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:

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.

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

A former sportscaster turned-doctor has admitted inappropriately touching a 14-year-old girl despite earlier denying the allegations.

Dr Marvell Scott, from New York, pleaded guilty today to a misdemeanour charge of endangering the welfare of a child – who was a runaway child prostitute.

He said he only learned her age after the encounter in June 2008 which allegedly took place at his Manhattan apartment.

At the time the charges were first brought against him he said: ‘The whole thing was a hoax. They’re pursuing a case that has no proven evidence for it and they’re relying on the testimonies of criminals and liars.’

His case will be closed without jail time or probation if he does 20 days of community service.

Lawyers Benjamin Brafman and John Pappalardo noted that 38-year-old Scott has always said he was not guilty of rape, which was the initial top charge.

According to his lawyers, Scott was the victim of a shakedown by two prostitutes and a pimp.

Scott left his job as a weekend sportscaster at WABC-TV in summer 2009 to pursue his medical career as a specialist in sports medicine.

A WCBS reporter tweeted about the case: ‘Marvel Scott admits inviting three troubled runaways to his Manhattan apartment in June 2008. Gave DNA sample one year ago.

The girl, apparently a runaway from Albany, and a 16-year-old friend were out of cash, and said they met a man in Times Square who ‘said he could help them make money’.

Prosecutors say that they then ran into Scott, who agreed to pay for sex with the girls, taking them to his West 47th Street home, according to Newsday.

The 14-year-old allegedly fled, ‘but when Scott demanded his money back, the 16-year-old talked the younger girl into going back’, according to the Daily News.

It is then alleged that the older girl stayed in the bedroom while Scott and the younger girl had sex so the girl wouldn’t be afraid, prosecutors said.

Further, prosecutors claim that Scott called the pimp after the incident to ask for the 14-year-old again.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026721/Sportscaster-turned-doctor-pleads-guilty-inappropriately-touching-child.html#ixzz1VtHszeXZ

For more information about how demand shapes prostitution and enables human trafficking go here or here

This year, the Department of State annual report on human trafficking released a ranking for the second year in a row which included the  United States and an evaluation of national efforts to combat and prosecute human trafficking, and protect those who have fallen victim. You can read the State Department’s full report here.