Monday, August 31, 2009

The Women’s Crusade

Dear Friends:

This is a long piece but it very much worth taking the time to read. It includes powerful stories of truly heroic women, as well as thorough analysis and innovative ideas to encourage and inspire all of us to do more for women and girls around the world.

Abolition!

Lisa

"The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine "gendercide" far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1#
The New York Times
August 23, 2009
The Women’s Crusade
By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF and SHERYL WuDUNN

IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater. "Women hold up half the sky," in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the
World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.
Read more!

Child Bride's Nightmare After Divorce

By Paula Newton
CNN
SANA'A, Yemen (CNN) -- It is midday and girls are flooding out of school, but Nujood Ali is not among them.

We find her at the family's two-room house in an impoverished suburb of the city where Nujood is angry, combative and yelling. Tension surrounds the home like a noose.

After much arguing with family members, Nujood finally grabs her veil and agrees to sit down with CNN. Her presence is grudging, although CNN had got permission in advance to see how the girl who rocked a nation by demanding a divorce was shaping up.

Nujood is very different from the girl we first met nearly two years ago. Then, there was no doubt the 10-year-old was every inch a child. She was the very portrait of innocence: A shy smile, a playful nature and a whimsical giggle.

That picture was very much at odds with the brutal story of abuse she endured as a child bride who fought for a divorce and is now still fighting. Watch Nujood tell her story to CNN on World's Untold Stories

Nujood says she remains relieved and gratified that her act of defiance -- which led to appearances at awards shows and on TV -- had paid off.

The story was supposed to end with the divorce and an innocent but determined girl allowed to fully embrace the childhood she fought so hard to keep.

Instead, there has been no fairytale ending for Nujood.

There was, though, a stunning transformation. Nujood went from being a victim and child bride to a portrait of courage and triumph. Her inspirational story was told and re-told around the world, but at home all was not well.

In the fall of 2008 Nujood was recognized as Glamour Magazine's Woman of the Year, alongside some of the world's most impressive women. She even attended the ceremony in New York and was applauded by women from Hillary Clinton to Nicole Kidman.

There is a tell-all book which is to be published in more than 20 languages, and the author says Nujood will receive a good portion of the royalties.

Nujood's strength was celebrated by complete strangers. But what did all the fame do for the one person it was meant to transform?

"There is no change at all since going on television. I hoped there was someone to help us, but we didn't find anyone to help us. It hasn't changed a thing. They said they were going to help me and no one has helped me. I wish I had never spoken to the media," Nujood says bitterly.

There was never going to be a fortune. Generous people have donated thousands so Nujood could go to a private school, but she refuses to attend, according to Shada Nasser, the human rights lawyer who took on the child's divorce case.

"I know Nujood was absent from the school. I spoke with her father and her family. And I ask them to control her and ask her to go every day to school. But they said, 'You know we don't have the money for the transportation. Don't have the money for the food,' " says Nasser.

She believes Nujood is being victimized by her own family because they believe Nujood's fame should bring them fortune.

Nujood's parents say they've received nothing, and in the meantime Nujood stews wondering out loud how everything turned out this way.

"I was happy I got divorced but I'm sad about the way it turned out after I went on television," she said adding that she feels like an outcast even among her family and friends.

Nujood was pulled out of school in early 2008 and married off by her own parents to a man she says was old and ugly. And yet, as a wife, Nujood was spared nothing.

"I didn't want to sleep with him but he forced me to, he hit me, insulted me" said Nujood. She said being married and living as a wife at such a young age was sheer torture.


Nujood described how she was beaten and raped and how, after just a few weeks of marriage, she turned to her family to try to escape the arrangement. But her parents told her they could not protect her, that she belonged to her husband now and had to accept her fate.


CNN tried to obtain comment from Nujood's husband and his family but they declined.

Nujood's parents, like many others in Yemen, struck a social bargain. More than half of all young Yemeni girls are married off before the age of 18, many times to older men, some with more than one wife.

It means the girls are no longer a financial or moral burden to their parents. But Nujood's parents say they did not expect Nujood's new husband to demand sex from his child bride.

To escape, Nujood hailed a taxi -- for the first time in her life -- to get across town to the central courthouse where she sat on a bench and demanded to see a judge.


After several hours, a judge finally went to see her. "And he asked me, 'what do you want' and I said 'I want a divorce' and he said 'you're married?' And I said 'yes.'" says Nujood.

Nujood's father and husband were arrested until the divorce hearing, and Nujood was put in the care of Nasser.

Indeed, it seems the judge had heard enough of the abuse to agree with Nujood that she should get her divorce.

But based on the principles of Shariah law, her husband was compensated, not prosecuted. Nujood was ordered to pay him more than $200 -- a huge amount in a country where the United Nations Development Programme says 15.7 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day.

Khadije Al Salame is working to help Nujood get her life back. Now a Yemeni diplomat, 30 years ago she too was a child bride. But when she left her husband, she did not have to endure the publicity that now haunts Nujood.

She said: "It's good to talk about Nujood and to have her story come out, but the problem is it's too much pressure on her.

"She doesn't understand what's going on. She's a little girl and we have to understand as a media people that we should leave her alone now. If we really love Nujood then we should just let her go to school and continue with her life, because education is the most important thing for her."

To get her divorce, Nujood showed a character and strength not easily expressed by women in Yemen, let alone a 10-year-old child bride. But she will need to muster all that strength and more if she's to finally reclaim her life.

Nujood told us she thought the divorce would be the end of her struggle and she's still angry that it turned out to be just the beginning.

CNN producer Schams Elwazer contributed to this report
Read more!

Slow Progress Against Human Trafficking

RIGHTS-MEXICO:Slow Progress Against Human Trafficking
Emilio Godoy

MEXICO CITY, Aug 27 (IPS) - Despite progress in bringing Mexican law into compliance with the international treaty against human trafficking, little has been achieved so far in this country in terms of prosecutions and convictions of traffickers, protection of victims and prevention of this increasingly widespread crime, says a new report released in the Mexican capital Thursday.

The "Human Trafficking Assessment Tool Report for Mexico" was produced by the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI).

"So far there have been no convictions, which is a very serious problem," attorney Gretchen Kuhner, one of the authors of the report, told IPS. "But the law against trafficking in Mexico is very new, and more time is needed to evaluate its implementation."

The Mexican Congress passed the Law to Prevent and Penalise Trafficking in Persons, creating federal mechanisms for the prevention, protection, and prosecution of human trafficking, in November 2007, although the regulations for the law were not issued until February 2009.

The law provides for both territorial and extraterritorial jurisdiction over trafficking in persons, which is classified as a felony, the ABA ROLI report says.

Based on 78 interviews with experts and government officials carried out between January and June 2008, the report found legal inconsistencies such as limiting the definition of "trafficking victim" to passive subjects of the crime of trafficking who participate in criminal proceedings in Mexico or abroad.
Read more!

My Friend went to Thailand....

Dear Friends:

Here's some news that I'm sure will get your blood pressure up -- I know mine is. There is a T-shirt available for purchase on The Onion website featuring the slogan, "My Friend Went to Thailand and All I Got Was This Lousy Prostitute." However, if you look at the image of the T-shirt online, it actually reads, "My Friend Went to Thailand and All I Got Was This Lousy Kidnapped Prostitute." Either way such a message is utterly appalling. It's hard to believe it, but there are actually people out there who not only dreamed up the T-shirt slogan, but also thought it would be a good idea to make money on such T-shirts.

Wow, it's not bad enough that millions of women and girls are sexually trafficked, rape, subjected to all kinds of physical and verbal abuse, afflicted by a host of diseases, even murdered, or tossed aside to fend for themselves when they are no longer "marketable"; now some jerks have to make jokes about it! These people actually have the nerve to mock the abuse and exploitation of women and children.

Just so you know, I've already called the store and confirmed that the shirt if for real, and that is for sale. Interestingly, I was not allowed to speak to a manager. Evidently the store has already received some complaints, but I think they need a few thousand more.

So, won't you please take a few moments and call 1-800-280-1791 to voice your objections? This type of callousness and outright mockery of exploitation cannot go unanswered. Please forward this email on to your friends and family. We need as many people calling as possible. Let's make this the last time The Onion ever sells a shirt like this.

Abolition!

Lisa


http://store.theonion.com/my-friend-went-to-thailand-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-prostitute-new-p-1027.html
My Friend Went to Thailand and All I Got Was This Lousy Prostitute – Tshirt at the Onion store

Customer Service

For all other Onion Store matters and order inquiries, please submit the brief customer support form below for an efficient response, or call 1-800-280-1791 between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. (CST), Monday–Friday. It’s an email form you fill out on the store site...

From the website:
http://www.theonion.com/content/contact_us

Public Relations:

Anna G. Richardson
Sunshine, Sachs & Associates
149 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor, NYC, 10010
O: 212.691.2800, C: 917.553.5916
richardson@sunshinesachs.com

Washington DC
The Onion
c/o Godfrey & Kahn
500 New Jersey #375
Washington DC 20001
Fax 202-628-0405
dc@theonion.com

Twin Cities

212 3rd Avenue North, #445
Minneapolis, MN 55401
612-370-1372 Fax 612-333-0444
minneapolis@theonion.com
Read more!

6 Arrested in Houston Prostitution Case

Some great news. A major domestic sex trafficking ring has been busted. Notice the assorted fronts used as cover for their illegal prostitution enterprise.

Abolition!

Lisa


6 arrested in Houston prostitution case
Published: Aug. 25, 2009 at 5:35 PM

Six people have been charged in Houston with sex trafficking of women and children, U.S. and local police authorities said Tuesday.

The U.S. Justice Department said it was the largest domestic sex-trafficking case ever prosecuted in the Southern U.S. District of Texas.

Five of the six were arrested late Monday and early Tuesday in a coordinated effort between federal and local law enforcement, after the unsealing of an Aug. 4 indictment Tuesday.

The indictment charges John Butler, 47, William Hornbeak, 34, Jamine Lake, 27, Andre McDaniels, 39, and Kristen Land, 28, all of Houston; and Ronnie Presley, 35, formerly of Houston and now of Tulsa, Okla., with conspiracy to traffic women and children for the purposes of commercialized sex, sex trafficking of children, sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, transportation of minors, and coercion and enticement, the Justice Department said.

Presley is a fugitive.

The indictment alleges the six operated commercialized sex businesses often disguised as modeling studios, health spas, massage parlors and bikini bars in Houston, and used sexually oriented publications and Web sites to advertise. Their alleged enterprise transported women and minors to and from the Houston area, and had ties to Kansas, Nevada, Arizona and Florida.

Alleged victims included women and minors as young as 16 who were routinely beaten and threatened and were denied any of the proceeds from prostitution, the department said.

Read more!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

White Ribbon Against Pornography

Dear Friends:

Attached is a flyer you can use to promote this year's White Ribbon Against Pornography week being observed October 25 through November 1, 2009.

The White Ribbon Against Pornography Week (WRAP) is intended to educate the public about the extent of our culture's pornography problem. WRAP week creates a useful opportunity for clergy and others to raise the issue of pornography within the Church, and to call all Christians to renewed lives of sexual purity.

See the flyer for ways you can help raise awareness about the devastating influences of pornography during WRAP week and throughout the year.

WRAP Flyer

Abolition!

Lisa

Read more!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

RIGHTS-PARAGUAY: NGO Offers Girls a Way Out of Sexual Exploitation

Dear Friends:

Below is a very interesting story about commercial sexual exploitation of children in Paraguay. Several different themes emerge: 1) The existence of familial pressure on children to enter and/or stay in prostitution, 2) how grinding poverty can erode the moral fiber of a society, 3) how normalized the demand for commercial sex can become -- like a run-of-the-mill fact of life that is not even questioned, 4) how prostituting adults can be completely ignored, even though they were likely once prostituting children too. Still, there is cause for hope. Clearly people recognize the problem commercial sexual exploitation of children/sex trafficking exists and are doing their best to make in a difference in the lives of as many girls as they can.

Abolition!

Lisa

RIGHTS-PARAGUAY:
NGO Offers Girls a Way Out of Sexual Exploitation

Natalia Ruiz Díaz

ASUNCIÓN, Aug 17 (IPS) - Claudia was 13 years old when she came to the capital of Paraguay from her small rural town. Just a few weeks after her arrival she was wandering the streets of downtown Asunción, a victim of sexual exploitation.

Her story replicates that of so many other girls and adolescents who every day fall into the clutches of child sex trade rings in Paraguay, one of the countries of Latin America where this heinous crime most flourishes.

Claudia* had left behind a broken and poverty-stricken family, encouraged by her older sister who was already living in Asunción. But her hopes for a better life vanished quickly and, as she found herself penniless and unprotected, she took to working the streets.

That was where she was found by Luna Nueva (New Moon), a non-governmental organisation that runs a comprehensive care programme for girls and adolescents victims of sexual exploitation, working both from its La Casa centre and through outreach activities conducted in the streets and brothels of Asunción.

"Approaching her was difficult, because Claudia had a special bond with her sister, who had been working in the sex trade for a long time
," Nidia Ríos, who works with Luna Nueva, told IPS.

The NGO has a team which goes out into the streets to identify girls and adolescents in situations of social risk. "Our task is to contact them and form a bond of trust. Then we tell them what Luna Nueva has to offer them," said Erika Almeida, who heads the team.

What it offers these girls is what they call a ‘multistage journey back to life,’ which takes about three years and is divided into five stages: welcome, integration, exploration, life plans and training for life.

Claudia agreed to stay at the organisation’s shelter and began the first stage of the process, called Kunu'u (which means ‘giving affection’ in Guarani).

At this stage, Luna Nueva conducts a psychological evaluation of the sexually exploited girl, explores her relationship with her family and assesses her school situation. These are then used to make a general diagnosis, establish the priorities in terms of care, and draw up a personalised plan, which is carried out over several months.

The rescued girls are offered the possibility of living at the centre - even bringing their children with them, in the case of young mothers
- or of continuing in the programme as external participants. The only requirement is that they get out of the sex trade. In exchange, they receive psychological counselling, are incorporated into some form of work and participate in activities that encourage them to express themselves.

When Luna Nueva finds them, many don’t even know how to read and write, and by gaining access to education, new opportunities open up for them and they establish a new relationship with their environment.

Claudia went back to school and slowly began rebuilding her relationship with her parents and siblings, which she had shied away from as she had been badly abused at home.

"The greatest obstacle is that these kids come from broken families, who don’t contribute to this process. The girls feel lonely, they need to receive affection, but they have no one," Ríos said.

There’s always the chance that they will leave the programme, and many times the girls’ own families - mired in poverty and a loss of values - are the ones that persuade them to drop out.

"Often, families are so concerned with their needs that they come to see prostitution as something natural, as a source of income, so the girls are forced to abandon the programme," Ríos explained.


Day and night, Luna Nueva workers comb the streets of Greater Asunción, in areas where prostitutes are known to work, also covering bus stations, truck stops and the central produce market.

Almeida explained that the girls who work in the market selling goods are often only able to sell their merchandise if they agree to have sex with the buyer. Many underage girls are also hired as domestics in what is actually a "front" for their subsequent sexual exploitation, according to a study conducted by the organisation in March.


The Luna Nueva counsellors inform the victims about the programme and how they can get in, and also carry out awareness-raising and prevention campaigns on the subject of sexual and reproductive health.

"If they don’t want to come with us, we try to establish and maintain a connection with them, supporting them from outside the programme with concrete activities," Almeida said.

Luna Nueva has been taking in girls aged 11 through 17 since 1995, when city authorities tried to get sex workers off the streets.
In Paraguay, prostitution is legal for adults 18 and older.

"A group of organised women who supported these workers were able to identify that a large number of them were girls and adolescents," Raquel Fernández, the director of Luna Nueva, told IPS.

That marked the birth of this NGO that focuses on protecting the rights of sexually exploited girls and adolescents. In 2008, Luna Nueva helped 36 girls and adolescents, along with 14 children belonging to some of the girls. Twenty-four of these girls are still in the programme, along with their 11 children.

Statistics reflecting a scandal

There are no official figures on the number of underage female victims of the sex trade in Paraguay, but a 2005 special report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) revealed that the phenomenon had reached alarming proportions in this country.

In Paraguay, two out of three sex workers are underage girls, child trafficking, prostitution and pornography are "tangible and widespread," and victims are generally initiated into the trade between the ages of 12 and 13. The vast majority of the girls who are exploited in Asunción come from outside the capital and have severed all ties with their families after suffering sexual or physical abuse at home.
[The commercial sexual expliotation of children goes hand-in-hand with legalized prostitution for "adults" . -- Lisa]


According to UNICEF, 98 percent of all sexually exploited girls receive six to 10 dollars for each sex act they perform. During a visit to Paraguay in 2004, then U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, Juan Miguel Petit, said he was moved by the many accounts he heard from very young girls who prostituted themselves for a dollar or a meal.

And the child sex trade is not limited to Asunción. It happens throughout the country, reaching especially dramatic levels in Ciudad del Este, the capital of the province of Alto Paraná, in the southeast. This city – part of the Triple Frontier, where Paraguay meets both Brazil and Argentina - is plagued with illegal activities of all kinds.

A May 2002 assessment by the International Labour Organisation’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour found some 650 sex workers in the streets of Ciudad del Este, 250 of whom were underage victims of prostitution and other forms of organised crime closely linked to the sex trade. The magnitude of the problem led the ILO to establish a special centre there to provide care for the victims.
[An interesting question to consider is how many of the 400 other prostituting persons began in the sex industry as children. -- Lisa]


In Paraguay the commercial sexual exploitation of underage boys and girls is fuelled by four factors that in turn feed on each other: poverty, inequality, social exclusion and a dominant patriarchal culture, according to the Latin American Centre for Experts on Child and Adolescent Exploitation, created in 2006 following the first regional forum held on this crime. [And the dominant patriarchal culture leads to the normalization demand -- a male sex-right to purchase sex. -- Lisa]


Paraguay is one of the poorest countries in South America, with 20 percent of its 6.1 million people living in extreme poverty - on less than a dollar a day - and another 36 percent below the poverty line.


This year, the National Council for Children and Adolescents (SNNA) revived the National Plan for the Prevention and Eradication of the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents that was launched in December 2003 but was then practically ignored.

Celeste Oudin, planning director at SNNA, told IPS that the purpose of the plan is to help focus the attention of the country’s institutions on this problem and to promote the adoption of measures aimed at protecting the rights of the victims.

But for now the SNNA lacks a direct intervention programme to address a crime that is scarcely viewed as reprehensible by society. It does however coordinate its actions with organisations such as Luna Nueva and the justice system.

The director admitted that it’s hard to deal with a problem that cannot be solved merely by pulling the exploited girls off the streets, and much less by arresting them, while "clients and pimps, for example, are not arrested."


For Oudin, exploitation exists because there is demand for sex with minors, so the solution lies in going after the exploiters - the clients and pimps - which would require interdisciplinary actions on multiple fronts.

But Luna Nueva director Fernández is optimistic about the possibility of establishing an efficient public policy to attack this scourge, based on political will and the combined efforts of public and private institutions.

Claudia’s case is also a sign of hope. Seven years after coming to Asunción and after spending four in the programme, where she came to realise that a different life was possible, she is now studying to become a nurse, is integrated into society and lives with an aunt near the capital.

The Luna Nueva counsellors said she gave it her all, fighting off pressure from her sister - the person she loved most in the world -, who never stopped insisting that she return to the streets.
It was very hard for her to rebuild her self-esteem and her relationship with her family, but today she keeps in touch with her parents and even visits them occasionally. "She’s a real success story and an example," one of the NGO's workers said.

* Her last name is omitted to preserve anonymity. (END/2009)

Read more!

Low-income kids report first sexual intercourse at 12 years old in new ISU study

Dear Friends:

A recent study by researchers at Iowa State University has found that among nearly 1,000 low-income families in three major cities, one in four children between the age of 11 and 16 reported having sex, with their sexual intercourse at the average of 12.77. (see article below)

There are many possible repercussions: problems with emotional attachment and bonding/forming lasting intimate relationships as adults, pregnancy, parenthood (children raising children), disruption of education, acquisition/transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, etc. Moreover, the study found that youths involved in delinquent acts have drastically higher chances of early sexual activity.

I think there are additional implications worth consideration by those working in anti-sex trafficking. Are the boys who have sex at such young ages more likely to become commercial sex buyers? Are boys and girls who have sex at such young ages more susceptible to the lures of exploiters and thereby at higher-risk of becoming victims?

Abolition!

Lisa

Low-income kids report first sexual intercourse at 12 years old in new ISU study

AMES, Iowa -- As a new mother herself, Brenda Lohman admits to being shocked by the results of a new study she co-authored. It found that among nearly 1,000 low-income families in three major cities, one in four children between the ages of 11 and 16 reported having sex, with their first sexual intercourse experience occurring at the average age of 12.77.

"So if 12 years was the average age here, that meant that some kids were starting at 10 or younger," said Lohman, an Iowa State University associate professor of human development and family studies (HDFS). "A handful of kids reported having sex as early as 8 or 9. We know from our follow-up interviews that one boy who reported having sexual intercourse for the first time at age nine had fathered four children by the time he was 18."

"Those people who say that kids don't have sex at that young of age should think again," she said. "Definitely the age is the most shocking thing about this study."

Tina Jordahl, a former Iowa State HDFS and public policy graduate student who is now a market research specialist with Hospice of Central Iowa, collaborated with Lohman on the study. It analyzes data from the "Welfare, Children and Families: A Three-City Study" -- a six-year longitudinal investigation of low-income families living in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio. Their paper, titled "A biological analysis of risk and protective factors associated with early sexual intercourse of young adolescents," was posted online in the Children and Youth Services Review and will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal.

Interview data for the study was first collected in 1999 on youth between the ages of 10 and 14, and again in 2001. Lohman says she also has data collected in 2006 from the same subjects, who were between 16 and 20 by that time.

Boys having sex earlier, more often than girls

In the study, boys reported their first sexual intercourse at younger ages (averaging 12.48) than girls (13.16). Boys also had nearly 10 percent higher frequency of intercourse than girls and were also more likely to experience sexual debut (20 percent to 14 percent) between the two years when the first two waves of data were collected.

Recent national research has found that 13 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys have had sex by the time they're 16. Lohman says that means the rate of sex among her low-income sample is only slightly higher among the girls, but almost double among the boys

"The ages [of sexual debut] are a bit younger than the national samples, but not alarmingly so," she said.

African Americans also had 12 percent more early sexual intercourse than whites (29 to 17 percent respectively), although racial differences did not change the age of their first intercourse.

The authors report that periods of instability in family structure and welfare use serve as risk factors for early sexual activity. They found that additional maternal education -- beyond a high school level -- was found to inhibit some of that activity.
"That can be for multiple reasons," Lohman said. "It can be that mothers have better paying jobs and more stable home environment and they're less likely to be in stressful circumstances. It could also be that mothers then have greater cognitive capacities to sort of sit down and discuss the pros and cons of waiting to have sex until you're older."

For that reason, the researchers propose allotting public funding to increase maternal education as a way to reduce early sexual promiscuity among their children.

Juvenile delinquency increases early sexual activity

The study also found the youths' involvement in delinquent acts drastically increases the chances of early sexual activity.

Because of the gender differences in sexual debut, the authors also urge more gender-specific prevention programs that are implemented at earlier ages, especially among high risk populations.

"It may be that boys and girls, starting at younger ages, should have these programs that are designed separately by gender before they're moved back together over time," Lohman said. " And yes, they must start much, much younger than they do now. You have to start before those young kids -- 10 or even younger -- start becoming sexually active."

She says the current political climate in Washington may be right for those types of programs to be developed.

"The Bush administration concentrated on abstinence education programs for all families across the spectrum of income, and Obama is definitely focusing on sexual education and prevention programs," said Lohman. "He's put a lot more money back into those programs that were stripped away during the Bush administration. And given his focus in other areas, he is concentrating on high-risk, low-income disadvantaged families as well."

Lohman is currently working on research to determine the relationship between obesity and teen sexuality. She hopes to publish results from that study within the year.

Contacts:

Brenda Lohman, Human Development and Family Studies, (515) 294-6230, (773) 505-2872 (c), blohman@iastate.edu

Tina Jordahl, Hospice of Central Iowa, tinajordahl@gmail.com

Cathy Curtis, College of Human Sciences, (515) 294-8175, ccurtis@iastate.edu

Mike Ferlazzo, News Service, (515) 294-8986, ferlazzo@iastate.edu
Read more!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

FBI Bust Alleged Prostitution Ring in 'Boro Using Minors

Dear Friends:

I think the take away message here is for everyone to talk to their teenagers about the lures and dangers of the commercial sex industry -- no matter what their school, community or socioeconomic status.

Abolition!

Lisa

Metro, FBI bust alleged prostitution ring in 'Boro

Family trio charged with using minor girls
THE DAILY NEWS JOURNAL • August 18, 2009

Metro Police detectives and FBI agents busted what they believe is a family-run prostitution ring using underage teens as prostitutes after conducting surveillance at a Murfreesboro Motel 6 in early August.

Teresa Ann West, also known as Teresa West-Dagley, 45, is charged in state court with trafficking for sexual servitude and promoting prostitution. She is also charged in federal court, along with her son, Casey, 20 and daughter Diana, 22, with using a minor for commercial sex.

Metro's Specialized Investigations Division and the FBI accused the trio of using a 16-year-old high school girl to perform sex acts as part of their prostitution ring, and they believe other underage victims are involved, according to a Metro Police press release.

After receiving information this year that the alleged ring was using girls from a Middle Tennessee high school to work as prostitutes, law enforcement officers set up surveillance of Teresa West on Aug. 3 as she checked into the Motel 6 on Chaffin Place in Murfreesboro, the release stated. They watched her leave a room key card on a wall in the parking lot and leave the area.

A little later, a 16-year-old girl drove to the motel and went into West's room, using the key card. Metro detectives and FBI agents then entered the room and interviewed the teenager, who acknowledged having sex for money at the direction of Teresa Ann West about 20 to 30 times this summer.

The girl told police that clients typically paid $110 and she gave West $40. She said West knew she was 16 but told her to tell people she was 18 if they asked.

Casey West is alleged to have driven the teenager to a client and received a $20 fee from her. She said she has given money to Casey West on other occasions as well. Diana West, 22, is alleged to have assisted in the operation of the prostitution business.

Parents of teenagers, particularly in the Robertson County area, who are or were friends with Casey, Diana or Teresa West, are urged to talk with their children and inquire whether they have any knowledge regarding the prostitution business. Anyone with additional information is asked to contact Metro SID Detective Chad Holman at 615-782-3301. Underage persons involved in this matter are considered to be victims.
Read more!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Broken Cords Benefit Concert To Raise Awareness Of Human Trafficking


Dear Friends:


I'm delighted to pass along word about this upcoming benefit concert to be held in Houston, Texas, August 29, 2009. This event was the idea of three teenagers! It's very encouraging to see youth getting involved in the trafficking issue, and using their energies in such creative ways to help generate greater awareness about human trafficking.

Abolition!

Lisa

BROKEN CORDS BENEFIT CONCERT TO RAISE AWARENESS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING TO BE HELD AT JONES HALL
HOUSTON, Texas

Broken Cords, a benefit concert to raise awareness of human trafficking and modern day slavery, will be held on August 29, 2009 at the prestigious Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts in downtown Houston’s theater district.

The brainchild of Houston area teenagers Stephen, Melanie and Dianna Muldrow, Broken Cords’ aim is to show that individuals of all ages can help identify and prevent the modern-day enslavement of children, women and men. Inspired by the plight of individuals in their own area, the Muldrow siblings challenged themselves to spend the summer of 2009 making a difference in their community.

"The fact that so few people know about modern-day slavery was one of the main reasons we wanted to put on this concert," said Stephen Muldrow. "Human trafficking involves individuals just like me, they can be my age, and they can come from backgrounds like mine."

The Broken Cords benefit concert will feature a world-class ensemble of musicians who have performed in the United States, Europe and Asia in an evening of music and education at Jones Hall. Confirmed performers include internationally acclaimed clarinetist Håkan Rosengren, concert pianists Rick Rowley, Caleb Harris and Andrew Staupe, and violist Luke Fleming, a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at the renowned Juilliard School in New York City, New York.

"We really appreciate the musicians giving their time to this cause, and making the concert a beautiful program that all will want to see," said Dianna Muldrow. "Human trafficking is a far larger problem than I ever realized and I am so glad to see people wanting and working to end it."
Proceeds from the evening’s event will be donated to Houston’s Coalition Against Human Trafficking through a non-profit organization. The Coalition actively works to free those in bondage to modern-day slavery primarily through educating the Houston public to the existence and horrors of this tragedy.

"I’m excited about the fact that the Coalition Against Human Trafficking will be able to fund some of their projects that will make the public aware of what human trafficking is and how it is becoming more prevalent right here in our own city," said Melanie Muldrow.

"Victims that were rescued and have been served by CAHT member organizations over the past several years are now needing extended care and connections to continue their journey of restoration," said Charlotte Morris, Chair of CAHT Houston.

"It is essential to engage the community in a diversified way so that human trafficking victims can be better identified, rescued and restored. The opportunity to partner with Broken Cords provides CAHT the avenues to reach the community and raise awareness, and it will provide much needed funding for projects and support to help CAHT better serve in the restoration process."

Ticket prices for the Broken Cords concert range from $25.00 to $75.00 for box seating. Special discounts are available for groups. Personal or corporate sponsorships are available in four levels: Liberator, Deliverer, Rescuer and Be a Hero. Concert, sponsorship and ticket information can be found at http://www.brokencords.com/.

About Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is a 32 billion dollar industry which exploits 27 million people worldwide in modern-day slavery. Trafficking takes places in many forms, not only sexual slavery, but also domestic situations, sweatshop factories and tourist industries, among other types of businesses.


About Broken Cords

Broken Cords is a benefit concert to raise awareness of human trafficking in Houston, Texas. The brainchild of siblings Stephen, Melanie and Dianna Muldrow, Broken Cords’ aim is to show that individuals of all ages can help identify and prevent the modern-day enslavement of children, women and men. Featuring worldclass musicians who have performed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, the concert will take place at the prestigious Jones Hall in the Houston Theater District on August 29, 2009. All donations are tax deductible through Broken Cords’ sponsoring non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

About the Coalition Against Human Trafficking

The Coalition Against Human Trafficking (CAHT) began out of the desire of professionals working with victims to have a dialogue and community forum to come together in their efforts to serve in concert with each other. Once a person is identified and rescued by law enforcement, there are many factors, services and professions that each play important roles in their care and extensive efforts toward physical and emotional restoration. CAHT provides a forum for these direct care service providers to come together with community leaders, churches and other organizations promoting service, awareness and advocacy for crime victims.
MEDIA CONTACT: Stephen Muldrow, Broken Cords, 281.426.5025, staff@brokencords.com For more information, please visit the concert web site at http://www.brokencords.com/.
Read more!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Tattoos of Girls Under Pimp Control

Dear Friends:

Attached to this email you'll find material documenting the tattooing of prostituted women and girls, as well as a list of "pimp rules". Tattoos are used as marks of pimp "ownership" and control. Such tattoos typically include the name of the pimp and/or in some way denigrate the tattooed individual. They are effectually a type of "brand." In fact, I've even read of a case where a pimp actually branded one of the girls he was prostituting. Tattoos are an important sign of pimp control and serve as a perpetual reminder to the prostituted person that they "belong" to the pimp.

Abolition!

Lisa


Tattoos of Girls Under Pimp Control & Pimp Rules for the Control of Victims
Donna M. Hughes
Professor & Carlson Endowed Chair
University of Rhode Island

August 10, 2009

I’ve read a few responses to the Citizens Against Trafficking Bulletin on “Prostitution in Strip-Clubs in Providence.” Some people have expressed skepticism that girls and women are tattooed and branded by pimps.

I have been collecting evidence of pimps’ practice of tattooing victims for several years. Tattooing, and sometimes branding or scarification, are marks of ownership. It is one of the ways that pimps maintain physical and psychological control over emotionally vulnerable girls.

(Click here for the rest of the bulletin.)

Donna Hughes
Co-founder
Citizens Against Trafficking
http://www.citizensagainsttrafficking.org
Read more!

A Note from Ambassador Luis CdeBaca - Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

Dear Friends:

Below you'll find a message from Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Traffiicking in Persons. It is very encouraging to read of his support for efforts to combat demand, as well as to learn of his outreach efforts to school officials/administrators/teachers who can play a vital role in primary prevention of child trafficking.

Abolition!

Lisa


Dear Colleagues in the Fight Against Modern Slavery:

I am writing briefly to update you on some of the activities of the Office to Monitor & Combat Trafficking in Persons (G/TIP) in the months since Secretary Clinton and I unveiled the annual Trafficking in Persons Report.

Since the rollout, my staff and I have met with over 50 foreign dignitaries and outgoing senior State Department officials on their way to postings overseas. I have been to Africa and back, encouraging governments to take effective action and to intensify their efforts. My trip built on President Obama's comments to the Ghanaian Parliament, where he lauded two of G/TIP’s international heroes' anti-trafficking activities as examples of the democratic spirit that can change Africa. And, during her trip to Africa this week, Secretary Clinton raised the need for partnership to fight this heinous crime.

In Washington, I have had the privilege of meeting with many of you, listening to your insights from years of experience in the field, seeing old friends, and making welcome new acquaintances. I am pleased to report that as of this week we have gained another strong voice against modern slavery in the person of Maria Otero, sworn in on Tuesday as the Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs. Under Secretary Otero has declared her commitment to "elevating and integrating the issues surrounding human trafficking into all facets of our foreign policy and diplomacy." I have pasted below the announcement from the White House with more information about Under Secretary Otero

I am struck how, in contrast to many countries where trafficking and other ills result from intractable ethnic rivalries, the United States has transformed itself in just a generation from a country where Hispanic children had their mouths washed out with soap as punishment for speaking Spanish on the playground to a country that in one week has seen the confirmation of both the first Latina Supreme Court Justice and the highest ranking Hispanic diplomat in U.S. history. We are all well-served by the diversity of experience and background that this Administration is bringing to bear. An economist with impeccable development credentials, we are grateful that someone of Maria Otero's caliber and expertise will be championing slavery issues within the State Department and around the world.

In parting, I’d also like to share with you my remarks from the 2009 Department of Education Conference: The Power of Change: Healthy Students, Safe Schools, Engaged Communities (attached). With NCMEC Director Ernie Allen, I was able to raise trafficking issues with over 2,000 principals, teachers, and security staff from around the country. I urged them to look for the signs of vulnerability among their students, to recognize the warning signs -- especially in child prostitution and domestic servant cases -- and to not view at-risk children as disposable or incorrigible.

The 13th Amendment’s living promise of freedom calls us all to work toward a slavery-free world. We must meet the scourge of human trafficking head-on through raising cultural awareness, attacking demand and other root causes of trafficking, ensuring that victims are protected, and insisting that governments punish those who would commit the heinous crimes of slavery.

2009 Department of Education Conference

Thank you for being partners in this fight.

Sincerely,

Ambassador Luis CdeBaca
Director
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Read more!

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) creates a taskforce on human trafficking

August 10, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact Information:
Marion Kim, Press Secretary. E-mail:
marion@worldevangelicals.org
Sylvia Soon, Chief of Staff. E-mail: sylvia@worldevangelicals.org


The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) has recently created a taskforce on human trafficking in an effort to raise awareness across the WEA community that represents 420 million evangelical christians worldwide. The taskforce, headed by the WEA spokesperson on human trafficking Commissioner Christine MacMillan, aims to prevent and combat trafficking by developing strategic and effective actions and tools that will help equip the local churches and their leaders to become responsive to the victims of human trafficking.
"The taskforce by conviction has the potential to develop skills of awareness for the WEA constituency of national alliances that represent 420 million. Looking at the atrocity of Human Trafficking may invoke lament where, tears flow like a river day and night. (Lamentations 2:18a) Perhaps the taskforce is to release tears in God's church as the door to which we produce strategic interventions of determination", Commissioner MacMillan said.
According to Commissioner MacMillan, who also serves as the Director of the International Social Justice Commission of The Salvation Army, the taskforce mandate is charged with the following outcomes:

  • Awareness raising events with WEA members and surrounding communities
  • Community based projects in addressing intervention strategies in highly trafficked parts of our world.
  • Engagement with regional UN offices in building collaborative think tanks and subsequent action.
  • Empowerment of the local church to influence civil society in the back yards of our community.
  • Bringing a social justice paradigm where there is an active presence in social service church mission.
  • Raising the issue of intervention in human trafficking with vulnerable and at risk persons

Resource materials for the local churches are already on offer and major projects of churches, collectively with taskforce members facilitating, are currently taking place in Eastern Europe, India, Canada, and Australia.
The taskforce members who have been selected from the WEA Women's Commission are Rev Eileen Stuart-Rhude, the Executive Director, Jennifer Roemhildt Tunehag of Sweden and Jocelyn Durston of Canada. Appointees will be responsible for developing the global vision and effectively applying the vision principles in their regions. Influential men are soon to be added to the taskforce and the named membership will be announced in the coming weeks.
"The anti-human trafficking taskforce holds to credence of action," added Commissioner MacMillan. "It embraces a spiritual worldview of unconditional compassion. Its love of God is intentional in encouraging society to live in communities of capacity and dignity in relationship. It views trafficking as an injustice to God's desire to live in relationships of mutual respect."
Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, the WEA International Director, commented, "It is a travesty that more than one person a minute is trafficked across borders every year. It is my hope and prayer that this WEA initiative will help mobilize and train our global community to respond in meaningful, effective and biblical ways. As Christ followers we must do all we can to help end the injustices of this worldwide calamity."

World Evangelical Alliance (WEA): World Evangelical Alliance is made up of 128 national evangelical alliances located in 7 regions and 104 associate member organizations. The vision of WEA is to extend the Kingdom of God by making disciples of all nations and by Christ-centered transformation within society. WEA exists to foster Christian unity, to provide an identity, voice and platform for the 420 million evangelical Christians worldwide.

Read more!

UN Urges Action to Stop Sexual Violence Against Women, Girls

By Margaret Besheer
The United Nations
07 August 2009


U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the Security Council Friday to authorize the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry in an effort to stop sexual violence against women and girls, particularly in conflict-ridden parts of Africa.
Mr. Ban told the 15-member council that parties to armed conflict continue with impunity to deliberately target civilians through acts of sexual violence.
"Parties to armed conflict use sexual violence with efficient brutality. Like a grenade or a gun, sexual violence is part of their arsenal to pursue military, political, social and economic aims," he said.
He said that in some countries the sexual violence continues even after the guns go silent.
"In Burundi, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the fighting may have ended, but sexual violence persists on a very serious scale," he added.
Mr. Ban urged the Security Council to immediately authorize the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry. It would be tasked to investigate and report on violations of international human rights laws in on-going conflict situations in Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan -- where both rebels and domestic security forces have been accused of perpetrating sexual violence against civilians on a big scale.
Human rights groups have also urged the secretary-general to create a high-level U.N. post on women and armed conflict, an option he told the Council he is considering.
U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice supported Mr. Ban's recommendations. She also suggested the possibility of sending technical assistance teams to affected countries to help develop the capacity to combat sexual violence in conflict zones. But she said the top priority must be ending impunity.
"We need to ensure that rapists and other perpetrators of sexual violence are identified and punished. We need sustained efforts to prevent new acts of sexual violence, including by increasing human rights training and vetting for members of domestic security forces," Rice said. "We also need quality and accessible treatment for the survivors of rape and abuse," she said.
Last year, the Security Council adopted resolution 1820, which demands that all parties to armed conflict immediately cease all acts of sexual violence against civilians. The resolution also puts possible perpetrators on notice that rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity -- which carry stiff penalties.
Read more!

Clinton assails rampant sexual violence in Congo

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee, Associated Press Writer

KINSHASA, Congo – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Monday for Congolese youth to lead nationwide protests against massive corruption and rampant sexual violence in the country's violence-torn east.
Clinton said she would press officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo to address the issues. But she stressed that domestic outrage at graft and sexual assaults against women and girls was needed to help prod the government into action.
"You are the ones who have to speak out," she told university students in Kinshasa. "Speak out to end the corruption, the violence, the conflict that for too long have eroded the opportunities across this country. Together, you can write a new chapter in Congolese history."
Clinton travels on Tuesday to the eastern city of Goma, the epicenter of horrific rapes and other sexual crimes committed by the military and rebel groups as they fight over the region's vast mineral wealth.
Calling the situation there "truly one of mankind's greatest atrocities," she said the fight against gender-based violence as a weapon of war was just as important as curtailing corruption.
The U.N. has recorded at least 200,000 cases of sexual violence in eastern Congo since conflict erupted in 1996. Although fighting has eased since a 2003 peace deal, the army and rebels continue to attack villages and kill civilians.
More than 5 million have been killed and hundreds of thousands left homeless over the past decade. Brutality is common in rural communities, including gang rapes that have led to unwanted pregnancies, serious injuries and death to tens of thousands of women and girls.

Earlier this month, a leading human rights group demanded that Congo crack down on rampant sexual violence often perpetrated by military generals and other top officers.
Citing U.N. data that show 7,703 cases of sexual violence by the army reported last year, Human Rights Watch said the Congolese authorities have failed to prevent the attacks.
It called on the U.N. Security Council to take "tough measures," including travel bans, and other sanctions against individuals or governments that commit or condone sexual violence in Congo and elsewhere.
Clinton called the statistics "astonishing and horrible" and said "the entire society needs to be speaking out against this. It should be a mark of shame anywhere, in any country."
"We have to speak out against the impunity of those in positions of authority who either commit these crimes or condone it," she said.
She added that the United States would support U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his call for global action to stop government forces and armed groups from using sexual violence as a tool of warfare.
Clinton spoke to the students alongside Congo native and former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo who has built a new medical center in Kinshasa. The basketball star named the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital for his late mother, contributing $19 million of his own money to the project
The pair toured the facility before the university town hall and Clinton lavished praise on Mutombo for his generosity and willingness to help his country. But not all the students appeared impressed by his largesse.
One asked Mutombo why he had not chosen to go into a more lucrative business after retiring from basketball earlier this year.
Mutombo, a one-time medical student, replied softly that he had been inspired to found the facility when his mother died in 1998 because she had not been able to get to a hospital in time for treatment. He urged the students to remain hopeful about their country and their future.
Clinton's Congo stop is the latest in an 11-day journey through Africa to promote development and good governance and underscore the Obama administration's commitment to the world's poorest continent.
She arrived in Congo from Angola, South Africa and Kenya. She will also visit Nigeria, Liberia and Cape Verde.
Read more!

ACTION IDEAS: Speak out for Congolese women

by Sharon Gramby-Sobukwe

There are several ways you can advocate for and support the women of the Congo. Here are four:
(1) Learn more from Friends of the Congo; (http://www.friendsofthecongo.org/)
(2) Sign a petition and/or make a contribution to support women's groups in Congo with the Congolese Women's Campaign Against Sexual Violence in the DRC; http://www.rdcviolencesexuelle.org/site/en/node/58)
(3) Support HEAL Africa or Panzi Hospital; (http://healafrica.org/cms/)
(4)Learn about and support the International Violence Against Women Act (HR 5927), designed to incorporate solutions for reducing violence against women into US foreign assistance programs. (http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/ivawa)
Read more!

Good Neighbors in the Congo

by Sharon Gramby-Sobukwe for PRISM Magazine (Sept/Oct 2009)

Meet two men who embody Christ's definition of what it means to be a good neighbor. Both are medical doctors, and both live and serve in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Read more at: http://www.esa-online.org/Article.asp?RecordKey=B58DD109-1284-4032-8E54-BE22E02F042C
Read more!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Profs for Prostitution?

by Judith Reisman (more by this author)
Posted 08/07/2009 ET


The headline in the August 3 Rhode Island Providence Journal , “Academics urge R.I. to keep indoor prostitution legal,” took me down memory lane. It was 1977, and I arrived in Swansea University in Wales to speak at the British Psychological Association conference on Love and Attraction. There I stumbled upon a nascent political movement that became what can be called “The Academic Pedophiles and Perverts Party” (APPP).

The Providence Journal reported that 50 “professors” wrote to their lawmakers, “imploring them not to ban indoor” brothels. The Rhode Islandprostitution traffic got support from “professors….from across the country and around the world” are lobbying for Rhode Island to maintain its “sensible” policy, enacted in 1976, which makes indoor prostitution legal.

Why? Well the smart folks explain that girls and women being prostituted in brothels are less often “assaulted, raped, or robbed” and infected less with multiple STDs than are streetwalkers who have to solicit before they go into rooms “indoors.”

Moreover, our “professors” think girls are older before they join brothels and have “more education.” It is unclear to me why Tillie in Room 5 is better off having control of advanced calculus than Sally in Room 3 when both obey the paying poo-bah (or professor) and smile while being sexually enslaved.

There is also no proof for the “professors” claim that marketing one's orifices in a brothel limits drug addiction and draws prostitutes from homes absent “childhood abuse."

The Journal quotes George Washington University Prof. Ronald Weitzer. He is sure “many” prostituted women and girls experience “moderate-to-high job satisfaction and think they provide a valuable service." Which could be paraphrased from a Margaret Mitchell dialogue between an ante-bellum plantation owner and his over-seer.

“Educators from such institutions as New York University, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Victoria University in New Zealand” signed the professor letter. You know, especially in an economic downturn, brothel keepers have so many openings!

Jenny Meyen, a Rhode Island resident, testified to the Middletown council seeking support for Rep. Joanne Giannini's prostitution bill in the House [Readers just to clarify Giannini's bill (passed by the R.I. House) is the good one; there are other bad bills (R.I. Senate bills) that give a pass to pimps... Meyen said the Senate prostitution bill decriminalizes pimping and makes the penalty for prostitution the equivalent of a traffic ticket.

“I’m here today because I’m a mother of 3 children….If the State Senate does not support the Giannini Bill….if the senate passes what they call a bill, NOTHING will prevent that pimp from soliciting our children.”

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute recently wrote about “Gonzo Porn” and internet free pornography with users “between the ages of 12 and 17,” young women and “mid-teens to the mid-twenties and up." We know the thinking, rational brain does not even mature until roughly age 21. These professors would thus encourage seduction of immature children seeking “moderate-to-high job satisfaction” into brothels where they provide “a valuable service."

Rhode Island is now the only state -- apart from some Nevada counties -- with legal brothels. Who are Rhode Island’s senators serving, when they consistently support brothel profits over public safety? Every pervert in the U.S. should be heading for Rhode Island, the state that traffics in brothel tourism.

Winding back to 1977, when the Swansea University staff threatened to strike when they heard that pedophile activist Tom O’Carroll was to call for legalized sex with children from their college podium, Tufts University professor Larry Constantine, a Penthouse board member, (some “professors” moonlight for pornographers) was furious at the workers. He circulated a “free speech” petition saying the pedophile must speak and the staff must work.

Almost all of the 96 international academicians at the conference signed the “free speech” petition. My charge is that as guests we had no right to leave behind a community undone by giving place to a proselytizing child molester.

Ten years later, in 1987, the Wales academic pedophiles launched their magazine, Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia campaigning for “a paedophile consciousness” and an end to the age of consent, worldwide.

There apparently is a real-but-closeted Academic Pedophiles and Perverts Party. Letters like the one cited by the Rhode Island Providence Journal , signed by 50 “professors,” brings me back to the September 1977 Wales pedophile and to wondering, again, if there is any way to bring reality to academia.

Dr. Reisman of the Institute for Media Education and the California Protective Parents Association has written frequently for HUMAN EVENTS on Alfred Kinsey. She runs drjudithreisman.com and is the author of Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences­The Red Queen and the Grand Scheme and the soon to be released Kinsey’s Attic: How One Man’s Sexual Pathology Changed the World .
Read more!

Academics urge R.I. to keep indoor prostitution legal

By Jack Perry

A group of 50 professors from across the country and around the world has penned a letter to Rhode Island lawmakers, imploring them not to ban indoor prostitution.

The state's current policy of treating indoor and outdoor prostitution differently is a sensible practice, they argue.

"Compared to street workers, women and men who work indoors generally are much safer and less at risk of being assaulted, raped, or robbed," the letter reads. "They also have lower rates of sexually transmitted infections, enter prostitution at an older age, have more education, and are less likely to be drug-dependent or have a history of childhood abuse."

"Many indoor workers made conscious decisions to enter the trade, and several studies also find that indoor workers have moderate-to-high job satisfaction and believe they provide a valuable service," it continues.

Written by George Washington University Prof. Ronald Weitzer and Nassau Community College Prof. Elizabeth Wood, and signed by educators from such institutions as New York University, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Victoria University in New Zealand, the letter emphasizes that it is not trying to "romanticize indoor prostitution."

"Rhode Island's current system of treating indoor and street prostitution differently is a step in the right direction. Criminalizing indoor sexual services is not the answer," it reads.

At present, Rhode Island is the only state -- apart from several counties in Nevada -- that does not ban indoor prostitution. The General Assembly has worked this year to change that law, though legislators have not yet agreed on a common version of the proposal.
Read more!

Women At Risk

By Bob Herbert
Published in the New York Times on 8th August 2009

"I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne - yet 30 million women rejected me," wrote George Sodini in a blog that he kept while preparing for this week's shooting in a Pennsylvania gym in which he killed three women, wounded nine others and then killed himself.

We've seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter.

Back in the fall of 2006, a fiend invaded an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, separated the girls from the boys, and then shot 10 of the girls, killing five. I wrote, at the time, that there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women - not so much of an uproar.

According to police accounts, Sodini walked into a dance-aerobics class of about 30 women who were being led by a pregnant instructor. He turned out the lights and opened fire. The instructor was among the wounded.


We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected. We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation's entertainment.

The mainstream culture is filled with the most gruesome forms of misogyny, and pornography is now a multibillion-dollar industry - much of it controlled by mainstream U.S. corporations.

One of the striking things about mass killings in the U.S. is how consistently we find that the killers were riddled with shame and sexual humiliation, which they inevitably blamed on women and girls. The answer to their feelings of inadequacy was to get their hands on a gun (or guns) and begin blowing people away.

What was unusual about Sodini was how explicit he was in his blog about his personal shame and his hatred of women. "Why do this?" he asked. "To young girls? Just read below." In his gruesome, monthslong rant, he managed to say, among other things: "It seems many teenage girls have sex frequently. One 16 year old does it usually three times a day with her boyfriend. So, err, after a month of that, this little [expletive] has had more sex than ME in my LIFE, and I am 48.

One more reason."I was reminded of the Virginia Tech gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people in a rampage at the university in 2007. While Cho shot males as well as females, he was reported to have previously stalked female classmates and to have leaned under tables to take inappropriate photos of women. A former roommate said Cho once claimed to have seen "promiscuity" when he looked into the eyes of a woman on campus.

Soon after the Virginia Tech slayings, I interviewed Dr. James Gilligan, who spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts and as a professor at Harvard and N.Y.U. "What I've concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal," he said, "is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one's manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act."

Life in the United States is mind-bogglingly violent. But we should take particular notice of the staggering amounts of violence brought down on the nation's women and girls each and every day for no other reason than who they are. They are attacked because they are female. A girl or woman somewhere in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count.

There were so many sexual attacks against women in the armed forces that the Defense Department had to revise its entire approach to the problem.

We would become much more sane, much healthier, as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem, and that the twisted way so many men feel about women, combined with the absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions.
Read more!

Not a Victimless Crime

Why the libertarian idea of decriminalizing prostitution is not so good.

By D. Hughes & R. P. George

National Review Online


Tiny Rhode Island prides itself on its history and charm. But since it decriminalized prostitution in 1980, it has become a haven for something decidedly uncharming: the trafficking of girls and young women into the commercial sex industry. There is a lesson in this for the nation.

Last month, a missing 16-year-old girl from Boston was found bleeding and incoherent in an apartment in South Providence. She was being held captive by an escaped convict who had her stripping in one of Providence’s many sex clubs.

In April, the so-called Craigslist killer allegedly assaulted a prostitute in a Warwick hotel. A federal investigation has linked some of Rhode Island’s “Asian spa” brothels to organized crime rings.

Late last year, an Asian woman ran from a brothel and burst into a nearby shop to plead for help, gesturing to indicate that she was being forced to engage in sex acts.

The intersection of highways I-95 and I-195 makes Providence an ideal location for the sex trade. Strip clubs and other sex establishments are flourishing there.

Activists fighting against sexual exploitation in Massachusetts say that many of the women and girls they aid have been trafficked to clubs in Rhode Island.

Decriminalizing prostitution sounds good in theory to some people of good will. It appeals to certain libertarians who imagine that without legal prohibitions, women will make “free choices” to sell themselves or not, just as they please. But the experience of Rhode Island exposes this as a tragic fantasy.

Without effective law enforcement, the sex industry is expanding rapidly, creating a haven for sex traffickers. Far from a libertarian utopia, decriminalizing prostitution has fostered coercion, exploitation, and abuse. In the early 1990s, Rhode Island had four strip clubs and one gay bathhouse. By 2005, there were nine “houses of prostitution,” according to the Providence Journal . The state has become a magnet for Asian-style spa-brothels, strip clubs, “gentlemen’s” clubs, gay bathhouses, and adult bookstores. There are now 40 known establishments offering prostitution, 12 of which have opened since January 2009, according to researcher Melanie Shapiro. Many more brothels have opened underground in residences and hotels.

Rhode Island police are stymied by the lack of laws enabling them to investigate effectively in order to identify victims and prosecute traffickers. Prostitution was decriminalized in the state as a result of a lawsuit brought by a prostitutes’ rights group in 1980. Since then, Rhode Island has had no laws against prostitution so long as no solicitation occurs outdoors. Outdoor solicitation remains illegal as a form of loitering for indecent purposes.

Rhode Island has laws against sex trafficking and pimping (pandering, transporting, and harboring for prostitution, and deriving support and maintenance from prostitution). But without a predicate prostitution crime, state police lack the grounds to intervene and interview likely victims. Enforcement of federal sex-trafficking laws is also severely hampered. Consequently, there have been no federal or state prosecutions for sex trafficking and no state prosecutions for pimping for many years.

Rhode Islanders talk about the “embarrassment” to the state, and some legislators have worked for years to close what has come to be called “the loophole.” Each time, they have been defeated. This year, State Rep. Joanne Giannini (D.) introduced a bill creating a basic prostitution law. To allay fears that it would make the victims of trafficking subject to criminal charges, her bill explicitly gives them immunity. It passed the Rhode Island House of Representatives overwhelmingly.

Then the Senate Judiciary Committee weighed in with a bill going in the wrong direction. State Sens. Paul Jabour, Charles Levesque, and Rhoda Perry crafted legislation that would repeal all of Rhode Island’s anti-pimping laws. Their bill would partially replace these felony crimes with a misdemeanor penalized at $1,000 and would make prostitution a civil offense, comparable to a traffic violation, with a penalty of $100 to $250. The bill passed the State Senate unanimously.

Law-enforcement agencies have rightly condemned the Senate bill for failing to give them the legal tools to investigate sex-trafficking crimes and for repealing or weakening existing laws that could be used if there were a predicate offense. The bill is so bad that many suspect it was passed deliberately to obstruct the passage of a serious prostitution law.

The Rhode Island legislature is in a deadlock. Another year could go by without real reform.

The State Senate’s obstructionism has been aided by the silence of many who should be speaking out. Some local and national anti-trafficking organizations have actually worked behind the scenes to oppose the desperately needed reforms. They blame the lack of trafficking prosecutions on lack of political will and inadequate police training. In reality, trafficking laws work only where law enforcement is empowered to fight prostitution.

Other groups, such as the Rhode Island chapter of the ACLU and Rhode Island NOW, have opposed passage of a prostitution law for ideological reasons. They support the decriminalization of prostitution and mistakenly believe that good trafficking laws make prostitution laws unnecessary. The Rhode Island experience demonstrates that it is long past time to lay that utopian hope aside. The truth is that these very groups are to blame for obstructing efforts to equip police to protect victims of trafficking.

It is an unspeakable tragedy that women’s rights groups and even organizations dedicated to fighting trafficking are failing to understand how basic prostitution laws help officials to identify victims and prosecute traffickers.

Rhode Island’s lawmakers have a choice: They can give Rhode Island a serious prostitution law this year, or they can continue their obstruction.

Whatever they do, though, let the tragic consequences of Rhode Island’s experiment in decriminalizing prostitution be a lesson to lawmakers in other states, and to all who care about protecting women and girls from sexual exploitation.
Read more!