, Nicole Clark, 14 years old, grew so desperate that she accepted a young man’s offer of a place to stay. The price would come later.

They had sex, and he soon became her boyfriend. Then one day he threatened to kick her out if she did not have sex with several of his friends in exchange for money.

She agreed, fearing she had no choice. “Where was I going to go?” said Nicole, now 17 and living here, just down the Interstate from Medford. That first exchange of money for sex led to a downward spiral of prostitution that lasted for 14 months, until she escaped last year from a pimp who she said often locked her in his garage apartment for months.

Prostitution in Georgian London: Harlot’s progress

Oct 15th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital. By Dan Cruickshank. Random House: 688 pages; £25. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

"Connoisseurs" by Thomas Rowlandson

AS MANY as one in five young women were prostitutes in 18th-century London. The Covent Garden that tourists frequent today was the centre of a vast sex trade strewn across hundreds of brothels and so-called coffee houses. Fornication in public was common and even children were routinely treated for venereal disease. A German visitor observed a nation that had overstepped all others “in immorality and addiction to debauchery”.

English society expected, even encouraged, men to pay for sex. Prejudice barred women from all but menial jobs. Prostitution at least offered financial independence: a typical harlot could earn in a month what a tradesman or clerk would earn in a year. For a few beautiful and savvy women, the gamble paid off. Lavinia Fenton, a child prostitute, married a duke. But most prostitutes were destined for disease, despair and early death.

Press Release: More Than 50 Children Rescued During Operation Cross Country IV

For Immediate Release
October 26, 2009
Washington D.C., FBI National Press Office (202) 324-3691

Over the past 72 hours, the FBI, its local and state law enforcement partners, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) concluded Operation Cross Country IV, a three-day national enforcement action as part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative. The operation included enforcement actions in 36 cities across 30 FBI divisions around the country and led to the recovery of 52 children who were being victimized through prostitution. Additionally, nearly 700 others, including 60 pimps, were arrested on state and local charges.

“Child prostitution continues to be a significant problem in our country, as evidenced by the number of children rescued through the continued efforts of our crimes against children task forces,” said Kevin Perkins, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “There is no work more important than protecting America’s children and freeing them from the cycle of victimization. Through our strategic partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, we are able to make a difference.”

Internet fuels virtual subculture for sex trade, study finds

Published: Oct. 21, 2009 E-mail Editor

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The Internet has spawned a virtual subculture of “johns” who share information electronically about prostitution, potentially making them harder to catch, according to a new study co-authored by a Michigan State University criminologist.

The research by MSU’s Thomas Holt and Kristie Blevins of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte challenges the common perception that sex customers act alone and do not interact for fear of reprisal or scorn. The study appears in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

Thai Sex Workers: APNSW Press Release for French Press

APNSW responds to the Mitterand story:

It has come to our attention that there is still continuing debate around the issue of the French Culture Minister,
Frédéric Mitterrand, and his admission that he paid for sex with male sex workers in Thailand. We have seen attacks on him from both the left and the right of French politics- attacks which we see as both homophobic and anti-sex worker.

Worse we see the racist, orientalist views of the elites on both sides of French politics who construct Thai sex workers as somehow “backward” and unable to choose what we do. In Thailand all male sex workers are referred to by the term “Nong” which means boy. We are not duped under age boys forced into “sexual slavery.” We are people in a poor country exercising our choices to live and earn money to support ourselves, our family and our country.

Chicago: Cook County Sheriff Loses Craigslist “Erotic Services” Ads Case

October 21st, 2009
Legal Analysis by Matt Zimmerman

Yesterday, a federal court tossed a lawsuit against craigslist over erotic advertisements. In March, Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart alleged that craigslist was liable for the illegal ads posted by its users in its “erotic services” (now “adult services”) category. As craigslist argued in their motion for judgment on the pleadings, and as EFF and others pointed out at the time, Dart’s complaint had virtually no chance of success because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act plainly immunized Internet intermediaries like craigslist from civil liability for material posted by third parties.

UK: A law which will protect women from exploitation

Letters:
UK news | The Guardian
Thursday 22 October 2009

Nick Davies follows a long tradition of saying that trafficking is not a big problem and so no action should be taken to deal with it. I have always been of the view that anyone coerced into selling their body experiences unacceptable abuse of their human rights. That is as true if 10 women are coerced, as if 100 are.

The law I have campaigned for seeks only to protect women who have been subject to such exploitation. It would make it an offence for someone to pay for sex where the person providing the sex was coerced. A previous draft of the law was claimed to put at risk prostitute women who paid a maid to help them be safe. Now there is no possible ambiguity about the proposed offence. It only occurs where a woman has been subject to exploitation such as force, threats or deception. It is sad that the Guardian has joined the campaign to protect men from prosecution where they pay women in such circumstances for sexual services.

This is rape,

UK: Sex trafficking is no illusion

Nick Davies argues that the problem of sex trafficking has been exaggerated. This is the last thing trafficked women need

Comments (362)
Rahila Gupta, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 October 2009 11.00 BST

An article on trafficking into the sex trade has been written by the investigative reporter Nick Davies, whose reputation will lend authority to it – although it is a hugely selective piece of reporting of the available research.

The article purports to show that so few women are trafficked into the sex trade that the policy, services and funding focus on it is completely misplaced. The debate on trafficking is bedevilled by the lack of credible data – but the parallels are not with the weapons of mass destruction case, as Davies suggests, which was ultimately verifiable, but with other subterranean issues such as domestic violence or rape. The widely accepted statistic that one in four women experience violence, for example, is based largely on anecdotal evidence and extrapolations from local surveys. It could be similarly taken apart by anyone who wanted to assert that the case was overblown, because ultimately the numbers are unknowable.