Photo “Boston red light district” by Flickr user hebedesign. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Via Echidne Pierre Thomas of ABC News says (emphasis mine)
In the last three days, the FBI and police from 29 cities rescued 47 children from 73 alleged pimps and more than 500 others who authorities say sought to exploit them. Among those children saved: a 12-year-old from Texas; a 13-year-old from Ohio; and a 14-year-old from Michigan.
...
FBI Deputy Director John S. Pistole vowed today that the effort would continue. “Those that exploit children should know they will be brought to justice,” Pistole said.
When I saw that “more than 500 others” I thought if it’s 73 pimps it must be 500 customers. Finally, I thought to myself, we were going to see action taken against the customer. And, given the fiery rhetoric Federal authorities used to decry sexual exploitation of children, they’ll face penalties stiffer than a few weekends at “john school.” Maybe, I thought, prosecutors will finally get serious about those who pay for sex with children by throwing the book at them for having sex with children! Including, oh, say, sexual assault of a child, statutory rape, sexual exploitation of a minor, pedophilia or ephebophilia, and all the other appropriately extremely draconian laws reserved for adults who have sex with children. Oh, and followed by, preferably, spending the rest of their lives registered as class two or class three sex offenders, reporting to local police every time they change address, having their names posted on neighborhood-watch registries, and putting big orange signs on their front doors on Halloween that say “No Candy At This Residence.”
Imagine my dismay then when, dissatisfied with the meager information at the ABC site I discovered instead that (emphasis again mine)
“Operation Cross Country II” involved efforts in 29 cities and resulted in the arrest of 73 pimps and 518 adult prostitutes, the FBI said.
Actually, to the extent that any adult prostitute knowingly fails to report sexual exploitation of a minor (inside or outside trafficking) I think it’s actually hunky-dory that they, like any other involved adult, be charged as accessories to the crimes committed against the victims. (Although admittedly the fact that adult sex work, even when coerced, is criminalized makes it not only personally but legally perilous for them to report trafficking of children or anyone else.) Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case either — instead the 500+ adult sex-workers were evidently just swept up in the course of the investigation.
So. Seriously. If people were serious about prostituted children then why the sam hill are they giving a pass to those who pay to have sex with them? And if people are serious about reducing demand for prostituted children it ought to be extraordinarily efficient to employ already well-established criminal law against the customers of the pimps who traffick them.
Thus announcing the arrest of 500+ adult prostitutes is beyond unimpressive. Either they were coerced adults in which case they too should have been rescued rather than arrested, or else they were voluntary sex workers in which case their arrests were irrelevant to the stated purpose of the law-enforcement initiative to rescue prostituted children.
I mean, seriously, a year-long, multi-agency, multi-jurisdiction “Operation Cross Country II,” presumably directed by a team that had already conducted a previous Operation Cross Country didn’t turn up one single solitary customer arrest? Yielding not one solitary prosecution for sexual assault of a child?
Priorities, people, priorities!
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For the record I think it’s dumb to prosecute affirmative, non-coerced sex between consenting adults, including sex for compensation between consenting adults. (In fact as I pointed out above, it’s counterproductive to protecting conscripted or otherwise trafficked children and adults.) But there we’re talking about consenting adults: adults, plural. Minors, by legal, social, and developmental definition aren’t adults and consequently none of the arguments supporting sex work for consenting adults have no bearing whatsoever on this discussion.
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See also – Why Reality Trumps Fantasy – “Patrons” of Child Prostitutes Need to be Registered as Sex Offenders – The Fledgling Fund: Very Young Girls – Not Pretty Babies – “Who Pays the Price? Assessment of Youth Involvement in Prostitution in Seattle” (pdf)
