NEWSPROSTITUTION

In New York City, over twice as many people in prostitution -- many of whom are victims of sex trafficking -- are arrested than the johns, pimps, and facilitators who exploit them. But an innovative new program called "A Losing Proposition" could help solve that problem by focusing the NYPD's resources on arresting the men who buy and force women to sell sex. A hearing that could decided whether or not to expand "A Losing Proposition to all five boroughs will take place on Wednesday, October 19th, and New Yorkers and other activists have launched a Twitter campaign asking the NYPD to expand the program.

Here's an example of how broken the current system is: SG, a sex trafficking victim in NYC, was arrested 86 times for prostitution and loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution over the course of three years.  Her identity documents were kept in the possession of her trafficker, she was forced to sell sex in a house in the Bronx and on the streets, and she was trafficked to other states.  SG repeatedly tried to get arrested -- even asked police officers to arrest her  -- because she wanted to escape the horror of her day-to-day existence.  The police, however, never recognized her as a victim, and instead released her back to her pimp.

More than 1,000 people from around the world have joined a popular new campaign on Change.org calling on E! Entertainment’s hit show Fashion Police to end a segment titled “Starlet or Streetwalker”, which mocks and derides women and girls in the commercial sex industry.

“Starlet or Streetwalker” features a panel of celebrities who laugh at photos of scantily clad women and girls as they try to guess whether they are Hollywood stars or prostituted women.

After long week at work, one of my favorite guilty pleasures is Fashion Police on E! with Joan Rivers. You either love Joan Rivers or hate her, and I'm definitely in the fan camp. She's a fearless woman who speaks her mind, isn't scared of offending people and is incredibly self-deprecating -- all qualities I appreciate. She's also frequently side-splittingly funny and while her whole persona, and the concept of Fashion Police is obviously based on criticizing celebrities, mostly women, to the point of mean-spiritedness, it is often very very funny. Like I said, it's a truly guilty pleasure with the emphasis on guilty. But... while I'm sure that most celebrities think Fashion Police crosses all kinds of lines every week, for me they've now crossed the line from funny to incredibly offensive and damaging.

Fashion Police has a recurring segment called "Starlet or Streetwalker," which is exactly what it sounds like. The panel, made up of George Kotsiopoulos, Kelly Osbourne and Giuliana Rancic, are shown pictures of women with their faces covered. Based on the outfit, the panel then has to vote if the woman in the photo is a starlet or a streetwalker. If the woman turns out to be a celebrity, her face is shown, if its a woman in the sex industry, her face remains blacked out. The panel, the studio audience and I'm sure the viewers watching at home laugh at these women and their 'tacky, trashy clothing.' The first time I saw the segment, it took me a minute to realize that the women whose faces were covered up were actually real women in the sex industry. I then watched with growing discomfort as I realized that these women, poor women, desperate women, drug-addicted women, women under the control of a pimp, women who are victims of violence and exploitation, were being used to highlight wealthy celebrities' poor fashion choices. Haha.

On June 29^th, 2011, The Village Voice joined the war against human trafficking. But unfortunately, they picked up arms and stepped onto the field fighting for the wrong side.

I have been a long-time fan of The Village Voice. I can clearly remember leaving the theater where I saw RENT for the first time, screaming “To Absolut, to choice, to the Village Voice” at the top of my lungs, relishing in the progressive ideals they represented. But sadly, a decade later, I’ve lost my faith in The Village Voice because of the choices they have recently made: the choice to disparage and villainize a movement of advocates working to end modern-day slavery, the choice to fight fuzzy methodology with fuzzy methodology, and the choice to put their bottom line above basic human rights.

The Village Voice recently published an article which challenged a statistic often bandied about in human trafficking discussions: 100,000 to 300,000 children in the U.S. are victims of child sex trafficking. Those are gut-wrenching, soul-crushing numbers. And The Village Voice claims they might not be 100% accurate.

Just three weeks after Kanye West released the official edit of his new video "Monster," MTV and VH1 have both banned the video from air. The ban comes after a hard-fought campaign by Change.org members Sharon Haywood and Melinda Tankard Reist, supported by over 5,000 other Change.org members.

Haywood and Tankard Reist launched a campaign on Change.org asking for MTV to refuse to air the video unless Kanye removed the hyper-violent and misogynistic themes, after a teaser to the video leaked back in January. "Monster" is not the usual scantily-clad, hyper-sexualized women washing expensive cars with even more expensive champagne. The video features West, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and Nikki Minaj surrounded by the "sexy" corpses of women in lingerie. Other women dangle from the ceiling by chains. Behind Jay-Z, a dead, naked woman lies with her mouth wide open, bluntly indicating her last act was a sexual one.  And West practically rapes the dead bodies of two women in bed. The message of the video is pretty clear: women are sex objects and it can be erotic when they are killed in violent, sexual ways.

Earlier this month, the Hartford Advocate published a story about child sex trafficking in Connecticut, citing "pimp-paid sex ads in alternative newspapers like the Hartford Advocate" as part of the epidemic. Yet despite acting on the information that the sex ads in their own newspaper have been critical tools for child sex traffickers, the newspaper continues to profit from them. Will someone at the Hartford Advocate read their own exposé and stop accepting ads for what they have identified as child sex trafficking?

For five years, Dennis Paris trafficked girls and women into prostitution in Connecticut. Some of the girls he sold were as young as fourteen, just freshmen in high school. Paris also sold adult women whose heroin addictions he exploited in order to keep the money they earned for himself and prevent them from leaving prostitution. The details of the violence and coercion Paris used to control the women and girls he sold is detailed in the book The Berlin Turnpike, including the detail that Paris's favorite place to advertise for sex with his victims was the Hartford Advocate.

Recently, San Diego native Tim Rosner launched a campaign on Change.org asking Wyndham Hotels to prevent child sex trafficking at their properties, after a sex trafficking ring selling girls as young as 14 was discovered in a Wyndham hotel in California. Now, another sex trafficking ring has been busted using Wyndham properties near Washington, DC. Will this latest scandal finally inspire the company finally do the right thing?

Virginia resident and MS-13 gang member Alonso Bruno Cornejo Ormeno was recently indicted for trafficking girls for sex at a Super 8 hotel -- a Wyndham property --  in Manassas, Virginia. At least one of the girls was 15 when she was sold, and Ormeno advertised her as a "high school girl" and "fresh out of the box." According to the indictment, Ormeno rented a room at the Super 8 where he sold sex acts with a number of girls and women for $50 each. He told an informant his business was booming, and his cell phone was ringing off the hook. Six or seven clients a day would stream in and out of the room, but no one at the hotel reported it.

Apple has developed a reputation for keeping offensive applications out of their online store, including one claiming to "cure" gay people and a game called "Smuggle Truck," which used racist stereotypes to mock immigrants. But another problematic app is about to be added -- the Sugar Sugar app. Not only is Sugar Sugar sexist and heteronormative, it actually facilitates the crime of prostitution and raises serious red flags of exploitation and sex trafficking.

SugarSugar is not an ordinary dating service. It uses GPS technology to connect wealthy men with women who are in financial need. If that sounds like a prostitution service to you, you're obviously listening. Facilitating a criminal activity like prostitution is a problem, but an even bigger problem is the opportunity for exploitation this app presents. Anytime a for-profit company sets up a situation in which one partner in a relationship has all the social and economic power, the the opportunity for abuse is huge. For example, mail order bride agencies have high rates of human trafficking because they pair vulnerable women with financially powerful men in situations controlled entirely by the men. Sugar Sugar does the same thing.

From 2006 to 2011, for at least 16 teen and preteen girls, hell was a Travelodge hotel in San Diego. That's because the staff of that hotel were actively helping members of the gang The Crips to force them into prostitution. For six years, Travelodge staff acted as lookouts, pocketed bribe money, and even let traffickers use the hotel computer to post ads for commercial sex with minors online. Now, the incident has inspired a movement asking Wyndham Hotel Group to prevent such horrific misuse of their property by signing the Code of Conduct to Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism.

The Crips gang in San Diego ran a child sex trafficking ring of at least 16 girls out of various area hotels, two of which were owned by the Wyndham group -- a Travelodge and a Howard Johnson. At the Howard Johnson, hotel staff neglected to take any action to protect the long parade of children who were being ushered in to be raped, but the Travelodge staff actually assisted the pimps. Two members of the Travelodge staff, both of whom were indicted for their crimes, allowed the gang members to use the hotel computer to post online ads advertising sex with minors. They also knowingly rented rooms for use in prostitution, charged higher rates for rooms to be used for child sex trafficking and pocketed the difference, and warned the pimps if police were nearby.

This is part two of an interview with Jessica Dickinson Goodman, a student activist at Carnegie Mellon University who is doing research on anti-trafficking issues and helping rally support for a proposal that would help end sex trafficking in Pittsburgh massage parlors. Here, Dickinson Goodman outlines how you can get a similar ordinance passed in your own community. To read part one, click here.

1) Investigate. Read through the johns’ boards; see how many massage parlors are in your area. Making a map helps; ours was color-coded by city council district to make it easy for people to see how close these places are to our homes and schools. Be warned: these boards can be extremely graphic and disturbing.