Friday, November 20, 2009

Exhibit unmasks horror of human trafficking


Dear Friends:

This article discusses the art exhibit "Journey" which depicts the plight of sexually trafficked women. To view some photos of the exhibit follow the link provided below.

Abolition!
Lisa


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33913920/ns/us_news-giving/

Exhibit unmasks horror of human trafficking British actress' new art exhibit unmasks the horrors of human trafficking
By Marcia Stepanek
Contribute Magazine
updated 3:47 p.m. ET, Fri., Nov . 13, 2009

NEW YORK - A filthy bedroom, pungent with the smell of sex and cheap perfume, is recreated for the curious. There is peeling wallpaper, soiled condom wrappers littering the floor and a dirty sink filled with half-used lipstick tubes and cigarette butts. Along one wall, a stained bed heaves under the weight of invisible, moving bodies engaged in rough sex.

The scene is part of British actress Emma Thompson’s controversial and powerful new public art exhibit to raise awareness of international sex trafficking. The exhibit is housed inside a chain of seven railroad boxcars, arranged as if waiting to depart at any moment, their exteriors slathered with degrading graffiti meant to stigmatize the captives portrayed inside.

Called "Journey," the exhibit, which opened in New York this week and runs through Sunday, attempts to unmask the denial that keeps the bustling sex-slave industry hidden in plain sight. [Long Island is a region where trafficking is rampant, curators say.]

Thompson says that she, herself, woke up to the issue after being introduced to a woman who had been a sex slave at a massage parlor that Thompson passed each day on her way to the London subway. "I was devastated that it was happening so close to where I lived and that I was doing nothing about it," she said.

Thompson is chair of the
Helen Bamber Foundation , a London-based philanthropic foundation formed in 2005 to help victims of cruelty. It was through Bamber – an 84-year-old woman who was on one of the first rehabilitation teams to visit the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 — that Thompson first heard the story of Elena, a young Moldovan woman trafficked into Britain at the age of 19. Elena’s story inspired Journey.

I caught up with Thompson and Bamber Foundation co-founder Michael Korzinski at the exhibit. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. "Journey" leaves Sunday for Madrid. New York City is the exhibit’s only U.S. stop.

What was it about Elena’s story that first inspired you to take action?

Thompson: I think it was simply how easily traffickers are able to prey on victims of tragedy. Elena’s father had died and she’d gone to work in the market selling vegetables and she was very unhappy about her life. She had to leave school.

A woman in the market came up to her and invited her home, then offered to get her a nice job as a doctor’s receptionist in London. She told Elena that she’d be able to save money, send it back home, and go back to school, so Elena handed over her passport and ended up in London six weeks later, only to be told that she owed them 50,000 British pounds ($82,900) to pay for her journey to the U.K. and that she would have to earn that money by working as a prostitute.

When Elena said no, that’s when the beating started. She was put into solitary confinement for two weeks. Then they told her they would hurt her family. I think it’s very important for people to understand that girls who are forced into this kind of slavery have been tortured, beaten, raped and threatened. It’s not the personal threats that really carry the weight; it’s the threats of harm to these girls’ family members that eventually breaks them down.

Elena is quoted as saying that prior to her confinement, she’d never seen a man naked; while in confinement, she says, “there were never less than 40 men a day.” Then she got arrested in a raid and was thrown into jail, where British authorities treated her badly. Eventually, she told trafficking investigators her story but it was clear that by then, she was deeply, emotionally scarred.

Thompson: When sex slaves are thrown into jail they usually can’t speak English; the vast majority of the men and women trafficked come from Eastern Europe and they have no papers because they are illegals. In the detention centers, they are not helped in any way and then they are deported.

But wouldn’t deportation be a form of escape for many of these people?

Thompson: When Elena came to the Bamber Foundation, she wasn't in very good shape. She'd gone home but she wasn't herself anymore, and couldn't face her mother or her family. She was someone deeply ashamed, someone utterly stigmatized by what she was doing and what had happened to her. She was someone who, in her own mind, was not literally worth helping.

Why did you choose this method to tell the story of human trafficking?

Thompson: Because there have recently been some very good documentaries and films about the problem. There’s a brilliant film called Lilja Forever and a great TV series called "Sex Traffic" that is pertinent. Unfortunately, though, I think sometimes when you present things too graphically, people get frightened and they can’t cope with the suffering. I wanted to find a way that I could engage people without scaring them off. I wanted to use shipping containers because trafficking is all about moving people about. I designed one of the containers and we had some very high-profile artists each taking one of the other cars to fill out the experience.

How are people reacting to "Journey"?

Thompson:
When it opened in London in September, I’d say 99.9 percent of the people were just appalled; they didn’t know what to do. People would come out of the exhibit outraged. Some of them, though, come out of it feeling very hopeless about it all. At the moment, we’re trying to figure out what ripples out and what impact this exhibit does have in the communities we visit. Traveling this piece around, of course, is one of the most important things you can do to explain what this is and what sex trafficking does to people. What really struck me was a young man, maybe about 24 or so, who came up to me the other day to ask me how someone is supposed to recover from something like this. He said it must take a very long time. It's that kind of awareness that we're after.

One part of the exhibit conveys the denial of some of the men who buy sex. One of them, interviewed on tape, says he believes he's actually doing himself and the girl he patronizes a favor. "When we're done, she goes on with her life and I go on with mine," he says. He seems to have no idea that the women he's been with are in captivity, being held against their will.

Thompson: I don’t think the average person knows and no one wants to know about suffering; they have got enough going on in their own lives. You have to find ways to engage people without having to depress them. What people want is to be offered a chance to do something useful, and there isn’t a single person I’ve met who doesn’t want to do something about this problem after having see the exhibit.

Korzinski: Some of the psychological impacts of the girls who a forced into captivity this way, after a while, are apathy, memory loss, insomnia, physical pain, severe depression, listlessness and insomnia. It's not unusual to see some of these girls simply acting on auto-pilot, as if the life inside them is over.

What can the average person do?

Thompson: If you’re someone who buys sex, you can go to the madam and demand to see the girls’ passports. Anyone can report any incidences of suburban households that may have a great slew of young girls walking in and out of the front door for no apparent reason. If you’re a store owner and some girl comes to you for condoms and tissues and doesn’t speak English, you can ask her if she’s all right. You can, mostly, just open your eyes and your ears. It’s time for everybody to look at what’s going on around them and to take responsibility, to proclaim that it is not okay to sell human beings, for whatever reason, and that this kind of thing should not be allowed to continue. [Friends, here's where this breaks down a bit. If human beings should not be for sale for any reason, then if you're someone who buys sex, you can stop buying sex! -- Lisa]

For more on human trafficking, see
Emma Thompson’s 2008 video on YouTube about her creation of the exhibit. For a global perspective on the problem, here’s a U.N. video made earlier this year.
Read more!

Friday, November 13, 2009

Publicly, a whole new lewdness



Dear Friends:

Here's a new term for you: secondhand porn. It's coming for us.

Abolition!

Lisa


Publicly, a whole new lewdness
Everywhere you look, porn is suddenly inescapable
By Monica HesseWashington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 12, 2009


Quick poll. Watching porn while on public transportation is:

A. Acceptable.
B. Not acceptable.

On a recent cross-country trip from Los Angeles, Jana Matthews thought she'd lucked out when her friendly seatmate cued up a cartoon on his laptop. Her four children were enthralled; she hoped listening in might keep them occupied. Then the cartoon characters started doing things that cartoon characters should not be doing. Naked things. Naked, noisy things, unfettered by the restraints of human anatomy because the participants were, after all, hand-drawn.

After unsuccessfully trying to divert her kids' attention, Matthews asked the guy whether he would mind watching something else. After a little grumbling, he put on some headphones and turned the screen away. But he was still watching. She knew he was still watching.

Porn vibes. In public. Flooding the recycled air of the plane.

The thing that skeeved out Matthews, an English professor, is that she'd had such a pleasant conversation with Porn Man before the plane took off. They'd talked about his Ivy League classes, about the math conference he'd just attended. "I had a significant amount of information about him," Matthews says. They'd developed a little travel-size friendship. Then came the porn. And she was trapped.

It's practically a human rite of passage to have a roommate -- a slobby college one -- who loves Jenna Jameson. This, we know how to deal with. ("Dude, turn it off. My lab group's coming over.")

But the increasing popularity of laptops and handheld devices, and the
prevalence of wireless Internet access, means there's a greater chance of becoming a bystander to a complete stranger's viewing proclivities. Like being exposed to the cigarette smoke of a nicotine addict on the street, people are inhaling secondhand smut.

"To each his own is my policy," says Debbie Shatz, a consultant who lives in Northern Virginia. That's why, with rare exception, she's remained unfazed every time she's encountered porn on planes, choosing to quietly avert her eyes and ignore it, unless ignoring it becomes impossible.

Something in the air

Naturally, flight attendants, the front line of defense for any in-flight high jinks, have experience with this issue.

"We don't walk through the cabin and give passengers a thumbs up and thumbs down" on what they're watching, says Steve Schembs, a Washington-based flight attendant and local union officer. But when he notices that something is disturbing other passengers, he intervenes. "I've had 100 percent compliance," Schembs says. "I have never had anyone say, 'I refuse to stop. I must watch this dirty movie.' "

"You want to create the least amount of conflict possible at 30,000 feet," says Renee Foss, the communications chairman for the Association of Flight Attendants, and a 24-year veteran of the skies. "Maybe a free snack box would give the passenger something better to do."

Both flight attendants say instances of public porn are rare.

Last fall, some airlines announced they would work on filtering in-flight Internet access to prevent the surfing of inappropriate content (dirty DVDs brought on by passengers, however, would be nearly impossible to filter). But this secondhand smut can also happen on the ground. On buses. In gyms. In movie theaters.

"At a Wizards game!" says Dan Merrill, who works in accounting in Washington. "We were at a Wizards game and this guy was watching porn on his iPhone!" Odd on many levels, but there the guy was, kicking back, watching the sport, watching the other sport, just as he would at home.

Perhaps this is the real problem: the increasingly blurred boundary between public and private.
If we are so accustomed to burying our noses in tiny screens, carrying our entertainment in and out of the house, perhaps people are simply getting confused as to where they are.

Could simple public service announcements clear this up?

ATTENTION: As similar as this basketball arena may appear to your apartment, they are not, in fact, the same place. For further evidence, please ask yourself the following question: Does my apartment typically contain 20,000 complete strangers? If the answer is "No," then you are in a public arena. You should not be watching porn.

Those afflicted with secondhand porn say it's not that they oppose adult entertainment. The trouble was knowing that they couldn't escape it, not until the plane landed or the Metro doors opened.

That, and the general haze of gross that seemed to descend on the public space, the filmy yuckiness that made them wish the sprinkler system would spontaneously activate.

That, and the feeling that came with knowing exactly what was on their neighbor's mind.

"It was like when a friend tells you too many details about their personal life," says Jess Mortimer, who spent an eternity stuck in a Beltway traffic jam behind some guy watching really acrobatic stuff on his SUV's television. (This type of secondhand viewing is prevalent enough to have earned its own terminology: Drive-By Porn. Several states have passed or proposed legislation dedicated to preventing it.)

"At some point . . . we've completely lost the ability to tell when it's socially appropriate and when it's not," says Matthews, the mother of four. At her last job, teaching at a university in Pennsylvania, "I don't think there was ever a time when I would do research at the library and someone wasn't using a public terminal to watch porn. I'm trying to do research and you're sitting there watching your . . . porn."

Especially when the library was full, she was never quite sure how to deal with the situation. What's the etiquette here? Shoot the offender dirty looks? Drag in a defenseless librarian? Innocently ask the guy how much longer his studies would take?

Or just make the best of a gross situation?

We're all adults here

Sandi Benedetti, a bartender in Northeast Washington, was catching some extra sleep on a long morning Metro ride when a guy in a business suit took the seat next to her -- the only one available on the rush-hour train.

"He sits down, reaches into this leather bag, gets his laptop, and suddenly I'm hearing Ah Ah Ah Ah AhAhAhAh!" She tried to ignore it, but the volume was loud enough for other passengers to hear it, too.
"The guy in front of us turns back and glares at me! Like he thinks I'm with this guy! And then the woman across the aisle, too."

She thought about saying something, or circling her finger at her temple in the universal crazy gesture -- anything to demonstrate that she had no part in this guy's morning wakeup call. But Benedetti is an adventurous gal, and as the train chugged on she began to ask herself when a bizarre event like this might happen again. "I was already being blamed for the porn anyway, so I figured I'd just play along."

She leaned into her seatmate and started watching.

"Dude smiles at me," she says, "and then we both just watch together. Stop before mine, he packs up the computer and gets off. We never said a word."

Just two consenting adults, on their way to work.
Read more!

Newark, New York targeted in federal human trafficking awareness ad campaign

Dear Friends:

This article emphasizes trafficking of persons across international borders. Please do not forget that trafficking victims are also frequently trafficked within their country of origin.

Abolition!

Lisa


Newark, New York targeted in federal human trafficking awareness ad campaign
By The Associated Press
November 10, 2009, 5:15PM

Immigrants smuggled from West Africa lived in a two-family house in East Orange and were forced to work without pay at hair-braiding salons, authorities said.

NEWARK — Fourteen cities are being targeted in a new campaign aimed at alerting people about human trafficking, federal immigration officials have announced.

The "Hidden in Plain Sight" initiative, sponsored by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, features billboards highlighting "the horrors and the prevalence of human trafficking," which the agency says is equivalent to "modern-day slavery."

The words "Hidden in Plain Sight" are displayed on the advertisements with a toll-free number people can call to report situations where they believe people are being sexually exploited or forced to work against their will.

Among cities included in the new campaign are Atlanta; Boston; Dallas; Detroit; Los Angeles; Miami; Philadelphia; Newark; New Orleans; New York; St. Paul, Minn.; San Antonio; San Francisco and Tampa, Fla.

Bruce Foucart, an ICE special agent in charge of New England, said officials hope the billboards persuade residents to report suspected cases to ICE or local law enforcement.

"It's difficult to identify victims, and it's difficult for them to tell their stories," said Foucart.

About 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked each year around the world and about 17,500 of them end up in the United States, according to ICE. Immigration officials say the victims are lured from their homes with false promises of well-paying jobs but are trafficked into the commercial sex trade, domestic servitude or forced labor.

Foucart said victims who cooperate with law enforcement are offered temporary status and can later apply to stay in the U.S. permanently.

Jozefina Lantz, director of New Americans services at Lutheran Social Services in Worcester, Mass., welcomed the new campaign and said the public is generally unaware that human trafficking is occurring near their homes.

"Often the victims get mistaken for undocumented immigrants," said Lantz. "It's the not same because these people were abducted from their homes and forced into trafficking."

Lantz said her group has recently helped trafficking victims from Africa and South America.
Read more!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Afghan girls burn themselves to escape marriage

Dear Friends:

As many of you know, we sometimes circulate news of egregious human rights abuses and harmful cultural practices that affect women, thus I'm forwarding you the article below. It describes the terrifying practice of self-immolation whereby young girls and women set themselves on fire -- usually out of the utter hopelessness and desperation that is created by the abusive conditions they find themselves living in. It appears that many of the females who carry out this desperate act are child brides, who after their forced marriages are treated as little more than household slaves and baby factories.

Abolition!

Lisa


Afghan girls burn themselves to escape marriage
Posted: Thursday, October 29, 2009 12:04 PM
Filed Under: Kabul, Afghanistan
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Correspondent

HERAT, Afghanistan – We watched a teenage girl die last Friday.

Seventeen-year-old Shirin had been brought to the Herat Regional Hospital Burns Unit a few days before we met her. Ninety percent of her body was covered in third-degree burns.

Her mother-in-law said Shirin had burned herself by accident. The girl was preparing a meal in the kitchen but somehow confused cooking gasoline with petrol, she said.

But Dr. Mohamed Aref Jalali, the director of the burns unit, said Shirin told him in private that she had set herself on fire deliberately after fighting with her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law.

Many girls in Afghanistan think self-immolation is the best solution for family problems, according to Jalali.


"[For these girls], it’s no good to solve the problem with the father-in-law, with the mother-in-law," said the doctor. "They think self-immolation will solve the problem."

It’s a "solution" that appears to be a major problem in Afghanistan, particularly among young women between the ages 13 and 25.

In the first seven months of this year, medical staff at the Herat’s burns unit – the only one of its kind in the entire country – said they have seen 51 cases of female self-immolation. Only 13 have survived.

The practice comes from Iran, where many Afghan refugees had fled to during the decade-long war with the Soviet Union (1979-1989) and the era of mujahedeen fighting that followed in the 1990s, said Jalali. But its popularity has spread among Afghan women, often from poor, uneducated backgrounds, where the tradition of child or forced marriages runs strong.

"The forced marriage is the best reason and the important reason, and it starts from the economic problem," said Jalali.

Often in arranged marriages, women are viewed in very stark terms.

"She is here only to wash, to clean, to give baby … and nothing more," said Marie-Jose Brunel, a French volunteer nurse at the burns unit who was full of Gallic warmth and purposeful seriousness. "If they have no freedom, no possibility to study, to be considered like nothing, it’s very, very difficult."

Domestic violence

Shirin was married two years ago when she was 15 years old.

But another patient we found at the hospital, down the hall from Shirin, was Rezagul. Skinny and illiterate, the 13-year-old was married at 11 to a man who was almost 20 years older. He was abusive, she told us, beating her whenever she failed to do her housework. So did her in-laws. "My cruel sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and husband … they beat me," she said.

Out of frustration and homesickness for her own family, Rezagul took drastic action.

"I was in very bad condition," she recalled. "I poured gasoline on myself and set myself on fire. I didn’t want to be alive." The burns covered the lower half of her body.

It took several months for her skin to heal properly and she was currently back at the clinic because of chronic kidney pain. Jalali said he would need to finish reconstructive surgery on Rezagul but with physical therapy she would recover nicely.

On the day we visited, Rezagul looked well-adjusted and almost happy. She was no longer married. Her father had welcomed her back home. She was excited about starting to go to school for the first time in her life.

In fact, with her burns covered up, Rezagul looked the picture of health as Brunel, the nurse, teased her – a testament to the success of the burns unit.

Filling a critical void

Brunel, who is usually based in the south of France and volunteers her time at the clinic through the French non-governmental organization HumaniTerra International, has been working with the burn unit’s senior medical team since 2003.

In fact, she was instrumental in starting up the unit – originally as part of the main hospital with only a handful of beds and no trained staff – after a meeting with then-governor of Herat, Ismael Khan, who emphasized the need for a place to treat burns.

In October 2007, after years of fundraising, planning, and training, Brunel and her Afghan colleagues opened the treatment center we were visiting.

On average, it receives 600 to 700 burn patients a year, the majority of whom are victims of domestic accidents, mostly children. In fact, one ward had dozens of infants – most of them with various limbs wrapped up in gauze and bandages, usually from boiling water that had spilled over from a kettle.

Still, a significant portion of the patients are victims of self-immolation – at least 10 percent, according to statistics kept by the burn unit. "In 2003, when we started, we estimate 350 [self-immolation] cases a year for Herat," recalled Brunel. The number has decreased – at least for those victims from Herat Province – after the hospital and the local government launched a public awareness campaign.

"We have seen decreases," said Brunel. "And I hope with the second year of [the public awareness] campaign, it’s better again."

But they need funding, and time. While the incidents of self-immolation from within the province may be on the decline, cases from outside Herat are on the rise.

"It’s going to the other provinces," said Jalali. "Now we have patients from Farah Province, from Nimruz, from Badgis, from Helmand."

A lost life

During our visit, we checked back on Shirin every now and then. She had long ago slipped into a delirious state and was murmuring nonstop. Her mother, Hanifa Ahmadi, hovered around her, occasionally stroking her hair.

Ahmadi – a thin, handsome woman who looks more Persian than Afghan – said she didn’t understand why her daughter had set herself on fire. "Shirin is always a happy girl and gets along with everyone," she said.

Ahmadi was convinced that Shirin would soon recover and leave the hospital, but Jalali was unequivocal.

"She doesn’t have long. Maybe she has one hour, an hour-and-a-half," he said. "It’s unfortunate, but we can’t do anything. Not with 90 percent burns all over the body, third-degree burns."

Brunel agreed. "We can do nothing except … we give dignity," she said. She and an Afghan orderly had taken turns trying to make Shirin as comfortable as possible – giving her a tube to make her breathing easier, feeding her, or just straightening the blankets that covered her burnt body.

The end came later than Jalali had predicted, but come it did. Six hours after we first met Shirin, she died.

Members of her family rushed past us in the hallway, her mother, then her uncle, an aunt, and then her husband – he looked more confused than grief-stricken. They piled into Shirin’s room, wailing, walking back and forth around her bed, hands wringing; even the mother-in-law, with whom the young girl had been fighting just days before.

We stepped away quietly, gathering our things, preparing to leave and trying not to intrude.

But as we walked down the hallway one last time, I ducked my head into the room where Rezagul lay. She looked up, her eyes aglow, and she waved.

The picture of health.
Read more!

Joan Smith: Make no mistake: sex trafficking is real

Dear Friends:

With this article we turn again to the debate about sex trafficking in the UK. You will recall from previous posts that an intense debate was touched off by Nick Davies' Oct 20 article alleging that sex trafficking in the UK scarcely exists and that it is mostly the wild fabrication of deluded and malicious Christians and feminists (see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated). For my observations on his aspersions see:
http://www.crossactionnews.com/articles/view/apologists-of-sex-industry-attack-uk-trafficking-statistics-to-protect-male-right-to-purchase-sex-.

The silver lining in this has been the incredibly insightful and no-holds-barred rebuttals to Davies piece, which have been getting in the mainstream press. For interested readers see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/20/sex-trafficking-inquiry-nick-davies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/21/sex-trafficking-newsnight-denis-macshane?commentpage=2&commentposted=1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/25/catherine-bennett-prostitution-trafficking

Today, I'm happy to bring you another in this series of responses; this one by columnist and novelist Joan Smith. She hits the nail on the head with her observation that all the "debate" connects directly with the consideration of a bill in the British Parliament that would criminalize men who purchase sex from trafficked/controlled women.

And I leave you with this powerful foretaste of her rebuttal:

The vilification we're experiencing is a tactic which the great anti-slavery campaigner, William Wilberforce, would have recognised. His critics claimed on different occasions (depending on the sympathies of their audience) that slavery was a necessary evil, slaves were not badly treated and abolitionists were just a bunch of religious bigots: "pious divines, tender-hearted poetesses, and short-sighted politicians" according to one polemic published in 1789. Three years later, a pamphlet claimed that each slave family had "a snug little house and garden, and plenty of pigs and poultry". Wilberforce didn't believe a word of it. And when I'm told sex trafficking isn't really a problem in this country, neither do I.

Abolition!

Lisa

October 29, 2009
Joan Smith: Make no mistake: sex trafficking is real
The debate is between those stuck in the 1960s and those of us with a modern view of rights


Earlier this week, the FBI released the results of a nationwide operation against child sex traffickers. After identifying children who were being sold for sex on the internet, in casinos, on the streets and at truck stops, they arrested 642 people and rescued 47 victims. The operation was carried out over three days last week, just as British journalists, academics and cheerleaders for legalised prostitution were arguing that sex trafficking in this country is mostly a myth.

"Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution," declared one headline. I wondered where it looked, given that British prisons are now home to such notorious traffickers as Luan Plakici and Viktoras Larcenko. In the debate that followed, I was struck by the nasty personal tone of much of the rhetoric, which dismissed campaigners against sex trafficking as evangelical Christians and ill-intentioned feminists. There was little mention of the international context - mainly, I suspect, because so many unimpeachable organisations are on the other side of the argument.

Since 2003, the FBI has rescued 886 child victims of sex traffickers and secured 510 convictions. According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the US is a trafficking destination for victims from other countries but "many US citizens are trafficked, usually run-away teenage girls, who are preyed on by pimps and trafficked for prostitution". Task forces identified 3,336 potential victims of human trafficking (for domestic labour as well as prostitution) by June last year.

Hillary Clinton launched the State Department annual report on human trafficking this year, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) produced its own assessment. It said that more than 21,400 victims were identified in 111 countries in 2006, but the number of convictions for trafficking was not proportionate to the extent of the problem. Two out of five countries covered by the report had not recorded a single conviction, leading UNODC's executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, to a blunt conclusion: "Either they are blind to the problem, or they are ill-equipped to deal with it."

According to the UK Human Trafficking Centre, there were 105 convictions for trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation between 1 May 2004 (when the Sexual Offences Act 2003 came into force) and 26 March 2009. Low conviction figures are being used to bolster claims that the extent of sex trafficking in the UK has been hugely exaggerated, and to discredit organisations and individuals who believe that conviction rates do not show the full picture. That's certainly the view of the Poppy Project, which runs a refuge for trafficking victims; it has received more than 1,300 referrals of women from 80 countries since 2003.

The Commons Home Affairs Committee has identified numerous reasons for the low conviction rate, including the brutality of traffickers - many victims are too frightened to testify - and the difficulty of proving trafficking offences; the authorities sometimes press alternative charges such as money laundering or false documentation. The MPs argue that "the comparatively low rate of prosecutions for trafficking ... adds to the confusion about the incidence of trafficking" and "may lead some authorities to underestimate the severity of the problem".

Here is an example of how confusion arises. Three years ago, West Midlands police trumpeted the success of an operation against alleged sex-traffickers in Birmingham, even taking Sky TV with them to film it; a police spokesman said the women had been tricked into the sex industry and were locked into a massage parlour called Cuddles each evening. Thirteen women who had EU passports were held in cells for two nights before being released; the remaining six - from Albania, Moldova, Romania and Thailand, all well-known countries of origin for trafficking - were taken to Yarl's Wood detention centre. Lawyers managed to stay their deportation and a representative of the Poppy Project was allowed to meet four of the women. Finally, 12 days after the raid, two were identified as sex-trafficking victims.

Just about everything went wrong with this operation, which is hardly surprising given that it was conducted under intense media scrutiny. The Poppy Project was not told about the raid in advance and the women were not interviewed in compliance with guidance on vulnerable or intimidated witnesses. A Birmingham man, Carl Pritchett, was jailed for two years for running a brothel and in August this year he was ordered to pay back £2m under the Proceeds of Crime Act, but specific charges of sex trafficking were never brought. The Government has now ratified the Council of Europe convention which gives suspected trafficking victims more rights, but existing figures for convictions cover a period when many potential witnesses were quickly deported.

Of course, this isn't really an argument about statistics. It's about a clause in the Policing and Crime Bill, currently being considered by the House of Lords, which would make it an offence to buy sex from anyone who is controlled for gain. Campaigners for legalised prostitution fear the testimonies of trafficking victims because they explode the notion that selling sex is a pleasant job, made risky only by its illegal status. When I hear about the "dignified living conditions" of women in the sex industry, I know the argument is more to do with ideology than figures. It's a clash between people clinging to antiquated ideas from the 1960s - that men are entitled to sex whenever they want it - and those of us with a modern view of the rights of women and children.

The vilification we're experiencing is a tactic which the great anti-slavery campaigner, William Wilberforce, would have recognised. His critics claimed on different occasions (depending on the sympathies of their audience) that slavery was a necessary evil, slaves were not badly treated and abolitionists were just a bunch of religious bigots: "pious divines, tender-hearted poetesses, and short-sighted politicians" according to one polemic published in 1789. Three years later, a pamphlet claimed that each slave family had "a snug little house and garden, and plenty of pigs and poultry". Wilberforce didn't believe a word of it. And when I'm told sex trafficking isn't really a problem in this country, neither do I.
Read more!

Teacher hired by Kyle school indicted on child porn charges

Dear Friends:

I don't often send these types of news reports--partly because they are so common. However, it is White Ribbon Against Pornography week and the scale of this offender's actions is particularly remarkable: he had a collection of 57,000 images and 1,000 videos. Presumably a substantial proportion of that collection is of child pornography (I don't know, but I think its reasonable to speculate that this offender began with adult pornography). This case shows how once this type of behavior/addiction takes hold, too much is never enough.

Abolition!

Lisa

P.S. Remember: adult pornography also feeds child sexual abuse. As Bob Peters of Morality in Media has carefully documented (
http://www.moralityinmedia.org/):

  • Perpetrators use adult pornography to groom their victims.
  • For many perpetrators there is a progression from viewing adult pornography to viewing child pornography.
  • Johns act out what they view in adult pornography with child prostitutes and pimps use adult pornography to instruct child prostitutes.
  • Children imitate behavior they view in adult pornography with other children
  • Perpetrators use adult pornography to sexually arouse themselves.
  • Addiction to adult pornography destroys marriages, and children raised in one-parent households are more likely to be sexually exploited.

Remember also, that pornography is simply recorded acts of prostitution--acts of prostitution recorded for mass consumption!

Teacher hired by Kyle school indicted on child porn charges
Stephen Wayne Sudduth resigned before he was to start work at Tobias Elementary, an official said.

By
Ricardo GándaraAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Friday, October 30, 2009

A man hired to teach fifth grade at Tobias Elementary School in Kyle — but who resigned July 20 and never started work — has been indicted on child pornography charges in what state Attorney General Greg Abbott called one of the most "disturbing, depraved and horrendous kinds of crimes imaginable."


Acting on a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, cyber crimes investigators found more than 57,000 images and 1,000 videos of children on computers at the home of Stephen Wayne Sudduth, 34, of Sealy, Abbott said. Sudduth was arrested at his home July 14 and was indicted Wednesday on 30 counts of possession of child pornography and 10 counts of promotion of child pornography in Austin County. He was employed at Nottingham Country Elementary School in the Katy Independent School District as a kindergarten teacher from 2000 to 2006, Abbott said.

Sudduth remains in jail with bail set at $500,000, said Jerry Strickland, spokesman for the attorney general's office.

Julie Jerome, spokeswoman for the Hays Consolidated Independent School District, said that a criminal background check of Sudduth done when he applied for a job in June turned up nothing. "We rely on criminal background checks when hiring people. He had no criminal record," Jerome said.

According to a résumé he submitted to the school district, Sudduth graduated from Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State University, in 2000. He interviewed with the Tobias Elementary principal and was recommended to be hired on June 4, but on July 20 he resigned, citing personal reasons, Jerome said.

"He had no contact with kids, absolutely not," she said.

Abbott said what was so alarming about the case is that the former teacher was going to school daily and was in contact with children of the same age as those in the images and videos allegedly seized by investigators.

Abbott said some of the children in the images might be from foreign countries, but some might be from Texas or other parts of the United States. Investigators are sorting through the evidence, he said.

Investigators suspect that Sudduth was collecting sexually explicit images of children, and also creating images and promoting them in forums and message boards as part of a distribution ring.

"We feel certain he's connected with other people," Abbott said.

He advised parents to monitor their children.

"We want to try to get to the adults and parents. Elementary school kids are exposed to these dangers," he said.

Under Texas law, possession of child pornography is a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in state prison and a fine of up to $10,0000. Promotion of child pornography is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

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Sunday, November 1, 2009

Abuse network ringleaders jailed

Dear Friends:

For a BBC video report on this case, follow the link below.

Abolition!
Lisa

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8331388.stm

Abuse network ringleaders jailed

The two men at the centre of Scotland's largest known child abuse network have been jailed for life.

Neil Strachan, 41, attempted to rape an 18-month-old boy while 38-year-old James Rennie sexually assaulted a three-month-old.


Strachan was sentenced to a minimum of 16 years in prison, while Rennie was ordered to serve at least 13 years.

Police said the operation had led to more than 200 suspected paedophiles, 70 of them in the UK, being identified.

Six other men had already been sentenced for their involvement in the network.

Strachan and Rennie, both from Edinburgh, were also found guilty after a 10-week trial of conspiring to get access to children in order to abuse them, while Strachan was convicted of a further charge of sexually assaulting a six-year-old boy.

Strachan, who is HIV positive, has already served a three-year prison sentence in 1997 for abusing a boy. Rennie was the chief executive of LGBT Youth Scotland, which offers advice to young gay and lesbian people.

Passing sentence on the pair, judge Lord Bannatyne referred to Strachan's abuse of the 18-month-old boy, which was captured in a photograph known as the "Hogmanay image" because it was taken on New Year's Eve in 2005.

The judge told Strachan: "By its very nature, what is shown in that photograph is utterly appalling and would shock to the core any right-minded person who has had to see it.

"Over and above that, this offence involves the most gross level of breach of trust. You were invited into a house, treated as a friend of the family, and then entrusted with their child.

"You then breached that trust in the way shown in the 'Hogmanay image' in order to satisfy your base sexual interests. This, in my judgment, can be properly described as a dreadful crime."

Lord Bannatyne said Rennie had also betrayed the trust of the parents of his victim to a "truly appalling" extent.

More suspects

The judge said Rennie, a trained teacher who was found guilty of 14 charges, was at the heart of the conspiracy to abuse youngsters, and likened him to a spider weaving an electronic web to bring about his crime.

The mother of Rennie's victim, known as Child F, told BBC Scotland of the "pain and torment" the case had put their family through.

She called for a "global strategy" between internet providers and government to prevent the distribution of abuse images.

"However, for those involved in paedophile behaviour to identify it in themselves and know where to seek help, society must be prepared to discuss this issue", she added.

"We need to allow an openness within society of where to seek help, just as alcoholics go to AA and gamblers go to GA.

"Clearly the protection of children must take precedence, but if individuals could have been stopped or deterred, we as a family may not have found ourselves in this situation."

Rennie had circulated pictures of the abuse and offered a boy to other paedophiles - an offer taken up by Strachan.

Both will remain under close supervision for the rest of their lives after the parole board sees fit to free them.

Co-accused Colin Slaven, 23, from Edinburgh; Neil Campbell, 46, John Milligan, 40, and John Murphy, 44, all from Glasgow; Ross Webber, 27, from North Berwick in East Lothian; and Craig Boath, 24, from Dundee, were also convicted of various offences.

They were given prison sentences of between two and 17 years.


The men had been arrested during the Operation Algebra police investigation, which uncovered nearly 125,000 indecent images of children.

Operation Algebra also uncovered dozens more suspects around the country and worldwide, many of whom have already been charged.

The investigation was sparked by a single indecent image of a naked 11-year-old which was found on paint company engineer Strachan's computer when it was sent for repair.

Detectives discovered that Strachan and Rennie had filmed themselves sexually abusing children before distributing the images over the internet.

The two paedophiles had been trusted by the children's parents to look after the children.

Lothian and Borders Police said their inquiry had led to more than 200 suspected paedophiles being identified internationally, and at least 70 in the UK.

Detectives have said there were further suspects in Scotland as well as Avon and Somerset; Devon and Cornwall; Merseyside; South Wales; West Midlands; Sussex; Essex; London; Thames Valley; and Hampshire.

Speaking after the sentencing, Morag McLaughlin, procurator fiscal for Lothian and Borders, said recent advances in technology were making it easier for the police to bring child abusers to justice.

She added: "It is clear from the evidence in this case that the accused saw no limits on how far they would share, exploit and abuse children in order to satisfy their own horrific sexual gratification.

"However, our specialist prosecutors will use the constantly improving technology available to the police to stop and bring to court those who think they are hidden by the anonymity of the internet."
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Alaa Al-Aswany: When women are sinners in the eyes of extremists

Dear Friends:

Here's a terrific article. While I don't agree with it 100%, there are a lot of excellent observations.

As for the bits I disagree with, the most prominent issue is that of "democracy is the solution." Really? Women's bodies are served up on the platters of misogyny, commercial greed, and consumerism everyday in Western cultures. Not only have our democracies not stopped this, they have protected such practices and enshrined them as some supposed form of "speech" or "entertainment." It is tragic, is it not, that what so many people (especially men) want to "say" involves the exploitation, the deconstruction, the objectification, the dehumanization of the female with a zealousness that mirrors the fanaticism of any Wahabi extremist?

Abolition!

Lisa


Alaa Al-Aswany: When women are sinners in the eyes of extremists
Somalia is in the grip of famine and chaos but officials there are inspecting bras

The Shabaab movement in Somalia controls large parts of the south and centre of the country, and because officials in this movement embrace the Wahabi ideology they have imposed their views on Somalis by force and have issued strict decrees banning films, plays, dancing at weddings, football matches and all forms of music, even the ring tones on mobile phones.


Some days ago these extremists carried out a strange operation: they arrested a Somali woman and whipped her in public because she was wearing a bra. They announced clearly that wearing these bras was unIslamic because it is a form of fraud and deception.

We may well ask what wearing bras has to do with religion, why they would consider them to be a form of fraud and deception, and how they managed to arrest the woman wearing the bra when all Somali women go around with their bodies completely covered. Did they appoint a special female officer to inspect the breasts of women passing by in the street? One Somali woman called Halima told the Reuters news agency: "Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts... They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women's chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat."

In fact this excessive interest in covering up women's bodies is not confined to the extremists in Somalia. In Sudan the police examine women's clothing with extreme vigilance and arrest any woman who is wearing trousers. They force her to make a public apology for what she has done and then they whip her in public as an example to other women.

Some weeks ago the Sudanese journalist Lubna al-Husseini insisted on wearing trousers and refused to make the public apology. When she refused to submit to flogging she was referred to a real trial and the farce reached its climax when the judge summoned three witnesses and asked them if they had been able to detect the shape of the accused's underwear when she was wearing the trousers. When one of the witnesses hesitated in answering, the judge asked him directly: "Did you see Lubna's stomach when she was wearing the trousers?" The witness gravely replied: "To some extent."

Lubna said she was wearing a modest pair of trousers and that the scandalous pair she was accused of wearing would not suit her because she is plump and would need to lose 20 kilos in order to put them on. But the judge convicted her anyway and fined her £500 or a month in prison.

In Egypt too, extremists continue to take an excessive interest in women's bodies and in trying to cover them up entirely. They not only advocate that women wear the niqab but also that they wear gloves on their hands, which they believe will ensure that no passions are aroused when men and women shake hands. We really do face a phenomenon which deserves consideration: why are extremists so obsessed with women's bodies? Some ideas might help us answer this question:

Firstly, the extremist view of women is that they are only bodies and instruments for either legitimate pleasure or temptation, as well as factories for producing children. This view strips women of their human nature. Accusing the Somali woman of fraud and deception because she was wearing a bra is the same charge of commercial fraud which the law holds against a merchant who conceals the defects of his goods and make false claims about their qualities in order to sell them at a higher price.

The idea here is that a woman who accentuates her breasts by using a bra gives a false impression of the goods (her body), which is seen as fraud and deception of the buyer (the man) who might buy (marry) her for her ample breasts and later discover that they were ample because of the bra and not by nature. It would be fair to remember that treating women's bodies as commodities is not something found only in extremist ideologies but often happens in Western societies too.

The use of women's naked bodies to market commercial products in the West is merely another application of the idea that women are commodities. Anyone who visits the redlight district in Amsterdam can see for himself how wretched prostitutes, completely naked, are lined up behind glass windows so that passers-by can inspect their charms before agreeing on the price. Isn't that a modern-day slave market, where women's bodies are on sale to anyone willing to pay?

Secondly, the extremists believe women to be the source of temptation and the prime cause of sin. This view, which is prevalent in all primitive societies, is unfair and inhuman, because men and women commit sin together and the responsibility is shared and equal. If a beautiful woman arouses and tempts men, then a handsome man also arouses and tempts women. But the extremist ideology is naturally biased in favour of the man and hostile to the woman, and considers that she alone is primarily responsible for all sins.

Thirdly, being strict about covering up women's bodies is an easy and effortless form of religious struggle. In Egypt we see dozens of Wahabi sheikhs who enthusiastically advocate covering up women's bodies but do not utter a single word against despotism, corruption, fraudulence or torture because they know very well that serious opposition to the despotic regime (which should really be their first duty) would inevitably lead to their arrest, torture and the destruction of their lives. Their strictness on things related to women's bodies enables them to operate as evangelists without any real costs.

Throughout human history, strictness towards women has usually been a way to conceal political abuses and real crimes. Somalia is a wretched country in the grip of famine and chaos but officials there are distracted from that by inspecting bras. The Sudanese regime is implicated in crimes of murder, torture and raping thousands of innocents in Darfur but that does not stop the regime from putting on trial a woman who insisted on wearing trousers. It is women rather than men who always pay the price for despotism, corruption and religious hypocrisy.

Fourthly, the extremist ideology assumes that humans are a group of wild beasts that are completely incapable of controlling their instincts, that it is enough for a man to see a bare piece of female flesh for him to pounce on her and have intercourse. This assumption is incorrect, because humans, unlike animals, always have the power to control their instincts by will power and ethics.


An ordinary man, if he is sane, cannot have his instincts aroused by his mother, sister, daughter or even the wife of a friend, because his sense of honour and morality transcends his desires and neutralises their effect. So virtue will never come about though bans, repression and pursuing women in the street, but rather through giving children a good upbringing, propagating morality and refining character.

Societies which impose segregation between men and women (as in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia), according to official statistics, do not have lower rates of sexual crimes than other societies. The rates there may even be higher. We favour and advocate modesty for women but firstly we advocate a humane view of women, a view that respects their abilities, their wishes and their thinking.

What is really saddening is that the Wahabi extremism which is spreading throughout the world with oil money and which gives Muslims a bad image is as far as can be from the real teachings of Islam. Anyone who reads the history of Islam fairly has to be impressed by the high status it accords to women, because from the time of the Prophet Muhammad until the fall of Andalusia, Muslim women mixed with men, were educated, worked and traded, fought and had financial responsibilities separately from their fathers or husbands. They had the right to choose the husband they loved and the right to divorce if they wanted. Western civilisation gave women these rights many centuries after Islam.

Finally, let me say that religious extremism is the other face of political despotism. We cannot get rid of the extremism before we end the despotism.

Democracy is the solution.
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