Will Nevada Legislature Pass Critical Anti-Trafficking Laws? | Change.org News

by Amanda Kloer · February 03, 2011

The state of Nevada is home to "Sin City" Las Vegas, several counties with the only legal brothels in the U.S., and a significant human trafficking problem. Child sex trafficking is especially high in Nevada, as Las Vegas is often a destination for pimps and teen runaways alike. But starting on February 7, the Nevada state legislature will have the chance to seriously impede the trafficking industry in the state. Will you ask them to make fighting human trafficking a state priority?

Anti-trafficking organization Polaris Project recently launched a campaign on Change.org asking the Nevada state legislature to pass four proposed anti-trafficking bills when they convene on February 7. The new bills would address everything from giving trafficking victims arrested for prostitution a chance to expunge their records to increasing penalties for existing offenses to bring them more in line with federal anti-trafficking laws.

The anti-trafficking bills up for a vote this session are AB4, which would expand the definition of involuntary servitude to include commercial sex acts; AB5, which would increase the penalties for pandering; AB6, which would create a procedure for victims of sex trafficking who had convictions for prostitution while they were a victims of trafficking to make a motion for a new trial; and AB106, which would increase penalties for living off of the earnings of a prostituted person and enhances those penalties if the person prostituted in a minor.

Together, these new laws would make Nevada a much less friendly place for those looking to exploit and profit from sex trafficking.

And the new legislation can't come soon enough. In Las Vegas alone, one investigation from Shared Hope International identified over 1,000 child victims of sex trafficking. The city as well as surrounding suburbs are considered to be one of the major U.S. destinations for child sex trafficking, and the Las Vegas Human Trafficking Task force is a busy group. But human trafficking affects all Nevadans, as children from other parts of the state are at risk for exploitation, agricultural workers in rural areas can suffer serious abuses, and domestic workers can be enslaved in the suburbs.

You can support the campaign by signing this petition to the Nevada legislature and sharing it with your friends (especially Nevadans). Stronger laws will help prevent sex trafficking in Nevada, and you can help make those laws a reality.
Photo credit: RickC

Amanda Kloer is a Change.org Editor and has been a full-time abolitionist in several capacities for seven years. Follow her on Twitter @endhumantraffic

RELATED PETITION

Take action to end human trafficking in Nevada

SIGN PETITION

138 People

Source: Change.Org
Will Nevada Legislature Pass Critical Anti-Trafficking Laws? | Change.org News

Related articles

• Tell Legislators: Virginia is for Lovers, Not Sex Traffickers (humantrafficking.change.org)
• Report Recommends Vermont Make Human Trafficking Illegal (humantrafficking.change.org)
• A Quick Guide to Virginia's New Human Trafficking Bills (news.change.org)

Craigslist ad claims underage sex for sale

Image via CrunchBase

Thursday, May 20, 2010
Last updated 4:54 p.m. PT
Craigslist ad claims underage sex for sale

By BENNY EVANGELISTA
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Critics of Craigslist's adult advertisements have taken their battle to the site's hometown, publishing a newspaper ad that claims the service is "the choice" for selling sex with underage girls.

The half-page ad, which appeared Wednesday in The Chronicle, describes the experiences of two teenage girls who claimed they were forced into prostitution and that Craigslist was used to find customers.

The ad called for Craigslist to shut down its entire "adult services" section, which Advanced Interactive Media Group LLC projected as generating $36 million in revenues this year. The ad is the latest development in an ongoing controversy that has heated up in the past month.

Craigslist Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster responded by saying that of the "thousands of venues" that offer adult services ads, his firm was the only one to take steps to combat prostitution.

Buckmaster listed several methods used by Craigslist, including manually reviewing every adult services ad, alerting users to report suspected trafficking and providing support for law enforcement sweeps and stings.

"Facilitation of trafficking or exploitation is unacceptable, and we will continue to work tirelessly with law enforcement to ensure any such victim receives the assistance they deserve and those responsible are imprisoned," Buckmaster said in an e-mail.

"We'd like to do even more, and my door remains open to experts from advocacy groups and law enforcement with ideas on how we can improve."

Children for sale

But Malika Saada Saar, executive director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, the Washington, D.C., organization that paid for the ad, said visitors to the site's adult services section in California "will see what clearly are children up for sale."

The newspaper ad was an open letter to Craigslist founder Craig Newmark from girls identified only as "AK," who is from the East Coast, and "MC," who is from the West Coast, Saada Saar said.

"Craigslist is the choice of traffickers because it's so well known and there are rarely consequences to using it for these illegal acts," the letter said.

AK said that in 2009, her pimp posted her picture on Craigslist in different cities, including Philadelphia, Dallas, Milwaukee and Washington.

"I was sold for sex by the hour at truck stops and cheap motels, 10 hours with 10 different men every night," AK wrote. "One Craigslist caller viciously brutalized me, threatening to dump my body in a river. Miraculously, I survived."

MC, now 17, said she was forced into prostitution when she was 11. "All day, me and other girls sat with our laptops, posting pictures and answering ads on Craigslist," she wrote. "He (her pimp) made $1,500 a night selling my body, dragging me to Los Angeles, Houston, Little Rock and one trip to Las Vegas in the trunk of a car."

Saada Saar said the ad was an appeal to Newmark's conscience. "We thought it was important to do it in Craig's hometown," she said.

Response to pressure

Last year, Craigslist, responding to pressure from law enforcement, launched a crackdown on prostitution ads, saying staff would review ads before allowing them on the site.

But Monday, the Schapiro Group, an independent research firm in Atlanta, released the results of a two-month study done last fall, after the review process started. The firm bought ads in Craigslist's metro Atlanta area promising "escort services" with young women, with an average of 1 in 4 gaining approval from Craigslist reviewers, said Alex Trouteaud, the firm's lead researcher.

Of the 218 men who contacted the number listed in the ad and agreed to a transaction, 47 percent still wanted to proceed even after learning the girls were minors, Trouteaud said.

And he said Craigslist ads received three times the response of similar ads posted with a competitor, Backpage.

"We found that johns have known all along that Craigslist is the place to buy sex, especially from young girls," Trouteaud said.

The study was commissioned by the Women's Funding Network of San Francisco in partnership with a group dedicated to stopping child prostitution called A Future. Not a Past.

Earlier this month, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he would seek information from Craigslist on whether the company is cracking down on prostitution ads. In a company blog, Buckmaster said Blumenthal "is once again indulging in self-serving publicity at the expense of the truth and his constituents."
E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista@sfchronicle.com.

Craigslist ad claims underage sex for sale

Related articles by Zemanta

• Malika Saada Saar: Craig, Please Listen to Us (huffingtonpost.com)

Modern Day Slavery in America -- Over 300,000 U.S. Children Fall Prey to Sex Trafficking | AlterNet

Image via Wikipedia

Huffington Post / By Dan Rather

People may have trouble believing that child prostitution has become a national problem -- but it's on the verge of becoming out of control.
May 19, 2010 |

Child prostitution has become a national problem in this country. Yes, I know that you have trouble believing that. You don't want to believe it, so you tend not to.

"Widespread sex trafficking in children?" you may be saying to yourself. "Sure, it happens overseas in places like Thailand and Moldova, and while there may be some of it here there's not that much of it in our country."

Based on a months-long investigation and some reportorial digging, I'm here to tell you that you are wrong. We all are. We're in denial.

In covering news for more than 60 years, I'd like to think that few stories shock me anymore. But this is one of them. We ran across it late last year and the more we dug, the more disturbing it became.

Eighty-year-old men paying a premium to violate teenage girls, sometimes supplied by former drug gangs now into child sex trafficking big time? You've got to be kidding. Nope. That's happening and a lot more along the same lines.

The business is booming. One of the worst areas for it runs along lines running roughly from Seattle to Portland, to San Francisco and Los Angeles, to Las Vegas. But no place in the country is immune.

To pick just one example among many, Portland, Oregon is without doubt one of the nation's treasures. It has been voted one of the best places to live and work. But according to police, the city and its outlying communities has become a hub for the sexual exploitation of children. In a recent nationwide sting by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, Portland ranked second in the country for the number of rescued child prostitutes. And according to Doug Justus, the workhorse sergeant in charge of Portland's tiny vice detail, many of the children caught up in this are middle class kids from the area.

The girls, sometimes as young as 12, often 13-16, are lured by a "front man" in his mid-to-late teens. He becomes her "boyfriend," taking her to dinner, buying her nice things, sometimes meeting her parents. The girl eventually moves in with him. Then he says they need money to continue being together. First, she's enticed to sleep with his friends to pay the rent. Soon she's turning tricks for what police say is an endless supply of older men willing to pay top money for sex with very young girls. Other times convincing the young adolescent girls to sell themselves happens very quickly.

"It is an out-of-control problem. It's unbelievable," say Justus. "I've only done this vice-squad job for three years. I've been a cop for 29. If you had told me three years ago that a 14-year-old girl would go to a food court, meet a guy, and three hours later be selling herself, I'd 'a said, no frigging way. It happens every single day, every day."

It is a very lucrative business, according to Justus. "An average pimp with one kid will make between $800 and $l,000 a day. That's seven days a week, 30 days a month," he said. And the pimps usually have a stable of young girls. No wonder so many criminals in the drug trade have turned to it which they have in droves. There's less chance of being caught, less chance of being prosecuted if caught, lighter sentences -- if any -- if convicted.

There is, and has been for a long time, a national "War on Drugs." There isn't one on child prostitution and what amounts to a slave trade. Only feeble efforts at best.

Justus is frustrated that the Portland police have only two full-time vice investigators, compared to dozens of drug investigators.

"I'm not a politician. I'm just a cop. But if I'm a criminal and I got busted for drugs and I had a regional (drug) task force over here. And there's another task force over there, and there, and then I know there's only two vice investigators in the city of Portland, let me think. I think I'll sell women because what are the chances of me being caught?"

The story we've prepared is not about prostitution per se. This is about child abuse. This is also about statutory rape and compelling prostitution among the young. All are difficult to prove. A major reason, according to police, is that it's extremely difficult to convince a young girl to testify against her pimps and johns. They are afraid.

Sgt. Justus told us the story of a 16-year-old girl whom he convinced to "roll" on her pimp. But before she could testify against him she disappeared -- and her pimp walked free. Justus has spent the last year looking for her and fears she's dead.

How many children are being peddled on the streets of Portland and in other cities and towns, to say nothing of the Internet? (Justus and other law enforcement people say Craigslist, along with other Internet sites, are major factors in the spread of child prostitution.) (Editor's note: Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has previously highlighted Craigslist's efforts to fight sex trafficking, including collaborating with law enforcement and instituting moderation strategies for purging ads for illegal sex acts from the site).

Hard to know the real numbers. The most conservative estimates are that at least 100,000 American children are being victimized. Many experts say they believe it's closer to 300,000 or more.

Whatever the number, it is a national outrage and disgrace. And the problem is growing, not diminishing.

Based on our investigation, we've prepared an hour-long program on this problem. We've spoken with parents who never dreamed their young daughter would be caught up in underage prostitution. We've also interviewed several girls who lived to tell about their experiences of being sold. Tuesday night at 8pm Eastern time on HDNet, via satellite and cable.

Modern Day Slavery in America -- Over 300,000 U.S. Children Fall Prey to Sex Trafficking | Reproductive Justice | AlterNet

Related articles by Zemanta

• Child Sex Trafficking a Growing Worry in the U.S. (abcnews.go.com)
• Rani Hong: Find Your Voice: Break the Chain Conference on Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery (huffingtonpost.com)
• Craigslist ad claims underage sex for sale (sfgate.com)