Don’t Increase Supply for Sexual Exploitation

Vermont, is one of the targets for Decrim Sex Workers (DSW). They may have changed their name in NH, after the last few go’rounds here, trying to repeal prohibition for pimping and other forms of sexual exploitation. Below, I share excerpts from the letter I sent to the VT Senate Judiciary Committee Chair. In short, I ask Senator Sears, “Please don’t increase supply for sexual exploitation.”

Our neighbors in Vermont surely don’t want to be known for sex tourism. Requiring supply for demand, is the only logical outcome to decriminalizing the sex (slave) trade. Very few women choose prostitution.

Don’t Increase Supply for Sexual Exploitation

Dear Senator Sears,

I am a juvenile sex trafficking survivor. For nearly eight years, I have been working with people to stem the tide of trafficking and violence against women. The bills referenced above are surely an attempt to combat the same. However, decriminalizing pimping, brothel keeping, and buying sex acts have been shown to increase demand. Increased demand means increasing supply.

Since I was that ’supply’ for four years, I thought you might be willing to think about what I have to say.

The men who bought me and sold me did not recognize me as a person. I was simply an implement for their use. There were times when it was simply sex, but very often the buyers were looking for more excitement: from rough sex turned to pinching, biting, punching, choking, pulling my hair out, slapping, throwing me around. I was 90lbs when I was being prostituted at 14 years old. Four years, often going days without food, weeks without sleeping in a bed or even a couch, and months -not knowing if anyone cared if I was dead or alive. I suffered many deprivations. Lice and sexually transmitted infections, even pregnancy during my experience.

You Care about Youth

Supply, means girls like me will have to be brought into Vermont to meet the demand. Youth and vulnerable adults will be used and abused. Then, thrown away like trash, damaged and traumatized.

I am begging you to reconsider the makeup of those on the study committee. Please include survivors of the sex trade and researchers. I was open minded. I did a lot of research when some people said that decriminalization would help keep participants safer. It’s just not true. Decriminalizing the sex trade has horrifying consequences.

Please, Sir, please do not move forward with this as written. Repealing protections for most women at the behest of a few who practice dominatrix makes no sense. After all, if torture is the paradigm from which you see the world, what constitutes violence will be very different from what is now normally defined as such.

If law enforcement cannot investigate prostitution, then what happens when a 90 pound 13 year old girl is in the mix? She will be like me, unseen, a non-person, used abused and thrown into a ditch.

You surely care about youth. After all the blood, sweat, and tears of 35 years working with young people, please use your authority in this matter to continue to be a hero for them.

Together, we can protect young people from sexual exploitation. Please don’t increase supply for sexual exploitation.

Illegality Decreases Demand

We don’t need a Study to know the logical conclusion to decriminalizing pimping, brothel keeping, and prostitution will require increased supply. The law is a teacher.

If it’s legal, it must be ok, right?

My colleagues and I have copious research and testimonies. Here are a few from Elenor Gleatan from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. 

There are no independent studies that show normalizing the sex trade by decriminalizing it or legalizing it makes it safer. On the contrary, wherever prostitution is legalized or legitimized there’s an increase in sex trafficking, as demonstrated by an academic study of 150 countries led by the London School of Economics.

Why? For several logical reasons:

1. Once you normalize the sex trade, it explodes. In Germany, where prostitution and brothels have been legal since 2002, an estimated one million men buy sex each day, coming from all over the world. Berlin alone, has over 500 brothels.

2. Men who don’t buy sex when it is illegal, become buyers. As a 2018 study of 8,000 U.S. men demonstrates, over 20% of respondents who never bought sex, would buy sex if it was decriminalized or legalized.

3. To satisfy demand, the sex trade has to lure in vulnerable people, because there are never enough women willing to be exploited and degraded in prostitution. Sex trafficking cases increased 70% in Germany as a result of legalization. In The Netherlands were prostitution was legalized in 2000, an estimated 50-90% of women are selling their bodies against their will.

4. The illegal sex trade increases under cover of the legal sector, when it is normalized. Nevada, the only U.S. jurisdiction with legal brothels, has the highest rates of an illegal sex trade—63% higher than the next highest state of New York and double that of Florida.

Who Wants This?

DSW hijacked a bill that sought to increase penalties for buyers of children for sexual exploitation. They managed to turn the whole discussion around to one about studying so-called “sex work.” At least one of whom is a pronounced dominatrix: one who engages inflicting pain and humiliation, as in a dominating woman, especially one who takes the sadistic role in sadomasochistic sexual activities. The bill was retained and passed the following year, not without a great deal of effort.

Pimps want this. Brothel keepers want this. And buyers want it too. As humans, we need novelty. If buying sex is normal, some men will prefer more excitement. They may engage in riskier behaviors and fetishes. This is explained by Fight the New Drug, a non-political, non-religious organization. They have heaps of research.

Sexual exploitation happens on a continuum. Forms of exploitation are related and overlap. There is a thin and fragile veil between prostitution and sex trafficking. Porn is literally filmed prostitution. It is often a depiction of trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation of minors, incest, and brutal rape for profit.

What can you do?

Contact me. Let’s have a conversation about that.