Category: Trafficking

Dept of Justice Facilitates Sexual Exploitation

1/29/2016

Online Press Conference: U.S. Department of Justice Named To List of Top Facilitators of Sexual Exploitation

WHO: National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)

WHAT: Online Press Conference: U.S. Department of Justice Named to List of Top Facilitators of Sexual Exploitation

WHEN: Monday, February 1, 2016: 11:00-11:30 am ET

WHERE: Streaming online here: http://endsexualexploitation.org/doj/

WHY: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is about to be named by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation as a top facilitator of sexual exploitation. The DOJ, despite being the primary federal criminal investigation and enforcement agency, has abandoned its post in the fight for freedom from sexual exploitation, objectification, and violence. The U.S. Department of Justice refuses to enforce existing federal obscenity laws against pornography even though these laws have been upheld by U.S. Courts and previously enforced. Federal law prohibits distribution of obscene adult pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops, through the mail, and by common carrier. While the enforcers of the law have refused to do their job, pornography has become so pervasive in American society that it is creating a public health crisis with vast neurologically, psychologically, and sociologically damaging consequences.

To learn more, visit: http://endsexualexploitation.org/doj/

For interviews, please contact Haley Halverson at 202-393-7245, [email protected]

About National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
Founded in 1962, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is the leading national organization addressing the public health crisis of pornography and exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation. NCOSE embraces a mission to defend human dignity and to advocate for the universal right of sexual justice, which is freedom from sexual exploitation, objectification, and violence.
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www.EndSexualExploitation.org

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The search for "ethical" porn

1/26/2016

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“Is there such a thing as ethical porn, and if so, how can we find it?” That's the question asked by Ethan Fixell in an essay for the Daily Dot entitled, “Why You Should Support 'Ethical' Porn.” Fixell writes that he gave up pornography for 30 days in an effort to determine how much control it had over his life. Porn had such a grip that, despite his month-long hiatus, he was unable to give up porn use altogether. But that got him thinking...

“What if, rather than restricting ourselves from all adult content, we could demand a higher level of quality from the industry?” he asks. “What if there was a way to seek out porn only made by enthusiastic performers under 'healthy' working conditions, the same way we seek out organically raised, grass-fed steak?”

Thus, he set off on a phantom search for ethical porn.

He concludes that, “as is the case in any industry,” there are a “handful of sleazy filmmakers who prey on inexperienced performers.” Luckily, “the majority of porn content is produced by responsible and capable performers and producers, under safe, professional, and consensual circumstances.”

What a relief.

But how to tell them apart? Fixell came up with a few pointers for others whose consciences twinge every time their loins stir.

He suggested only paying for pornography from the largest studios, assuming their actions must be above-board. He notes that “subscription websites” feature “interviews with [their] performers before and after each scene, ensuring that all activities were consensual.”

Porn addicts users could also binge-watch their favorite performers, he suggested. They regularly grant interviews discussing how much they enjoy their life in front of the camera.
“Perhaps the best thing a viewer can do for his favorite porn star is to subscribe directly to their website, instead of watching their content on a tube site,” he said – referring to the free, YouTube-like outlets that stream pornography for free. Such sites have severely undercut the porn industry's profit margin.

Following his helpful advice, he reassures his readers, “There’s no reason to feel guilty about watching [porn], or to try and give it up.”

Apparently, he is not the only one concerned with the prospect that the person he is lusting over may be less than enthusiastic about her filmed exploitation. His article got more than 3,100 Facebook shares in just a few days.

But Fixell's counsels – which coincidentally have the effect of filling the porn industry's coffers with cash – ignore the fact that there is no corner of the pornographic industry that does not demean and dehumanize women, no segment that is free of his expressed concerns.

But don't believe me; ask the pornstars and former pornstars themselves.

The Duke porn star Miriam Weeks, who performs under the name “Belle Knox,” has said publicly that her work left her feeling empowered. But she is not always so consistent.
“I’m so used to being on the lookout for scammers, people who are going to try pimp me out or traffic me. I think my experiences have aged me. I don’t have the mind of an eighteen-year-old. I have the emotional baggage of someone much, much older than me,” she said.

Weeks first experienced some doubt about her story when an online video emerged showing her being strangled, slapped, and verbally humiliated. Although she said she was “comfortable” with the limits, she understood that “maybe some of the women” who performed for that site “weren't role-playing, as I was.”

In fact, women have little choice about their roles or what will happen on the set, she and others have acknowledged. Women show up expecting one kind of scene only to be told a much different fate awaits them. If they turn it down, they must pay the producers a kill-fee (in Weeks' case, $300), and she would never be able to work for that company again. So, in the case of the video showing her being abused mentioned above, she consented. But it's hardly without ethical issues.

True, most pornstars say they enjoy having sex on camera – because women who are paid to have sex usually verbally flatter their customers. “I lied to the cameras,” revealed Jan Villarubia, a former pornstar who performed under the name Elizabeth Rollings. “I lied to the fans, 'I love what I do. I love what I do.' Because that's how you make money.”

At the risk of bursting Fixell's bubble, there is no sexual shangri-la in which teeming gangs of nymphettes long to sexually service every anonymous man who approaches them. For the women tasked with portraying such a fantasy, the degrading nature of the work soon takes its toll.

Brittni Ruiz, who used to be “Jenna Presley,” said she turned to drugs “to be able to do the scenes, because I was so robotic. I was like a rubber Barbie doll. I had no emotions. I was plastic.” She used cocaine and heroin before she began violent, self-destructive behaviors such as “cutting” – slashing her skin with knives as a form of stress-release.

Others need drugs to get through the scenes. Vanessa Belmond, formerly pornstar “Alexa Cruz,” told the crew of Date My Pornstar that the sexual situations she filmed were so dangerous she had to take painkillers to get through them.

That physical pain may last for life. Fixell never confronts the reality that virtually every pornstar will have an endless series of STD infections because of the work he and other “ethical porn” enthusiasts consume. Belmond said she had multiple STDs, and contracted one her first day on the set. Villarubia said she caught herpes on the job. And all porn industry shooting has been temporarily halted a handful of times in recent months as performers worry they have passed on AIDS/HIV. Yet porn consumers, and producers, object when performers use condoms to minimize the risk.

How does Fixell feel that these women will end up with the pain of a venereal disease because they chose to provide his product-of-choice?

What of the fact that nearly all of these women are reliving their own sexual abuse, and many are runaways, taking the next logical step after prostitution, or trying to get drug money?

These young women will be stigmatized and often unable to work in other careers because of a choice they made for the sake of a quick buck at age 18, 19, or 20. (Most women shoot only a handful of scenes before exiting the industry.)

Does Fixell really believe that women would consent to be choked, beaten, and humiliated in a medium that can be accessed around the world and that will be preserved forever if they saw any other viable way to make a living?

No “ethical porn” can exist, because pornography is by its very nature exploitative and artificial. It portrays the outer shell of sexuality – the deepest connection between two human beings – without conferring the emotional closeness itself to its viewers or practitioners. Even the biological imperative that scientists credit with giving us the sex drive – the will to procreate – speaks of a longing for something that transcends the boundaries of any one person's existence.

Instead of looking at images of people engaged in an imitation of love, why not search for love itself? Rather than sit in front of flickering images of exploited women, why not attempt to establish an emotional relationship with a woman or man that produces love, marriage, and, perhaps in time, children? “Against such, there is no law.”

This post was written by Ben Johnson. You can find his post here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/the-phantom-search-for-ethical-porn

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Walking down that street

7/29/2014

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We were visiting Amsterdam, exploring shops and the canals. At one shop on the canal there were the most beautiful flowers you have ever seen. It was a wonderful day. Everything was perfect. We were walking hand-in-hand enjoying Amsterdam. Kinda like two kids at a zoo. Excitement. Fun. Happiness.

The next thing I know, Karyn says, "don't look right." So, I put my right hand up to block my view. Then she said, "don't look left." So, I put up my left hand to block my view. So, now, I am walking down this street on this beautiful day looking like a horse with blinders. I said, "what's going on?" Karyn said, "we've stumbled into the Red Light District." I dropped my hands and looked around and yep, she was right. There were some windows with scantily clad women beckoning us to come in. We promptly turned around and left that street.

You ask, "how in the world didn't you know that you were entering the most famous Red Light District in the world?" Well, it was still bright out, even though we didn't realize the sun was starting to descend. If it had been dark, we would have seen the red lights warning us that we had wandered into "adult" territory.

So, what does this story tell us about temptation?

Well, I was certainly glad that I had my wife with me. She saw things up ahead that I hadn't noticed. She loves me and wants to protect our marriage. So, if you are doing something new, something you have never done before, it would be good to not be alone. Because you never know what is on that street.

The person you take with you needs to be committed to holiness and purity. S/he needs to be able to stop you when you start to go somewhere you shouldn't be going. Because you never know what is on that street.

Temptation sneaks up on you when you least suspect. We were having a great time. Exploring Amsterdam, enjoying the sunshine and building memories. Then, boom! There it is. Right in front of you. Sometimes, we are lulled into complacency or feeling really good and then we are blindsided. Temptation can come from anywhere. You know why?

Because you never know what is on that street.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Your porn habit is adultery

7/21/2014

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I know a guy who cheats on his wife. He cheats on her every day. He cheats on her multiple times a day. He’s a husband and a father and a serial adulterer.

I shouldn’t know this fact about him, but it came up in conversation a few days ago. We were talking about the divorce rate; both of us gave our theories as to why the statistics are so high. I mentioned in my diagnosis a few studies that show pornography to be a root cause in over 50 percent of divorces annually.

He laughed. “People don’t get divorced over porn.” He went on to explain that porn isn’t a “big deal” to most people. It’s not “like it’s cheating or something.” He told me that he looks at it multiple times daily. His wife, he insisted, might be a little peeved if she knew the extent of it, but only because women overreact about “that kind of thing.”

What kind of thing? Their husbands spending all day obsessively plunging through the darkest regions of the internet for graphic sexual images of rape, abuse, perversion, exploitation and other forms of filthy depravity previously unknown to mankind?

Yeah. That kind of thing. No reason why any wife should be too upset about that, apparently.

Listen guys, I know this is an uncomfortable conversation. But it’s time we man up and get real about pornography. First things first: if you’re married and you look at porn, you are cheating. Period. From a Christian perspective, this can’t be debated. Christ laid it out very clearly: if you lust after another woman, you have committed adultery. When we look at porn we are choosing to succumb to that lust; we are indulging it, fertilizing it, giving it respite in our minds. We are diving into it headfirst and soaking in it like a sponge. We are lessening ourselves, betraying our wives and participating in the violent exploitation of women (and girls). Our minds and our bodies belong to the Lord and to our wives; pornography, therefore, intrudes on their domain. If we look at porn, we are adulterers. We are adulterers in all the worst ways.

We don’t even need to refer to Scripture to figure out the simple equation that porn equals adultery.

Why wouldn’t it?

Because you aren’t physically in contact with another woman?

So what? That’s merely a matter of semantics and circumstance. The absence of physical touch doesn’t automatically free you of the scarlet letter — if it did, ‘sexting’ with other women would be fair game, I suppose. How would you feel if you looked through your wife’s phone and found racy, sexually graphic text messages she’d sent to a man at her office? Would you be alright with it as long as she could prove she never had any physical contact with him? Or is that totally different because she knows the guy, whereas porn is anonymous and impersonal? See, we find ourselves constructing many arbitrary lines of distinction when we are determined to rationalize behavior we instinctively know to be immoral and wrong.

But, OK, what if she didn’t know the guy? What if she was engaging in “fantasies” with men she never met? Imagine that, in your cyber travels, you stumbled upon a porn site featuring pictures and videos of a particularly alluring young female: your wife. How would that sit with you? Your wife selling digital sex all over the internet — how would you like that? It might cause a bit of a marital dispute, wouldn’t you say?

If you wouldn’t want your wife being a porn provider, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to be a porn consumer. If you wouldn’t want her to invite and encourage other men to violate her in their minds, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to accept the invitation to violate other women in yours.

I don’t mean to concentrate only on married men. Porn is poison for everyone, married or not. And I’m not here to castigate you if you’ve stumbled. We live in a society that preys upon a man’s weaknesses, shoving sex into his face at hyper speed every day, all day, all of the time. This isn’t an excuse; just an attempt to put things into context. I won’t yell at a guy who fights a porn addiction anymore than I’d yell at a guy who fights a crack addiction. But at least the crack addict likely won’t encounter very many people (besides his dealer) who will tell him that it’s actually healthy to smoke crack. If he ventures outside of the abandoned shack where he scores his dope, he probably won’t find any respectable people who will say, “hey, crack isn’t a big deal — it’s totally natural to smoke crack, man!” In that way, the crack smoker has a leg up on the porn addict. The porn addict, by contrast, has to fight both the compulsion itself and the myriad of creeps who will try to convince him that it’s all just a bit of innocent fun.

That’s a lie, of course. It’s not innocent. It’s not fun.

I could cite for you the mounds of psychiatric research proving the detrimental effects of pornography on the brain. But you can do that research yourself.

I could tell you about sex slavery, human trafficking, drug abuse, and child molestation, and I could explain how the porn industry wouldn’t exist without these necessary ingredients. But these are conclusions you can draw on your own, if ever you take even a moment to think about it.

I could remind you that these women you find on your porn sites might not be women at all — they could be children — and there’s no way for you to know for sure. I could then point out that any avid porn customer has most likely at some point been a child porn customer, whether he knew it or not. But this is, indeed, an obvious and inescapable reality.

I could tell you that many children view graphic porn for the first time before the age of 12. I could tell you that we haven’t even begun to reap the atrocious fruits that will come from an entire generation raised on the heinous perversions of internet pornography. But it’s probably too late for these warnings.

So what is left? Perhaps nothing, really. Pornography is evil, empty, deadening, dirty — this is something we all know. That’s why, unless you are either psychotic or utterly despicable, you wouldn’t want your daughter to get into the porn business. That’s why most people hide their porn habits. That’s why it still isn’t considered acceptable to browse “adult” websites at your desk at work or at a table in Starbucks (although people still do, in both scenarios). That’s why you only find porn shops and strip clubs in the slummy, rundown parts of town. No matter how hedonistic and “open minded” we become, we still recognize porn as something that ought to be stowed away in the dank, dark corners of our lives. This is Natural Law, and we can’t escape it. We have an innate understanding of right and wrong, whether we want it or not.

Married men: I think we should be spending our free time with our families, or reading interesting books so that we can sharpen our minds, or building things, or exercising, or doing anything else that will make us better men. Porn will not make you a better man. It will make you smaller. It will make you a liar. It will kill that instinct inside you that calls you to protect and honor women. It will turn you into something you never wanted to be. It will turn you into a sneaky, shameful pervert.

It will turn you into an adulterer.

This post was written by Matt Walsh. For the original post, go to: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/11/25/married-men-your-porn-habit-is-an-adultery-habit/

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Free Indeed!

7/4/2014

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For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave. 1 Corinthians 7:22

The desire for freedom is a longing of the human heart. It is the heartbeat of God. Liberty for all is foundational to free nations. Let freedom ring is the battle cry of republics who have sacrificed lives, so future generations can live free. It opens door of opportunities, like freedom to worship and work. We are free to be sad or glad, free to pursue God or money, and free to experience good or evil. Freedom in Christ is fundamental to the faith. By faith in Jesus, we are free indeed.

However, we have an enemy to freedom: slavery. Slavery to sin, self, and Satan. A soul’s bondage brings despair and dread. We are not free to make wise choices, until our minds have been freed from the confusing claims of lies. But, truth clarifies. Moreover, there is a hideous slavery to sinister human beings. Human slavery treats people like property, not as precious people created by almighty God. Those imprisoned by evil need the righteous to rise up. Yes, freedom in Christ bears the responsibility to rescue those trafficked by greedy perverts. We must help the captives!

“But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life” (Romans 6:22).

Furthermore, freedom in Christ comes from being a slave to Christ. Before Christ, our master was evil, after Christ our master was good. Before Christ our master was selfish, after Christ our master was generous. Before Christ our master was mean, after Christ our master was merciful. In Christ, we cannot serve two masters, only one: God Almighty. Thus, our glad servitude to the Lord frees us to serve for the Lord. Grace binds us to God’s love, so we are free to love for God.

Human slavery is against the will. Spiritual slavery is free to choose. Human slavery is bondage. Spiritual slavery is freedom. Human slavery is hurtful. Spiritual slavery is healing. Human slavery is exploitation of helpless humans. Spiritual slavery is glorification of holy God. Thus, we ask ourselves, “Does anything other than Jesus Christ master any part of my life?” “Who in my life needs to be set free by faith in Jesus?” “How can I bring awareness to the atrocities of human trafficking?” Freedom in Christ comes from being a slave to Christ. So, live free for Him!

This post was written by Boyd Bailey. For the original post, go to: http://www.wisdomhunters.com/2014/03/freedom-in-christ/

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Greek adultery

4/21/2014

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Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.

Today and the next two days, we are trying to understand a bit better what this verse is talking about. Paul, writing in the Greek has very specific concepts in mind. Today, we are talking about adultery and fornication, which both have the same Greek word: porneia. This word includes all sexual activity outside of marriage.

When using the word porneia in reference to a woman, it means prostitute. The woman has entered into the sin of prostitution by selling herself. This word does not just include professional prostitutes but describes any woman who has committed adultery.

When using the word porneia in reference to a man who has committed adultery, it depicts a man who has had sexual intercourse with a prostitute. The word porneia simply means that he slept with a prostitute. So, in reference to adultery, whenever a man has sexual relations with a woman who is not his wife, God says his action is equivalent to seeking a prostitute for a cheap and dirty thrill.

Pornography comes from the same Greek word. In fact pornos (the same greek word for porneia) and grapho which means to write. Thus pornography refers to the writings or reflections about prostitution (adultery). This means that when an individual meditates on the writings or the photography contained in pornography, it is the equivalent of committing mental prostitution. Mental prostitution sheds light on what Jesus said, "Whoever looks on a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

So, now you know the actual meaning of the Greek word adultery that is used throughout the New Testament.

So how does this affect your view of someone who committed adultery?
How does this affect your view of pornography?
How does this affect your view of your own sexual sin?

This study is taken from Sparkling Gems from the Greek.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Porn and sexual violence

1/9/2014

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Sexual violence attitudes lead to an increased likelihood of violent sexual behavior. Pornography can start to cross the line between thought and behavior in the kinds of fantasies that can produce an erection. One study exposed males to an arousing rape or non-rape presentation and then asked them to try to reach as high a level of sexual arousal as they could without any direct stimulation of the penis. In doing so, those who had been exposed to the rape presentation created more sexually violent fantasies than those exposed to the non-rape presentation. For these males, rape fantasies were now part of their sexual template.

Another study examined measures of the likelihood of future sexually violent behavior as well as past actual sexually violent behaviors. It found that all types of pornography (soft core, hard core, violent, and rape) are correlated with using verbal coercion, drugs, and alcohol to sexually coerce women. The likelihood of forcing a woman sexually was correlated with the use of hard core, violent, and rape pornography. The likelihood of raping a woman was correlated with the use of all types of pornography, including soft-core pornography. All types of pornography other than soft core were correlated with actual rape. Those reporting higher exposure to violent pornography are six times more likely to report having raped than those reporting low exposure.

Similarly, men who engaged in date rape reported that they “very frequently” read Playboy, Penthouse, Chic, Club, Forum, Gallery, Genesis, Oui, or Hustler. The correlation between rape rates and circulation rates for eight pornographic magazines (the same magazines minus Hustler) indicated that states with higher circulation rates had higher rape rates.

Adolescent boys who read pornographic material were more likely to be involved in active sexual violence. Juvenile sex offenders (juvenile rapists and child molesters) were more likely to have been exposed to pornography (42% had been exposed) than juveniles who were not sex offenders (29%) and also to have been exposed at an early age (five to eight years old), while juvenile child molesters had been more frequently exposed to pornography than those who did not molest children. Another study reported that 29 of the 30 juveniles studied had been exposed to X-rated magazines or videos, and the average age of first exposure was about 7.5 years. Only 11% of juvenile sex offenders said they did not use sexually explicit material. Ironically, given these figures, exposing adults to pornography decreases the number who believe that pornography needs to be restricted from children.

Similarly, adult sex offenders showed a high rate of using hard-core pornography: child molesters (67%), incest offenders (53%), rapists (83%) were significantly higher in use than non-offenders (29%). Child molesters (37%) and rapists (35%) were more likely to use pornography as an instigator to offending than were incest offenders (13%). It is an interesting finding that while these offenders used rape and child pornography to instigate their offenses, they did not exclusively do so, they often used adult and consensual pornography. Even adult consensual pornography can be used to instigate these offenses.

Pornography’s effect depends not just what you are exposed to but also how often. The more frequently men used pornography and the more violent the pornography they used, the more likely they were to coercive others into sex, including to use of physical coercion (i.e., rape).

Pornography’s effect also depends upon individuals’ characteristics as well as their use of pornography. Males who were high in hostile masculinity and sexual promiscuity and who used pornography frequently were significantly more likely to have physically and sexually aggressed than males who were low in these factors. (This study was unable to determine if those individual characteristics, hostile masculinity and promiscuity, might have been produced by pornography use at an earlier point in life.)

Much of the research has focused on the males who perpetrate the behaviors. However, there are studies that have focused on the female victims. One questioned 100 women who presented to a rape crisis center. Twenty–eight percent said that their abuser used pornography; 58% did not know if he used pornography or not. Of those whose abuser used pornography, 40% said the pornography was part of the abuse, being used either during the abuse or just prior to it, and 43% said that it affected the nature of the abuse. None of them thought it decreased the frequency of the abuse, but 21% thought it increased the frequency, and 14% believed it increased the level of violence. In fact, 18% thought their abuser became more sadistic with the use of pornography. Of the total, 12% said the abuser imitated the pornography and 14% said someone had tried to force them to do something he had seen in pornography.

Another study found that 24% of women surveyed indicated that they had been upset by someone trying to get them to do something they had seen in pornography. Those who said this were more likely to have been victims of threatened or actual sexual assault.

A meta-analysis of thirty-three studies (meta-analyses examine findings across a large number of studies) revealed that exposure to either violent or nonviolent pornography increase behavioral aggression. These studies taken as a whole indicate that many types of pornography and frequent use of pornography are connected to negative behaviors—both violent fantasies or actual violent assaults—with violent pornography having the strongest negative effect. These patterns are seen in adults and in minors, and are found in studies focused on perpetrators and victims.

Summary

The large body of research on pornography reveals that it functions as a teacher of, a permission-giver for, and a trigger of many negative behaviors and attitudes that can severely damage not only the users but many others, including strangers. The damage is seen in men, women, and children, and in both married and single adults. It involves pathological behaviors, illegal behaviors, and some behaviors that are both illegal and pathological. Pornography is an equal opportunity and very lethal toxin.

Pornography and Violence: A New Look at Research (2010), by Mary Anne Layden, PhD, Director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program Center for Cognitive Therapy, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania

This article can be found at: http://www.antipornography.org/sex_crimes.html

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Major hotel chain stops selling pornography

9/9/2013

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A bit more than a year ago, we made public here on Public Discourse a letter we had sent to the chief executive officers of our nation’s largest hotel chains, respectfully asking them to stop offering pornography in their hotel rooms. We said:

"We are, respectively, a Christian and a Muslim, but we appeal to you not on the basis of truths revealed in our scriptures but on the basis of a commitment that should be shared by all people of reason and goodwill: a commitment to human dignity and the common good. As teachers and as parents, we seek a society in which young people are encouraged to respect others and themselves—treating no one as an impersonal object or thing. We hope that you share our desire to build such a society.

Pornography is degrading, dehumanizing, and corrupting. It undermines self-respect and respect for others. It reduces persons—creatures bearing profound, inherent, and equal dignity—to the status of objects. It robs a central aspect of our humanity—our sexuality—of its dignity and beauty. It ensnares some in addiction. It deprives others of their sense of self-worth. It teaches our young people to settle for the cheap satisfactions of lust, rather than to do the hard, yet ultimately liberating and fulfilling, work of love."

One hotel chain, Marriott, informed us that they were “phasing out” offerings of pornography in their hotel rooms. Another, Hilton, defended its participation in the pornography business by appealing, dubiously in our view, to libertarian principles. Others, so far as we can tell, have ignored our plea.

We wish to reiterate that plea here, however, by holding up to the American hotel executives the highly laudable actions of Petter Stordalen, owner of Nordic Hotels, one of Scandinavia’s largest chains. Mr. Stordalen, after becoming involved in international efforts to fight the horrific practice of trafficking women and girls into sexual slavery, announced that pornography would no longer be offered to his customers. In a public statement explaining his decision, he said:

"The porn industry contributes to trafficking, so I see it as a natural part of having a social responsibility to send out a clear signal that Nordic Hotels doesn't support or condone this."

He’s right. The pornography industry is corrupt through and through—inherently so. It should come as no surprise that it is connected to something as exploitative, degrading, and dehumanizing as human trafficking. Bravo to Petter Stordalen for refusing to continue profiting from peddling the industry’s wares.

Of course, even if trafficking were not part of the reality of the industry, good people should be opposed to pornography and unwilling to profit from it. As we said in our letter to hotel executives:

"We beg you to consider the young woman who is depicted as a sexual object in these movies, as nothing but a bundle of raw animal appetites whose sex organs are displayed to the voyeurs of the world and whose body is used in loveless and utterly depersonalized sex acts. Surely we should regard that young woman as we would regard a sister, daughter, or mother. She is a precious member of the human family. You may say that she freely chooses to compromise her dignity in this way, and in some cases that would be true, but that gives you no right to avail yourself of her self-degradation for the sake of financial gain. Would you be willing to profit from her self-degradation if she were your sister? Would you be willing to profit from her self-degradation if she were your own beloved daughter?"

The reality is, however, just as Mr. Stordalen depicts it. Human trafficking is part of the reality. And it is time for his fellow hotel executives to face up to that fact.

Indeed, it is time for Mr. Stordalen’s American counterparts to follow his commendable example. If Nordic Hotels can demonstrate this kind of moral and social responsibility, then there is no reason that Hilton Hotels and the other large chains cannot. Let them stop trying to deceive the public—and perhaps even themselves—with rhetoric about respecting or even protecting their customers’ liberty. Pornography is a social plague with horrific real-life consequences for real live people—addicts, spouses, children, communities, girls and women trafficked into sexual servitude.

At this late season of our nation’s experience with the social costs of pornography there is no longer any excuse for supposing that porn is merely a form of harmless naughtiness. Even the socially very liberal nation of Iceland is moving to ban or severely restrict it by law. Whatever one thinks of legal prohibitions or restrictions, everyone should recognize that pornography is a moral and social evil that no decent person would want to profit from or have anything to do with.

This was written by Robert P. George who is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Shaykh Hamza Yusuf is President of Zaytuna College and a contributor to this post as well. The original post can be found at the Witherspoon Institute. Click here to be directed to the Witherspoon Institute's website.

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Rescued from sex trafficking: Now what?

8/27/2013

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Every year, federal and state governments pour millions of dollars into combatting sex trafficking through local and federal law enforcement agencies. But the emerging link between the child welfare system and child sex trafficking in the United States underscores the need for a new tactic, one that addresses the social origins of child sex trafficking.

At the end of July, the FBI’s Innocence Lost initiative, the wing of the agency tasked with addressing domestic child sex trafficking, conducted its annual three-day Operation Cross Country. During these 72 hours, federal agents across the country “recover” juvenile victims from sexual exploitation and arrest their exploiters. This year, the agency boasts that it saved 105 children and arrested 152 pimps. According to U.S. law, anyone under 18 and involved in the sex trade is considered sexually trafficked.

However, what happens to those who are “rescued” is unclear. Whether the children are placed in juvenile justice proceedings or the Department of Social Services, the story of the rescue mission as the FBI tells it ends when the handcuffs go on—often both on the exploited young person as well as his or her exploiter. (A video montage of Operation Cross Country VII accompanies the FBI’s press release.)

Julianne Sohn, spokesperson for the San Francisco division of the FBI, explained to AlterNet that the agency couldn’t account for what happens to the youth after they are “recovered” because local law enforcement agencies have varying policies on how to handle teens.

“If you’re 17 years old and sex-trafficked in New York you are literally a victim and a criminal at the same time,” Chrystal DeBoise told AlterNet. DeBoise is the co-director of the New York-based Sex Workers Project, an organization advocates for both sex workers and trafficking victims.

The Sex Workers Project has helped to decriminalize individuals who have been sex trafficked and charged with prostitution by successfully lobbying for the Vacating Convictions Law, passed in 2010 in New York, which allows a trafficked individual to have her record cleared.

But DeBoise notes there is still a long way to go: “Over 50 percent of our clients are trafficked and they tell us that the arrests were some of the most traumatizing parts of their trafficking experience.”

“It’s shocking to believe that you could be trafficked and for the rest of your life you have a prostitution record,” DeBoise said. “It is shocking.”

These FBI sweeps also result in the netting of adult sex workers. The data for Operation Cross Country in the Bay Area reveals that while its ostensible focus is to rescue child victims, the program results in a markedly higher arrest rate for adult sex workers: for the 12 children rescued, 65 sex workers were arrested in the Bay Area alone. During Operation Cross Country in 2008, the FBI recovered 47 juveniles while arresting 518 prostitutes.

Prioritizing criminal justice proceedings to combat child sex-trafficking has resulted in a paucity of services devoted to helping children most vulnerable to sexual exploitation: those in foster care. Depending on the city, 50 to 80 percent of child victims are or have been involved in this part of the child welfare system. The correlation has led many advocates to argue that funding needs to be redirected away from law enforcement and toward social services that are designed to work with traumatized children.

“People are beginning to realize that juvenile justice is not appropriate to serve sexually exploited children. People are frustrated that those kids are going to the criminal justice system rather than the foster care system, which is designed to help kids,” Kate Walker, from the National Center for Youth Law, told AlterNet. Earlier this year, Walker authored a publication for the California Child Welfare Council examining the needs of victimized children and how the welfare system should address them.

Southern California Congresswoman Karen Bass has proposed legislation to the House of Representatives that she hopes will address the cyclical relationship between foster care and child sexual exploitation. In April she reintroduced Strengthening the Child Welfare Response to Human Trafficking Act (SCWRHT) that had died in committee last year. (After being elected to Congress in 2010, Bass co-founded the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth and has since been a strong advocate for extending services to foster youth.)

SCWRHT would establish training programs so child welfare agencies could better detect children at risk of becoming victims and respond to those who have already been traumatized and victimized. The legislation would also extend services to trafficking victims up to the age of 21.

Bass has distinguished herself by focusing on the social roots of sex trafficking, rather than investing in law enforcement and tougher penalties. Explaining why she voted against last November’s Proposition 35, which increases fines and penalties for convicted human traffickers, she said: “I worry that just like with Three Strikes, when there is a horrific crime we come up with an extreme response and the net gets cast too wide.”

“It’s not my focus to increase penalty, because I am also worried about the pimps.” According to one case study, approximately 25 percent of pimps come out of the child welfare system.

In 1990—fourteen years before she would make the transition to electoral politics—Bass founded and directed Community Coalition, a grassroots organization based in South Los Angeles dedicated to strengthening black and latino communities ravaged by economic injustice, the War on Drugs, and poor quality schools.

After being elected to Congress in 2010, Bass co-founded the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth and has since been a strong advocate for extending services to foster youth.

Like Bass, Kate Walker believes that with reform, the child welfare system has the potential to serve as a support network to child victims. “I think the child welfare system has a ways to go in terms of setting itself up to adequately serve these children, like prevention curriculum that includes teaching about exploitation, healthy relationships and ways to protect yourself.”

But while advocates may agree that improving the child welfare system is essential to addressing child sex trafficking, there is persistent ambivalence among policy advocates on whether locking up sexually exploited children is necessary in order to save them.

“There is a big divide in the field: should we be locking kids up or should we meet them where they’re at and provide them what they need,” says DeBoise.

Bass’ bill would create “specialized, long-term residential facilities or safe havens serving children who are human trafficking victims.”

One such safe house in Florida was forced to shut down within weeks of opening after one girl left the grounds and was raped. This recent tragic incident has led some legislators and social workers in Florida to conclude that it may be necessary to keep the premises of safe houses locked so that inhabitants cannot leave freely.

However, as DeBoise points out, “We don’t consider locking up any other victim the way we do with this population. It wouldn’t occur to us that we should lock up a victim of, say, domestic violence, if she continued to go back to her abuser.”

“When looking at the population of runaway kids involved in prostitution, there’s a tendency to treat them as criminals and force them into care.”

Casting further doubt on the incarceration model, Walker notes that one method of rehabilitating victims of sexual exploitation in California has been to send them out of state, far away from their exploiters. “Some of these places are on top of a mountain so the kids can’t run. But then they are just exploited upon their return to their communities.”

“I want to look at providing more services in the communities from which they come, because those are the communities that need them. When kids run away [from foster care] they are doing so because we are not providing something that someone else is; we’re not adequately meeting their needs,” explains Walker.

Speaking as a psychotherapist, DeBoise argues it is essential that services enable the youths to opt into therapy and shelter of their own volition: “We need shelters that are open and that have a high level of sophistication in the staff. We need to acknowledge that people can leave and they can also come back. When we work with those principles, we are successful. It’s not a problem to keep our clients, they don’t run away.”

DeBoise urges people to look at the phenomenon of domestic sex trafficking as part of a larger picture: “I think the way to end trafficking is to take seriously poverty and its consequences, racism and its consequences, sexism and its consequences. Trafficking is at the intersection of all these things.”

This post was written by C. Silver. For the original post, go to: http://www.salon.com/2013/08/15/far_too_many_kids_move_from_foster_care_into_the_sex_trade_partner/

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105 Children rescued from prostitution

8/2/2013

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The FBI announced Monday the arrests of 150 people and recovery of 105 children involved in child prostitution rings across the country.

The 76-city sweep, conducted in the past three days, represents the largest such law enforcement action focused on children forced into sexual slavery, federal authorities said.

Assistant FBI Director Ron Hosko, head of the bureau's criminal division, said the children ranged from 13 to 17 years old. The youngest of the victims was allegedly being offered up by her father, who also was allegedly involved in videotaping his daughter's sexual encounters.

"We have victims whose new normal is sexual abuse,'' Hosko said. "We are trying to take this crime out of the shadows and put a spotlight on it.''

In operations involving 230 separate law enforcement agencies, authorities either made arrests or child recoveries from Atlanta to Los Angeles. The weekend action, called Operation Cross Country, also is the latest in a national campaign that has helped recover 2,700 children since 2005.

Hosko said the children, generally recruited from foster care or group homes, were being offered up on Internet sites, at truck stops, casinos and street corners.

In addition to at least one parent, the alleged pimps included individuals acting alone and some with affiliations to organized crime. In many cases, Hosko said, the children "don't see any avenues of escape'' from their handlers.

John Ryan, president and chief executive officer of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, called the criminal activity "an escalating threat against America's children.''

Ryan said the law enforcement action "is saving lives.''

The largest number of children -- 12 -- were recovered in San Francisco during the weekend sweep. The most alleged pimps --18 -- were arrested in Detroit.

In the Detroit area, where 10 children were recovered, a 17-year-old girl was rescued Saturday night from an Econolodge Hotel, where she was being held against her will and beaten. Police said a separate prostitution arrest yielded information that led police to the hotel.

In Flint, Mich., a 911 call led police to a home where they rescued two 17-year-old girls who were being assaulted and forced into prostitution. Genessee County sheriff's deputies responded and rushed the girls out of the home. A suspect, whose identity has not yet been released, was arrested.

Criminal charges are expected to be brought both in the state and federal courts and will involve a variety of offenses, including human trafficking and coercion.

LIST OF CITIES: Breakdown of arrests, children recovered

TOUGHER LAWS: Nevada increases penalties for pimps.

"Child prostitution remains a persistent threat to children across America," Hosko said. "This operation serves as a reminder that these abhorrent crimes can happen anywhere and that the FBI remains committed to stopping this cycle of victimization and holding the criminals who profit from this exploitation accountable."

This post was written by T. Baldas of the Detroit Free Press. For the original post, go to: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/29/fbi-arrest-child-prostitution-ring-rescue/2595725/

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