trafficking

If "Sex Trafficking" Opponents Were Sincere They'd Take the Fate of the Other 80% of Trafficking Victims Seriously Too

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2011-04-12 14:03

Aaah, there now. After cooling off for a week or two I'm finally able to post the following without delving into an over-the-top rant about the acute immorality of those who claim the only kind of trafficking we should worry about is "sex trafficking."

Monica Potts puts her finger squarely on why I'm so overcaffeinatedly intolerant of those who dismiss all trafficking that isn't sex trafficking as a prostitution-industry smoke screen.

Carina Diaz worked in fields in upstate New York for seven years, picking tomatoes, planting onions, and growing other specialty vegetable crops like beets. During that time, she says, she and the other women she worked with were sexually harassed by their supervisor and his friend. Her supervisor groped the women, made vulgar comments and threatened them. She says she had a boss who threatened to deport undocumented workers because he didn't want to pay them bonuses they were due. In general, the supervisors acted as if the harassment were acceptable because they gave the women jobs, and the women were afraid to report the abuse because they needed the money and didn't trust law enforcement. "Supervisors touch women's bodies and they think they can get away with it," she said this morning at an event hosted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Source: The American Prospect

By almost all accounts only about 20% of humans are trafficked into prostitution. The majority are instead trafficked into a) agriculture, b) industry (sweat shops, construction) c) domestic service and d) hospitality (i.e. janitorial / room service.)

The trick being that, y'know, even when an individual isn't trafficked into commercial sex they can still be subjected to quite a lot of sexual coercion.

For reasons that completely elude me an awful lot of people who might otherwise take a serious interest in the rape, harassment, and other sexual exploitation of trafficked and otherwise subjugated workers are so invested in making their plights invisible.

It's enough to make you think that maybe they hate prostitution for reasons that don't really have very much to do with worrying about sexual exploitation of those who perform it.

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Ignored Trafficking Victims Aren't Sold for Sex -- Instead They're Sold for Sex... and Housekeeping... and Bearing Children

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2010-10-18 09:02

Laura Agustín of Border Thinking on Migration, Culture, Economy and Sex usually writes with experience-based skepticism of the idea that all sex work is trafficking, or the even more specific claim that all cross-border sex workers are trafficked. It’s not that trafficking never happens, and she’s pretty clear about it when it does. It’s just that such monomaniacal echos of the politically-motivated “white slavery” panics of 100 years ago poorly serve neither sex workers, migrants, or all the different kinds of people who are actually trafficked.

Case in point (all emphasis hers.)

Getting trafficked into a marriage you didn’t want sounds at least as bad as getting trafficked into the sex industry, because on top of the need to have sex when you don’t want to you will be very isolated and forced to do housework and other manual labour. Migrant women from Myanmar recruited for jobs in China and then passed on as wives are being forced to marry (in contrast to different sorts of ‘arranged’ marriages by families of two more-or-less witting spouses).

Lured into a trap, Global Post, 9 September 2010, with photos by Katsuo Takahashi

Last year Chinese police freed 268 Burmese women who had been trafficked and forced into marriages with Chinese men. Human rights activists believe that this represents only a small fraction of the growing number of Burmese forced to marry Chinese husbands.

She said it here.

This has been a long-standing trafficking bugaboo of mine so I’m really glad she’s raised the issue. It’s a mistake to imagine all sex workers are trafficked. It’s an even bigger mistake to imagine that all those who are trafficked are forced into sex work. (Instead many were sex workers in their home countries who hoped to simply migrate but found themselves enslaved.)

The biggest mistake, however, and the most perniciously infuriating to me is to imagine that only people (it’s not always women) trafficked into sex work are forced to have sex. Those like these women of Burma, who are trafficked into marriage* are a golden example.

I’ve spoken harshly before about the peculiar emphasis right-wing anti-traffickers place on paid prostitution at the expense of other forms of sexual assault against trafficked persons. (Enslaved domestic workers are never sexually abused? Really? Enslaved farm, industrial, and construction workers are never sexually exploited? Enslaved child labor? Really?) Let’s just dwell harshly for a moment about the right’s equally peculiar blind spot for forced marriage and be done with them.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Puts a Spotlight on Trafficking in the U.S.

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2010-06-21 22:42

Katy of Jezebel passes along some news from UPI (and elsewhere) that now she’s in charge of the State Department Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is following up on her interest in human trafficking that goes back to her alliance with the late Senator Paul Wellstone in the 1990s.

There’s a first time for everything: the US State Department’s annual report on human trafficking has included a rating for the United States. “We believe it is important to keep the spotlight on ourselves,” explained Hillary Clinton.

She said it here.

Incidentally, what’s significant about trafficking isn’t how open-eyed victims are going into their situation. Nor is it how bad things were, or even how much worse they were before they left their homes. It’s whether and how easily they can get out of their situation. And from slaves and convicts transported to America in the 18th Century to the “owe my soul to the company store” miners and loggers of the 19th Century to the sharecroppers and “adopted” orphans of the 20th to sex workers, agricultural workers, domestic servants, and industrial laborers today the U.S. has had an ongoing history of pretending trafficking is somebody else’s problem.

Good for Sec. Clinton.

Oh yeah, and fuck all the assholes who claim it only counts if you’re trafficked for (commercial) sex. It certainly does count, of course, it’s just not the whole story. And never has been.

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How New Laws in Arizona and Rhode Island Will Tend to Benefit Traffickers at the Expense of Their Victims

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2010-05-02 14:32

According to Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster, LAPD (ret.) of Criminal Justice Online

Florida Couple Charged in Forced Labor and Document Servitude Conspiracies

April 28, 2010 – WASHINGTON – Sophia Manuel and Alfonso Baldonado Jr. have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges arising from a human trafficking scheme to hold Filipino nationals in forced labor in country clubs and hotels in Southeast Florida, the Justice Department announced.

According to the indictment, defendants Manuel, 41, and Baldonado, 46, owners of Quality Staffing Services Corporation of Boca Raton, Fla., conspired to obtain a cheap, compliant and readily available labor pool. The indictment details the defendants conspired to hold the workers in their continued service, for little or no pay, and housed them in substandard conditions without adequate food or drinking water.

The indictment alleges that the defendants used false promises to entice the Filipino nationals to incur debts to pay up-front recruitment fees; and then compelled the workers to remain in the defendants’ service, despite inadequate work or income to pay off the debts, using a scheme of threats to have the workers arrested and deported with no way to repay their debts, confiscation of the workers’ passports and rules and controls restricting the workers’ freedom of movement and communications with outsiders.

He said it here.

But wait, from the same website there’s more

Arlington, Texas Couple Convicted of Forced Labor and Other Crimes for Holding Nigerian Woman in Domestic Servitude

February 3, 2010 – WASHINGTON—A federal jury has convicted an Arlington, Texas husband and wife Emmanuel and Ngozi Nnaji of engaging in a nine-year scheme to compel the labor of a Nigerian victim as their domestic servant, the Justice Department announced today. The jury found the defendants guilty of conspiracy, forced labor, document servitude, alien harboring and false statements. Ngozi and Emmanuel Nnaji each face a maximum sentence of up to 55 years in prison.

According to the evidence at trial, Emmanuel Nnaji and Ngozi Nnaji enticed a widowed Nigerian mother of six to come to the United States to be their domestic servant by falsely promising a salary and support for her children, who she was struggling to support.

“Holding other human beings in servitude against their will is a violation of human rights that will not be tolerated in our free society,” stated Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “This prosecution demonstrates our commitment to combating human trafficking in all its forms, vindicating the rights of trafficking victims and bringing human traffickers to justice.”

He said it here.

But wait, there’s still more

Two Brothers Plead Guilty in Conspiracy to Hold Thai Workers in Forced Labor in Hawaii

Defendants Alec Sou and Mike Sou, co-owners of Aloun Farm, pleaded guilty on Jan.13, 2010, in federal district court in Honolulu, to conspiring to commit forced labor. The two defendants, who are brothers, each face up to five years in prison for their respective roles in a labor trafficking scheme that held Thai agricultural workers in service at Aloun Farm through a scheme of debts, threats, and restraint.

During their respective plea hearings, the defendants acknowledged that they conspired with one another and with others to hold 44 Thai men in forced labor on a farm operated by the defendants, using a scheme of physical restraint and threats of serious harm to intimidate the workers and hold them in fear of attempting to leave the defendants’ service.

“Holding other human beings in servitude against their will is a violation of individual rights that is intolerable in a free society,” stated Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “This prosecution demonstrates our commitment to combating human trafficking in all its forms, vindicating the rights of trafficking victims, and bringing human traffickers to justice.”

He said it here.

Now why, you might ask, would I be talking about all this domestic, agricultural, sexual, and labor servitude, a.k.a. human trafficking on a nice morning in May, 2010?

One big reason derives from a companion piece to the Dreams Die Hard documentary about trafficking and involuntary servitude in the United States from Free The Slaves. The companion piece is called the Dreams Die Hard Study Guide. In the section “What Happens to Slaves?” the following bullet point really stood out.

When they turn to officials, trafficking victims may get harsh treatment if the police officer or immigration staff regards the escaped victim as an illegal immigrant. Although some law enforcement officials have immediately rescued and protected people in slavery, there have been tragic situations where police simply failed to recognize slavery. Proper training is crucial.

Source: Pg. 3

It just made me wonder how much better off Arizona’s de facto slave owners are now that the state legislature has made it even more illegal to be an undocumented immigrant. And, given the gleeful promises of ever-more draconian enforcement by sadists like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, how much further is this law going to shift the balance of power even further in the direction of those who already abuse trafficked people.

—-

Note: I was inspired to write this post by search results that showed up while I was trying to verify whether the authors of the website Citizens Against Trafficking were living up to their claim that they’re “a broad based coalition formed in 2009 to combat all forms of human trafficking.”

The short answer appears to be no: they instead appear to have been primarily opposed to prostitution, which they say is a hotbed of trafficking, and only in the state of Rhode Island. They were particularly opposed to a loophole in Rhode Island that made some forms of prostitution legal there.

The law has recently been amended, with much applause and support from the website’s authors: it’s now as illegal to be a sex-worker in Rhode Island as it is to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona. With what will turn out to be, I’m afraid, similar consequences for sex workers.

As I’ve mentioned relatively often I personally don’t care much for sex work in the current dominant paradigm since I believe, strongly, that it reinforces rather than relieves our expectations that all sex between men and women is ultimately transactional. And I strongly regret when people cross borders illegally. On the other hand I don’t think either sex work nor immigration ought to be illegal primarily because it increases rather than mitigates the underworld environments serious anti-traffickers are concerned puts victims most at risk — whether they’re “massage parlor” workers in Rhode Island, or “nannies” in Maryland, or “lettuce pickers” in Arizona.

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Harriet Jacobs on Marginalization, Subsistence, and Denial in "Grey Area" Prostitution and Pimping Culture

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sat, 2010-02-06 00:44

Harriet Jacobs of Fugitivus again, this time on an extremely prickly subject I’ve discussed previously: the blurred boundary between subsistence and dependency at the real margins of society. In this case the difference between assistance and exploitation or… well… she puts it rather pithily (emphasis mine.)

I had a social worker friend who once described a conversation she’d had with a female client who was trying to get back on her feet. She had met a new guy that she was very excited about. Oh, sure, there were problems, but who doesn’t have problems? Anyway, he was so committed to her, so committed to working out everything. The woman brushed off the few times he’d encouraged her to have sex with his friends as times that they were all just sooooooo drunk, but it totally strengthened their relationship because they’re not even the jealous types. And, of course, there were all the times that she was just trying to “help him out” on a drug deal. And then those times that she had “cheated” when a friend of his came by and locked her in the bedroom. At the end of her description, the social worker had to try and explain that this woman didn’t have a relationship, or a boyfriend: she had a pimp.

She said it here.

You wouldn’t think this kind of denial could happen. It could.

What’s really harsh, by the way, is that since in circumstances like this the pimp “boyfriend” may be trading his partner for favors or status or cargo rather than cash he may not, strictly speaking, recognize that he’s being a pimp either. Although mostly I’m guessing he’s pretty clear about he’s doing he still might not think of it as pimping.

That would be another problem with stereotypes, especially for those living really marginal lives.

As I said in my own post a couple of years ago

speaking for myself, even though I was sometimes sleeping under overpasses, in cars, or “crashing” at other people’s apartments, and even though my diet was so meager I developed nutritional deficiency diseases, it wasn’t until the 1980s that I realized I’d been homeless. And it wasn’t till very recently that I realized the people we thought of at the time as “in some kind of hot water” probably qualified as trafficked or pimped. So I’m guessing the same is true for a lot of people still in those situations. And not because they’re not there but because there’s there’s so much overlap between the aspirations and difficulties of migration/transience, smuggling, and trafficking that sometimes it’s hard to tell even when you’re in it, let alone from the outside.

I said it here: Between Transience and Trafficking, a Personal Perspective

This isn’t by the way even remotely anything like an excuse. It’s a complication in any scheme to legalize prostitution, which I would still like to see. Or to keep it illegal, which many more people would evidently like to see. Which means, at least to me, that no matter how the pro/anti activism turns out this particular issue will probably need to be addressed by separate policy initiatives.

I don’t have much else to say about it. Except maybe that I think it could be distinguished pretty unambiguously in a page, or even a sidebar, in a comprehensive sex-education curriculum. And so if anyone’s listening I’d really like to lobby for its inclusion. Of course it would also be nice if we could count on students receiving comprehensive sex education in the first place…

I’ll just reiterate that I think Jacobs writes powerful stuff.

Incidentally she closes her post this way…

it’s impossible to ignore rape culture when it calls and makes an appointment, in a whisper and obviously hiding in a closet. When it arrives late on the bus, alone and lost. When it walks in the front door, comes over to your desk, and whispers on the verge of tears, “I need, um, I need, I need the thing.” It’s hard to ignore when it’s curled up in your lobby, unresponsive and unwilling to come back, to interact with you or any representative of the world. It’s hard to ignore when it’s made manifest in a real live girl, a real live girl who has been stripped of the right to disallow strangers access to everything from the waist down. I am acutely aware that many of these girls have been violated, and that I constitute a further violation; my presence announces to them that not only are they not allowed to choose when and with whom they have sex, but they are not allowed to choose how to deal with the consequences of being abused. All I did was pass a job interview, and I am temporarily LordGodKing of her uterus. All she did was own the uterus; why should she get to decide what to do with it? It’s not like she can type up the paperwork. She doesn’t even have a desk.

Again, she said it here.

Powerful stuff.

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Sungold on Protecting All Trafficking Victims: "Because There's Nothing Sexy About Their Enslavement"

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Thu, 2010-01-14 02:38

Sungold of Kittywampus says almost all that needs to be said about certain monomaniacal definitions of “trafficking.”

Nor do I want to see trafficked domestic workers (for instance) completely ignored because there’s nothing sexy about their enslavement. (As if forced prostitution might be sexy??!!?)

Read the quote in context here.

She’s referencing a bill in the Ohio legislature, introduced by Rep. Teresa Fedor and endorsed by the Polaris Project that defines human trafficking a stand-alone crime that shocking, I know “include[s] a broader definition that covers forced labor in addition to coerced sexual activity.”

Which is pretty cool.

Also cool is Sungold’s thoughtful distinctions about who is and who isn’t a victim in sex work and how our (too-often willful) misunderstanding complicates the lives of all manner of vulnerable subsistence and migrant populations.

Also, happy 2nd blog anniversary to Sungold.

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Wasila Prostitution Sting: How Simultaneously Not to Fight Child Sex-Trafficking and Demonstrate Contempt for the Issue

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Thu, 2009-11-05 09:14

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”)

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Trafficking Post Follow-up: Guilty Verdicts in Los Angeles

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2009-09-06 11:16

Following up on a post from last January, a press release by Thom Mrozek of the DOJ Central District of California Office reports that…

LOS ANGELES – Five defendants, all members or associates of an extended family, face potential life prison sentences after being found guilty today of international sex trafficking for participating in a scheme that lured young Central American women and girls into the Los Angeles area and forced them into prostitution, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King for the Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien for the Central District of California.

The defendants, four Guatemalan nationals and one Mexican national, were convicted of conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; and importation of aliens for purposes of prostitution. The jury in the case was unable to reach unanimous verdicts on additional charges.

During a six-week trial, the government presented evidence that the defendants targeted young, uneducated, impoverished undocumented women and girls from Guatemala, and conspired to lure and smuggle them into the United States, where they were put to work as prostitutes. All but one of the victims were enticed with bogus promises of legitimate jobs. But after arranging for the victims to be smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border, the defendants used a combination of threats – deception, rape, physical violence and witchcraft – to compel the victims to perform acts of prostitution.

Read the rest of the press release here.

In my original post I mentioned one of the victims who pretty clearly believed she was being voluntarily smuggled into the U.S. to do domestic labor despite the defendants claims that all their victims had agreed to be smuggled for sex work. Mrozek’s press release suggests only one victim had arrived with the intention of doing sex work.

But as I also mentioned in the original post it doesn’t really matter what their intention was: the victims agreed only to be smuggled — transported across the border for a fee. The perpetrators instead trafficked them, withholding their incomes, forcing them to work without compensation, and keeping them physically and psychologically captive —including with threats to… wait for it… turn them over to immigration service for imprisonment and deportation.

Trafficking would still occur without restrictive immigration and border-migration policy. And sex trafficking might still occur if sex work was legal and socially destigmatized. But the motivation to trust one’s luck to someone who might only smuggle you but… might not would nearly evaporate. And so would the opportunities for traffickers to hook their victims in.

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Guess We Have To Turn to Fashion Websites For News of *Non* Sex Trafficking Victims

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2009-09-01 13:09

Part 1: The setup on the conclusion of a two-year human-trafficking trial

From Joe Ryan at the New Jersey Star-Ledger

“And the girls were not allowed to keep any of the money they earned?” asked Shana W. Chen, an assistant U.S. attorney.

“No,” said Afolabi, a burly man who sat shackled before U.S. District Judge Jose Linares, wearing a dark-green jail uniform.

He said it here.

(Note: I found Joe Ryan’s article after reading the following piece. Read on.)

Part 2: The context

Laura Kenney of AOL’s StyleList fashion site uncovers a straight-up classic case of international trafficking of children as young as 10 into the United States.

The worldwide epidemic of human trafficking has reached the beauty industry.

A West African immigrant has pleaded guilty to running a human trafficking operation that forced women to braid hair for up to 14 hours a day in Newark and East Orange NJ, reports the New Jersey Star Ledger.

In a case prosecutors equated to modern day slavery, Lassissi Afolabi, 46, told a judge he headed a ring that smuggled victims from villages in Ghana and Togo. He brought twenty women, age 10 to 19, to New Jersey, where he seized their passports, forbade them to learn English and make friends, and planted them in salons where they were forced to work up to 14 hours per day, 7 days a week.

Though not as horrific as sex-trafficking, this story brings to light the exploitation of innocents who want to find a better life in the US. And this is only one case — we wonder how many more women are being made to work against their will in salons across the country?

She said it here.

Part 3: False Distinctions

Not being a sex-trafficking case this case of trafficking, with coerced sex, hasn’t yet showed up on the standard sites for hand-wringing for sex-trafficker/prostituteders. Because for most of them the real crime isn’t the trafficking or coerced labor it’s sex work. (Why else would so many of them insist that even self-selected sex-workers equals trafficking.)

Which is sort of a shame, as I’ve said fairly regularly. Because it’s not like only trafficked sex-workers have coerced sex. Here’s the Star-Ledger again.

During yesterday’s hearing, Afolabi admitted trying to have sex with one of the girls, who was under 18, during a trip to North Carolina, where he hoped to open a hair-braiding salon.

“And she begged you not to do it — “You are old enough to be my father,’ “ Chen said, quoting the alleged victim.

“Yes,” Afolabi said.

He pleaded guilty today to forced labor, aggravated sexual abuse and traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor.

The point being that just as not all sex work is coerced, neither does all non-sex trafficking involve no sexual coercion. Failing to get this has multiple consequences. The two biggest being that resources are spent to “protect” people (those sex-workers who are autonomous) who don’t need it and resources don’t protect other people (a substantially larger number who are trafficked, yes, and like Afolabi’s hair-braiding victim definitely sexually exploited, but who very often not the least bit “sex-trafficked.”)

Part 4, which seems to be growing into its own post, will be about a peculiarity in what I’m going to call, cynically, “benevolent trafficking” that makes prosecution, and even identification more difficult. The two-bit version is that four of Afolabi’s victims dispute that they were exploited and others report that their families at home are scorning and/or shaming them for complaining. The peculiarity being that Afolabi was actually treating his victims fractionally better than they would have been treated at home, with the result that they and their families felt they were getting a pretty good deal while… on the other hand he was treating them appallingly, and illegally, by U.S. standards and pocketing the difference between what they and their families expected them to earn in their home country (nothing) and what he was able to charge for their services (contemporary U.S. beauty-salon prices, which is quite a lot.)

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Knowing What We "Know" About Pimps, Why Bother to Fact-Check a Name?

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2009-08-18 17:09

When you hear someone named Chomphoonut Dongird was sentenced to four years for pimping trafficked young women you’d probably want to check whether the person in question was a man or woman before posting the story on your allegedly-reputable wire service. But not if you were the Associated Press, which a) wants to shake down or sue us disreputable bloggers for linking to their stories and b) just arbitrarily assumed last month that Dongrid is a man.

She’s not. A pimp, yes, and a classic extortionist, false-pretenses sex-trafficker to boot yes…

At least two of the women were forced to perform sex acts on customers to make extra money, which was garnisheed by Dongird to pay for their immigration, made possible by sham marriages to American men who were paid thousands to pose as their husbands.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ye-Ting Woo said the women were made to work up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for virtually no pay. And Dongird scared them into staying hidden indoors lest they be discovered by immigration authorities.

Source: Seattle Times

But not a man.

(Via The Slog)

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And just to be clear, it doesn’t matter that the women she contacted in Thailand may have already been sex workers, as is often the case. What matters is that she coerced them to work for her. And, exploiting U.S. immigration law as well as anti-prostitution laws, she used fear of immigration authorities to intimidate her victims.

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