According to Zaz Hollander, reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, police in Wasila, Alaska used funds allocated for fighting child-sex trafficking to… round up adult customers who answered ads where police officers pretended to be… adult prostitutes.

The late October bust resulted in the arrests of 10 men, plus the seizure of more than $2,100 in cash and 10 cell phones, police say. The sting, conducted by Palmer and Wasilla police with help from the FBI and Anchorage’s vice squad, was associated with a larger federal strategy called Operation Cross Country that targets child prostitutes and people who sell children into slavery.

The Mat-Su operation turned up neither, said Palmer police Detective Sgt. Kelly Turney. Instead, Turney said, the arrests represented the beginning of “us being able to work the issue”— arresting low-level johns to find pimps for adult prostitutes who may also be trafficking young girls.

Police knew prostitution happened here, but they didn’t know to what extent. The sting was one way to figure that out.

Police placed ads on Craigslist and other places. Turney wouldn’t describe the ad, but did say it made no reference to child prostitution.

Read all about it here.

Not to seem too petty or anything here but WTF? Whatever you think of sex trafficking, and whatever you think of sexual exploitation of minors, and however seriously you take ‘wingnut allegations that millions of American children are trafficked for sex, you’d sort of expect funds used to fight child-sex trafficking would be used to fight child-sex trafficking!

As one dour-sounding Alaskan “complete energy manipulation” provider (reiki massage, guided meditation, “ancient hot stone body work,” “some [presumably customer] nudity involved”) in Hollander’s article put it “If you advertise in the paper for whatever service and you’ve got grownups coming to see you, you think they’ve got child abductees in their car?”

I think that’s about right: it sounds like, you know, exactly the sort of thing you’d do if you didn’t actually take the problem at all seriously but you saw a way to featherbed your local budget with Federal dollars.

This is one of those things I find really frustrating. Because it relies so heavily on paradigms of sexual scarcity and transactional heterosexuality I don’t have much patience with prostitution. And because I think the transitory benefits to adults don’t merit the sometimes lifelong consequences for children I’m intolerant of sexual exploitation of minors. And don’t even get me started on commerce in coerced or conscripted people. But Zeus on Zanzibar I hate it when people pretend there’s no difference between the three. And so I’ve got nothing but contempt for the boneheads who pulled this stunt in Wasila, or for anyone who thinks it was just a swell idea.

Hollander says the community reaction isn’t going down well for the Wasila’s police chief

“It’s a little disheartening when you actually try to do something good and the majority of people think you’re wasting money, wasting time, why aren’t you out doing something bigger?” said Palmer police Commander Tom Remaley.

“It’s almost like you can’t win.”

See, this is what’s frustrating about it. If he was serious about investigating prostituted children or trafficked adults he wouldn’t be pulling stunts like this. That he did pull this stunt suggests he actually doesn’t take it seriously. He actually could win, you know. He just can’t do it that way.

(Via Google Alert on keyword “sex trafficking”)

Photo by Flickr user lawgeek. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Earlier today I mentioned an article, via Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors, about an underage girl from Massachusetts who was being prostituted out of a New Jersey motel room.

Authorities: Kidnapped girl rescued at motel

ABSECON — Police arrested a Vineland man and three other people after a Massachusetts girl called her mother to report she was being held against her will at a White Horse Pike motel.

...

Authorities would[n’t] give the exact age of the victim, or when she was first allegedly kidnapped, stating only that she is under 18.

Source: South Jersey News

Response #2:

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere recently but can anyone explain why let alone pimps and traffickers of the underaged, let alone their customers, shouldn’t spend the rest of their lives on sex-offender registries?

And no, it doesn’t matter whether their prostitution is voluntary or, as in the case of the New Jersey girl, coerced. Nor does it matter that (as Lux Alptraum correctly points out) “...adolescents are not children.” Because as she also points out, neither are they adults.

And yet, as Debra Boyer pointed out in “Who Pays the Price? Assessment of Youth Involvement in Prostitution in Seattle” (pdf)

The routine fine for those arrested for “patronizing” is $500 although the maximum that can be imposed is $1,000.

What’s not just wrong but sick and wrong is that in virtually all instances the penalty for “patrons” of minors is no higher with the result that…

- Customers have no incentive to check. Which is ironic because in cases of non-prostitution “She looked old enough to me” isn’t a defense. It’s also ironic because evidently customers have no qualms, at all, about checking whether a sex-worker is actually an undercover cop.

- There’s no additional penalty for those pimps and traffickers who conscript minors. Which is a particular shame since minors, especially runaway or kicked-out minors, are particularly vulnerable.

- Particularly disturbingly from my perspective is that, evidently, if there are no additional penalties then police and prosecutors evidently have no additional incentive to investigate or bring charges against prostitution, or “patronage” of minors.

- And finally, if “patrons,” pimps, and police aren’t checking ages and responding accordingly then it’s easier for minors themselves to slip into prostitution, either voluntarily or by conscription.

Show of hands, please, if anyone thinks that status quo is just hunky-dory? Didn’t think so. So! WTF?

Actually, three WTFs

1) Why aren’t anti-prostitution activists specifically targeting child prostitution for reasons other than flash or buzz value? (For instance would Professor Bartow have given the New Jersey child case any attention at all if she wasn’t pushing to extend TVPA coverage to all adults?) It seems to me that even if you wanted to stop all prostitution going specifically against prostitution of minors would let you build up a lot of momentum. Unless I’m mistaken and anti’s are content to let children be prostituted in order to maintain a high scare-quote quotient against prostitution in general. (Anyone know why anti’s are so reluctant to single out prostitution of children? Is it that they like the shock-troop value that child prostitution adds to what might otherwise be a more straight-up libertarian issue?)

2) Why aren’t pro-prostitution activists specifically supporting targeting child prostitution? It seems like a no-brainer if you really wanted to see prostitution legalized and/or normalized. Not least because anti-prostitution types get so much mileage with prostituted-child statistics (even if, evidently, they never otherwise lift a finger to stop it — see the preceeding point.) And not to put too fine a point on it but why on earth do adult prostitutes tolerate competition from minors in the first place? Why on earth do they tolerate the diversion of paying customers to generally less expensive and more conventionally desirable child prostitutes? (Anyone know why pro’s are so reluctant to single out prostitution of children? Is it that most adult sex-workers have better sense than to draw attention to themselves for fear of arrest? Is it because nominally pro-prostitution customers themselves enjoy “patronizing” children when they can get away with it? Especially since there appear to be no, zero, none consequences if they do under the current system?)

3) Why aren’t reporters, parents, community activists, politicians, and police specifically supporting targeting child prostitution? Actually this might be less of a no-brainer than the preceding ones because, to too many people, once someone’s had sex, even if they’re a child, they’re “broken” or “damaged goods” or their “innocence” is “lost.” On the other hand, it seems to me that they’d be most easily recruited to support anti-child-prostitution policies.

At any rate this seems like a classic case of if you’re not part of the solution you’re the problem** whether you disapprove of, approve of, or are utterly indifferent to prostitution between adults. So again, WTF? If you’re not part of the solution you ought to be ashamed of yourself: pimps and patrons of prostituted minors should be registered as the unambiguous sex offenders they are.

[** Not just part of it. —fl]

Jess McCabe of The F-Word Blog points to an Oxfam/Kalayaan Report (PDF) on yet another form of trafficking the Ann-Bartow/Southern-Baptist-Convention-supported amendment to the Wilberforce/TVPA act will do nothing about. Not least because, like a little too much human trafficking actually, the context in which the trafficking occurs is

Oxfam and Kalayaan today reveal that abuse of migrant domestic workers is mind-bogglingly widespread. The majority of these workers are women from developing countries, living in conditions close to slavery:

Migrant domestic workers have the legal status of workers in the UK – and are entitled to rights such as the minimum wage, time off, etc. Yet, of more than 300 workers registered with Kalayaan in 2006, 43% of workers reported not being given their own bed, 41% were not given regular meals, 70% were given no time off, 61% were not allowed out of the house without their employer’s permission. In addition, 10% reported sexual abuse, 26% physical abuse and 72% psychological abuse at the hands of their employers. Many workers were paid as little as 50p an hour, were made to work up to 16 hours a day, and were on constant call to their employers.

Yes, 61% are not allowed out of the house without their employer’s permission. 80% of the domestic workers registered with Kalayaan, an organisation which provides services for migrant domestic workers, are women.

Read the quote in context here.

A friend mentioned yesterday that “you should talk to my sister, her [politically conservative, fundamentalist/evangelical] church is really involved in trafficking.” “Really,” I said, because I’ve been trying to find anti-trafficking connections in the area (it really really matters to me.) We talked a bit more and, it turns out somewhat predictably, that it’s a pulpit issue (i.e. a coordinated with conservative politics) and concerned exclusively with the anti-domestic-prostitution amendments to the Wilberforce/TVPA reauthorization bill.

That the same people are as virulently anti-immigrant, and as disinclined to doing “good works” as one can be and still even pretend to call one’s self Christian suggests exactly where the congregation stands on actual, you know, human trafficking.

They are not likely to know, and even less likely to care, that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act they’re seeking to amend does little or nothing to remedy the kind of abuse, including sexual abuse, of legally internationally-trafficked, effectively indentured migrants mentioned in Jess’s article.

So you still sometimes hear people talking about the halcyon days of life in America before the 1960s cropped up with all it’s nasty non-conformity and civil rights and environmentalism and, especially, feminism. I… I… I just don’t think most people, even most anti-feminists, would really enjoy it as much as they imagine. One thing, especially, I don’t think outside of maybe the most fervently anti-feminist/anti-modernist evangelical movements and the occasional South Carolina law professor’s other allies, I’m pretty sure most people would be uncomfortable with the 1960 the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that officially defined women as mentally “weak” and accepted the “legislative supposition” that women have “no independent will of their own.”

The case dealt with interpreting whether a woman could be compelled to testify against her husband under a prosecution of the 1910 “White-Slave Trade Act,” a.k.a. the Mann Act if the husband had been her pimp. The court said go for it.

Justice John Marshall Harlan II, evidently considered the most conservative judge on the court at the time wrote the majority opinion. (All emphasis mine.)

U.S. Supreme Court WYATT v. UNITED STATES, 362 U.S. 525 (1960)

it cannot be seriously argued that one who has committed this “shameless offense against wifehood” ... should be permitted to prevent his wife from testifying to the crime by invoking an interest founded on the marital relation or the desire of the law to protect it. Petitioner’s attempt to prevent his wife from testifying, by invoking an asserted privilege of his own, was properly rejected.

Second. The witness-wife, however, did not testify willingly, but objected to being questioned by the prosecution, and gave evidence only upon the ruling of the District Court denying her claimed privilege not to testify. We therefore consider the correctness of that ruling. 3 [362 U.S. 525, 528]

...

Where a man has prostituted his own wife, he has committed an offense against both her and the marital relation, and we have today affirmed the exception disabling him from excluding her testimony against him. It is suggested, however, that this exception has no application to the witness-wife when she chooses to remain silent. The exception to the party’s privilege, it is said, rests on the necessity of preventing the defendant from sealing his wife’s lips by his own unlawful act, see United States v. Mitchell, supra, at 1008-1009; Wigmore, op. cit., supra, 2239, and it is argued that where the wife has chosen … not to “become the instrument” of her husband’s downfall, it is her own privilege which is in question, and the reasons for according it to her in the first place are fully applicable.

We must view this position in light of the congressional judgment and policy embodied in the Mann Act. “A primary purpose of the Mann Act was to protect women who were weak from men who were bad.” Denning v. United States, 247 F. 463, 465. It was in response to shocking revelations of subjugation of women too weak to resist that Congress acted. ... As the legislative history discloses, the Act reflects the supposition that the women with whom it sought to deal often had no independent will of their own, and embodies, in effect, the view that they must be protected against themselves. Compare 18 U.S.C. 2422 (consent of woman immaterial in prosecution under that section). It is not for us to re-examine the basis of that supposition.

Applying the legislative judgment underlying the Act, we are led to hold it not an allowable choice for a prostituted witness-wife “voluntarily” to decide to protect her husband by declining to testify against him. For if a defendant can induce a woman, against her “will,” to enter a life of prostitution for his benefit – and the Act rests on the view that he can – by the same token it should be considered that he can, at least as easily, persuade one who has already fallen victim to his influence that she must also protect him. To make matters turn upon ad hoc inquiries into the actual state of mind of particular women, thereby encumbering Mann Act trials with a collateral issue of the greatest subtlety, is hardly an acceptable solution.

Fourth. What we have already said likewise governs the disposition of the petitioner’s reliance on the fact that his marriage took place after the commission of the [362 U.S. 525, 531] offense. Again, we deal here only with a Mann Act prosecution, and intimate no view on the applicability of the privilege of either a party or a witness similarly circumstanced in other situations. The legislative assumption of lack of independent will applies as fully here. As the petitioner by his power over the witness could, as we have considered should be assumed, have secured her promise not to testify, so, it should be assumed, could he have induced her to go through a marriage ceremony with him, perhaps “in contemplation of evading justice by reason of the very rule which is now sought to be invoked.” United States v. Williams, 55 F. Supp. 375, 380.

Read the full text of the opinion and dissent here.

Interestingly, in the dissent Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was regularly excoriated by evangelicals, conservatives, and other opponents of civil rights, 10-Amendment rights in general, and rulings that trumped “states rights” a.k.a. legislated racism, wrote that in passing the Mann Act Congress expressly relieved women of any culpability in prostitution on the assumption that, again, women lacked independent will to make such a decision and therefore it has to be someone else’s, anyone else’s, fault.

The Court does not and could not rely upon the record to prove that petitioner’s wife was somehow mesmerized by him when she was on the witness stand. The evidence, in point of fact, strongly suggests that the wife played a managerial role in the sordid enterprise which formed the basis for the prosecution. 2 Apparently this was the jury’s view, since the jurors asked the judge whether it would “make any difference or – if the woman had anything to do with the instigation or planning . . . .” The judge, of course, instructed them that this would be immaterial, but the jury nevertheless unanimously recommended leniency. Thus this case is a strange vehicle for the Court to use in announcing its “lack of independent will” theory. Presumably it is to be regarded as the exception which proves the rule.

The sole ground assigned by the Court for its decision is that it is a necessary application of the “legislative judgment underlying the [Mann] Act,” which “reflects the supposition that the women with whom [Congress] sought to deal often had no independent will of their own, and embodies, in effect, the view that they must be protected [362 U.S. 525, 534] against themselves.”

...

In assessing the pertinence of the woman’s consent to the culprit’s criminal responsibility, Congress chose between the interest of society in eradicating the importation and interstate transportation of prostitutes and the interest of women to be protected from clever and unscrupulous profiteers, on the one hand, and the voluntary engagement of women in prostitution on the other. In view of the manifest imbalance of these competing considerations and the difficulty of definition and proof of the type of consent which might conceivably be relevant, it is hardly surprising that Congress passed the Mann Act and made consent entirely immaterial under 2422.

At any rate I can see why people like the Southern Baptist Convention would prefer that the Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007 should relocate sex trafficking from coverage under, you know, a 13th-Amendment-based anti-trafficking statute to coverage under the commerce-clause coverage of the White-Slavery Trade Act. They’re acidly committed to the once-common, now-radical proposition that women aren’t people. (See also Juhu Thukral’s guest post at Feministing about problems with shoving real trafficking under the Mann Act umbrealla.