Fact Sheet on the Demand Side of Human Trafficking

These statistics provide an overview of the men who choose to purchase sex.

Who They Are:

• 62% of interviewees identified as having a regular sex partner (girlfriend or wife).
• The age when men first bought sex ranged from 10 to 52. The average age was 21.
• 39% of interviewees were regular pornography consumers. Interviewees frequently mentioned reenacting pornography with women in prostitution.
• 14% of interviewees had been in the armed forces, and 50% of those men had purchased sex during military service.
• 22% of interviewees felt guilty and/or shameful the majority of the time they purchased sex.
• For 20% of men, prostitution was their first sexual experience.

Why They Do It:

•  46-48% of interviewees buy sex to obtain sex acts they could not get from a partner or are ashamed to ask of a partner.
• 83% consider buying sex an addiction.
• 19% purchase sex to obtain a sense of companionship.
• Cultural reasons such as pornography (49% thought of women in porn as prostitutes), constructions of masculinity (didn’t want people to think they weren’t a man), and workplace culture that may encourage the purchase of sex.

Men’s Acknowledgment of Why Women Enter Prostitution:

• 66% of interviewees stated that women become prostitutes out of economic necessity and 27% thought that the majority of women in the sex trade are homeless.
• 57% of all interviewees believed that the majority of women in prostitution experienced some type of childhood sexual abuse.
• 25% of the men had encountered a woman in the sex industry who they believe was forced into prostitution.

Men’s Acknowledgement of Harms to Women in Prostitution:

•  49% of interviewees said that prostitution exploits a woman’s sexuality. 42% stated that prostitution causes both psychological and physical damage.
•  13% had seen an act of violence perpetrated against a women in prostitution.
•  80% of interviewees thought that prostitution had an overall negative impact on communities. They specifically mentioned the negative impacts of increasing crime (29%), being a bad influence on children (28%), and devaluing the neighborhood (24%).
•  21% of interviewees did not think that it was possible for women in prostitution to be raped.
• 75% of men had observed a woman in prostitution with a pimp, and 40% had bought a woman in prostitution who they identified as having a pimp or manager. 27% of interviewees described the prostitute-pimp relationship as exploitative and harmful.

Crime and Legality:

• Estimates suggest that “for every john arrested for attempting to buy sex, there are up to 50 women in prostitution arrested.”

These statistics were gathered from a 2008 Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation report titled, “Deconstructing The Demand for Prostitution: Preliminary Insights From Interviews With Chicago Men Who Purchase Sex,” and Melissa Farley’s research with the Prostitution Research and Education Organization.

14 Johns Charged in NYC sex-trafficking case

By Jennifer Peltz, Associated Press

NEW YORK (WTW) — Fourteen men were charged Monday with buying sex as part of an unusually wide-ranging sex-trafficking case against a Pennsylvania father and son accused of sending prostitutes to New York City.

The alleged customers — including financial brokers, real estate executives, a restaurateur, a ticket broker, a doctor — turned themselves in and were arraigned on misdemeanor charges of patronizing a prostitute. Two pleaded guilty.

Their arrests came a week after the Manhattan district attorney’s office unveiled the case, which also encompasses charges against six livery car drivers accused of recruiting passengers as clients for the prostitutes.

While the district attorney’s office has pursued a growing number of cases in recent years against men accused of hiring prostitutes, it’s somewhat unusual for such arrests to happen en masse as part of a larger investigation into an alleged pimp or madam. In this case, prosecutors used wiretaps and follow-the-money techniques more often used in business-crime cases.

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said prosecutors wanted to get at the demand for prostitution, as well as its providers, in a “top-to-bottom approach to dismantling a sex trafficking business.”

“There is a misperception that prostitution is always a victimless crime — in fact, as in this case, it can involve the physical or psychological coercion of women,” he said in a statement.

The father and son, Vincent George Sr., 55, and Vincent George Jr., 33, housed the women in Allentown, Pa., and dispatched them nightly to Manhattan prosecutors said. The women made as much as $500,000 a year for the Georges but got only a few dollars a night themselves and were threatened with beatings when they didn’t bring in as much money as expected or were late to check in, according to the district attorney’s office.

The livery drivers got paid to net customers and negotiate prices, prosecutors said.

The Georges pleaded not guilty earlier this month, as did the livery drivers, who are charged with promoting prostitution. The father’s lawyer has said he’s dumbfounded by the allegations.

Most of the men arrested Monday also pleaded not guilty. But two, physician Anthony Napolitano and upscale burger joint proprietor Zachary Zaitzeff, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a violation. They were sentenced to five days of community service and $250 fines apiece.

Both declined to speak in court. Napolitano’s lawyer declined to comment afterward; Zaitzeff’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to an email message.

All the men were released without bail.

The other defendants are Dale Araten, who told an investigator he works as a concierge for an entertainment company; Ben Corr; Richard Farrell; Justin Gorenkoff, who runs an online ticket brokerage; Michael P Haughton; Edward Kamenitzer, who owns a real estate firm; Nick Koutsoulidakis; Robert J. Krioski; Brian Lee, also known as Phi Hoang; Thomas Madden, Constantine Nicolaidis, a musician; and Paul Taboada, a stockbroker and investment banker. Their ages weren’t immediately available.

The district attorney’s office brought 107 patronizing-prostitutes cases last year, up from 65 the year before. The number looks poised to rise again this year, with 90 arrests as of the end of March.

Source: http://lohud.us/JPTbuA

Halogen TV Recognizes Stop Human Trafficking NY, Raises Awareness through TV Show

One of Halogen TV’s most critically-acclaimed shows is the Emmy nominated Tainted Love.   This groundbreaking series brings awareness to the catastrophe of sex trafficking, and gives viewers information on ways they can help bring it to an end.  The second season of Tainted Love will air this fall.

This season of Tainted Love will take viewers across the world to the cities of Delhi and Mumbai in India; and several popular sex trafficking destinations in the US such as Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Portland to examine the cultivating problem.   Audiences will see in depth interviews with experts, compelling stories of survivors and the inspiring work of modern-day abolitionists.  Episodes will be wrapped up with a “Call to Action” piece that highlights the real life heroes fighting the tragedy every day.  

Halogen TV has dedicated a page of their website, http://halogentv.com/shows/taintedlove/tainted-love-anti-trafficking-organizations/ that lists organizations who are helping to make a difference, and the Stop Human Trafficking New York was recently added to their Anti-Human Trafficking Organization Contact List.

Some of the ways you can help Halogen TV make as many people aware of the atrocity of human trafficking include:

• Liking the Tainted Love Facebook Page (click here)
• Liking the Halogen TV Facebook Page (click here)
• Posting Facebook messages about Tainted Love on your Facebook Profile & Pages
• Following @halogentv on Twitter and retweeting about the show
• Sending out Tweets about Tainted Love on your Twitter Feeds using the hash tag #taintedlove
• Forwarding emails about Tainted Love to your family, friends, and colleagues

Tainted Love airs Sunday nights at 10pm EST on Halogen TV.  To find where to watch in your area visit www.halogentv.com/FindHalogen.

***

Halogen TV (www.halogentv.com) is a socially-conscious entertainment network that tells the stories of amazing people who are making the world a better place to live.  Our mission is to encourage viewers to “be the change” they want to see in the world, and our programming not only highlights pop-culture and eco-friendly issues, but sheds light on social injustices and inequalities that include the war in Uganda, domestic sex trafficking and other global issues.

 

Village Voice Cashes in on Kids: Backpage.com Fuels Sex Trade

Via Change.org:
Sex trafficking of girls and boys on Backpage.com, owned by Village Voice Media, is becoming a disturbing trend.  A Georgia man was arrested for pimping two 17-year-old girls around the Nashville area. Detectives responded to a suspicious ad on Backpage.com and drove to a motel. There, they found the teens and their 37-year-old pimp, as well as a laptop computer, likely used for the online advertising. Just four days prior to that, four people in Denver were arrested for forcing a teen girl into prostitution. They also advertised her sexual services, including semi-nude pictures, on Backpage. And last year, a South Dakota couple was arrested for selling underage girls for sex on …. wait for it … Backpage.com yet again.

Village Voice Media has a moral responsibility to ensure that young girls and boys aren’t being abused in the commercial sex industry with help from their website.  Now, a rising movement of people of many faiths and backgrounds, motivated by their shared moral convictions, are taking action to end this practice.  Please join us in demanding that Village Voice Media – Backpage.com’s parent company – stop selling ads that others use to sell minors on Backpage.com by shutting down the Adult section of the website.

Sign the Petition NOW!

Read the bombshell article by Nick Kristof in the New York Times, who profiled a survivor of child sex trafficking who was sold on Backpage.com repeatedly, and on the horrifying news of a Long Island gang who abducted and abused a 15-year old girl, selling her for sex via Backpage.com, according to court documents and press accounts.

Tags: backpage.com, kristoff, petition

Watch The Whistleblower at the Athena Film Festival

The Whistleblower
Director: Larysa Kondracki
Feature: 2010, [Canada], English, 112 minutes
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Monica Bellucci and Vanessa Redgrave

Screening: Friday, Feb. 10, 2011, 6PM
Miller Theatre 2960 Broadway at 116th St.
Buy Tickets

Producer Celine Rattray and Tanya Domi (journalist who broke the story) who is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs, Harriman Institute Affiliate will participate in a q and a with Columbia University film professor Annette Insdorf following the screening.

Synopsis: This gripping expose of human trafficking tells the story of Kathryn, an American police officer who takes a job as a UN peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia. After initial success in prosecuting a case of domestic violence, Kathryn is offered a job in the United Nations Gender Affairs Office, working with the police to investigate rape and domestic abuse. But her expectations of helping to rebuild a devastated country and protect women from violence are routed when she uncovers a ring of UN officials and private contractors smuggling young women in from the Ukraine to service a back-woods brothel. Against a sordid and corrupt backdrop, Rachael Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave give tension filled, dramatic performances in the directorial debut of Canadian filmmaker Larysa Kondracki.

Watch the trailer:

Join Us to Protest Backpage.com’s Facilitation of Sex Trafficking!

Join Us
Wednesday, November 16, 2011

To Protest Backpage.com’s Facilitation of Sex Trafficking
In Front of Its New York City Headquarters

The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) in partnership with Prostitution Research and Education (PRE) and co-sponsors that include Equality Now, Soroptimist International of the Americas, Apne Aap, Alicia Keys, Aboriginal Women’s Action Network, Breaking Free, Ambassador Mark Lagon, Frederick Douglass Family Foundation, Temple Committee Against Human Trafficking, A Call to Men, along with many others, will hold a protest in front of the Village Voice building at the offices of Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC, owner of Backpage.com. We will bring attention to their corporation’s facilitation of and profiting from sex trafficking.

“Backpage is now the leading online facilitator of sex trafficking,” says Norma Ramos, Executive Director of CATW. Since August, 51 Attorneys General have called upon Backpage to cease its facilitation of sex trafficking. In doing so, they have cited more than 50 cases across 22 U.S. states in the past three years that involve Backpage’s facilitation of sex trafficking.

It is estimated that Backpage generates upwards of $2 million per month largely attributable to its functioning as a virtual red light district for pimps/traffickers and johns. Currently, Backpage is facilitating sex trafficking in at least 10 other countries. Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC, owner of Backpage, is displaying a reckless disregard for human rights. Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC could act to create a sex trafficking free Internet by no longer hosting prostitution ads through Backpage.

We invite you to join CATW, PRE and our co-sponsors to hold Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC accountable for its facilitation of and profiting from the rank exploitation of others. We call upon Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC to engage in corporate responsibility by ceasing to host ads that facilitate sex trafficking on Backpage.

When: Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 4:00 – 7: 00PM

Where: The Village Voice, 36 Cooper Square, Manhattan

Contact: SAndar@catwinternational.org

For protest updates, follow @CATWIntl on Twitter and
“Like” Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) on Facebook.

Snared Into Prostitution at 13, and Now Given a Chance for a Clean Legal Slate

We helped pass the NYS law to recognize minors who perform sex for money as not criminals but victims and now, justice is being served – read the story below for more details.

 

From the New York Times – Sept 20, 2011 – http://tinyurl.com/4xu6s5z

The summer she was 13, before she went into eighth grade, the child who would come to be known on police blotters under a half-dozen names began to stand on sidewalks in the Bronx and wait for men in cars to give her money for sex. Call her Leni Johnson.
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Her previous employment had been bagging groceries for tips in a Pathmark, wearing the uniform of the Catholic middle school she attended in the Bronx. That summer, in 2001, she was outfitted by a 21-year-old man who paid her less than she had made at the supermarket and brought her to Hunts Point.

“He gave me the little shorts to wear, and the little tank top thing to wear,” said Ms. Johnson, now 22, who asked to be identified pseudonymously. “He told me: ‘Just stand right there. When the car pulls up, just tell them, “You want to have a good time?” You tell them the price, then you go and do whatever.’ ”

For the next eight years, she was sold by men to men. She went through spells when her young body was bringing in $1,600 to $2,500 a night. All of it went to the pimps, she said. They gave her stiletto-heeled shoes, and Ecstasy, and two babies, and beatings with a stick for looking at other pimps.

On Wednesday, she will be part of a small, vital revolution in New York State. Her lawyers from the Legal Aid Society and prosecutors from the district attorney’s office in the Bronx will jointly ask a judge to overturn her convictions on prostitution charges before she had reached the age of consent. A law that took effect in August 2010 recognizes that children and minors who perform sex for money are not criminals but victims, and says that they should not bear the residual burden of convictions.

If her request is successful, as is likely, Ms. Johnson will become the third woman in the state to have used the new statute to erase prostitution convictions, and the first United States citizen to do so, said Kate Mogulescu, a Legal Aid lawyer who is representing her.

How many girls are involved in similar situations? In 2007, the state commissioned a survey of every social services agency that had contact with minors in trouble.

In New York City, the study found 399 children who were first “commercially sexually exploited” at age 12 or 13, and 922 at 14 or 15. The state and city have made reforms to move young people like them out of the criminal justice system and to help them with social services.

“The majority of the girls out there had started when they were young,” Ms. Johnson said. “They find a little bit of happiness in the game.”

That means there are vast numbers of women who were arrested as minors on prostitution charges.

“This is a landmark moment,” said Steve Banks, the attorney in chief at Legal Aid. “There are thousands of women who will benefit over time. It removes a blot on their lives.”

Ms. Johnson lives in Georgia and works in a Waffle House, supporting her daughter, who is not yet 3. (An older son lives with Ms. Johnson’s mother in the Bronx.) She hopes to get a second job, Ms. Johnson said, but the first question on a supermarket application was, “Have you ever been convicted?”

The court hearing on Wednesday will address three convictions for prostitution in 2006, when she was 17. Her pimp, who is under investigation and whom she did not want to identify, had given her false identification that showed she was over 18.

She grew up in the Bronx, the eldest of three daughters born to a hard-working single mother who ran her household with rules and attention that you might expect would keep a child from going astray.

As she tells her story now, a decade later, of the headstrong, damaged, bright, pretty girl that she was, it is hard to grasp all the forces that brought her to a life on the streets. In 2001, a few months before she first left home, her father, who did not live with the family but with whom she was close, was murdered in New Jersey. She cherished the attention of the older boys and men.

It came to an end in 2008, she said, when she learned that she was pregnant and was expecting a girl.

“There was just no way she could be around that,” Ms. Johnson said. “Not having it.”

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com | Twitter: @jimdwyernyt