What Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Service Providers Need to Know About Sex Trafficking
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WHAT SEXUAL ASSAULT AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SERVICE PROVIDERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX TRAFFICKING This project is supported by Arizona Department of Health Services Contract No. 961025, Rural Domestic Violence and Safe Homes Network. Points of view in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the Arizona Department of Health Services. © Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, April 2002 1 The contents of this publication may be adapted and reprinted with permission of the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ACADV). Any adaptation or reprinting must be accompanied by the following acknowledgement: This material was adapted from the publication entitled What Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Service Providers Need to Know about Sex Trafficking, Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, April, 2002. ACADV would like to thank the Arizona Department of Health Services, and especially Ann Tarpy, for the courage and foresight to fund this project. 2 Table of Contents What is sex trafficking? 4 How big a problem is sex trafficking? 5 What is the federal government doing about sex trafficking? 6 What is the definition of sex trafficking? 8 What are some of the issues and problems? 10 Ideological 10 Police 10 Discrimination 10 Force versus consent 11 What services can or should shelters or programs provide? 18 Victim or survivor? 18 Relation to law enforcement 19 Eligibility for benefits 20 Language 20 Safety concerns 21 Role of the advocate 21 What Immigration Visa’s is she eligible for? 23 What if she’s being sent back to her home country? 26 What about sex trafficking of American women within the United States? 27 References 29 Appendix Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 31 Contact information for women’s groups 102 Where to file a complaint 122 Mail order brides 123 Ad in a Ukranian newspaper 146 List of web sites 147 List of videos 149 3 Chinese women are being trafficked into the United States for brothels in New York and North Carolina. They are held in $40,000 debt bondage. (Chinese Women “forced into prostitution in US”, BBC, 3 March 1998). (Fact scenarios excerpted from Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation) What is sex trafficking? Sex Trafficking is not new on international agendas. It generated considerable attention at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, resulting in five international conventions, the last in 1949. There are a number of reasons why trafficking in women for sexual exploitation has re-emerged as an international policy concern. One of the most potent is that all forms of trafficking in human beings have increased globally, and are continuing to do so. Trafficking in women reflects these shifts (Konig, 1997; International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism, 1999). A number of potential contributory factors have been suggested, including: the growth of the sex industry internationally, the International Labor Organization has proposed recognition of the “sex sector” as a significant component of many economies (Lim, 1998); globalization making the movements of people, capital and business easier and faster than previously; transformations within and between nation states, which have exacerbated the differentials (for example, in the Central and Eastern European states) between rich and poor (IOM, 1999); the feminization of poverty, which has in turn fed into the feminization of migration globally (Skrobanek, 1996); the increased involvement and growth of organized crime in trafficking in persons (Konig, 1997, IOM, 1999); emergence of new borders between and within former countries. It is also evident that traffickers are adept at reading local, regional and international politics, targeting women whose lives and possibilities have been disrupted and diminished by economic, political and social dislocation. Hence the increased involvement of women from regions marked by war and conflict, and those where economic change has had negative impacts on women’s opportunities to earn a living (Kelly and Regan, forthcoming; IOM, 1999). Internationally, as Anita Gradin, Mary Robinson and Hilary Clinton have all highlighted in speeches, trafficking people is a less risky activity for criminals than trafficking in drugs or weaponry. (Anita Gradin, EU Summit, Vienna, September 1st 1999; Mary Robinson address UN High Commission on Human Rights 121st June 1999; Hilary Clinton speech on International Women’s Day, March 8th 1999.) The maximum sentences in most jurisdictions are far less for people than other illegal activities (although there are now proposals to address this, including from the European Union). Trafficking for sexual exploitation adds additional layers of profit, since the receivers pay a fee to traffickers and then make considerable profits from prostituting the woman, who is in a condition of debt bondage. The lower potential costs and higher profits have acted 4 as powerful incentives to organized crime, smaller networks and “enterprising” individuals. Many countries across the globe are implicated in trafficking, as sending, transit and/or destination countries. Some are all three, with indigenous women being trafficked outwards, parts of the country being used as transit routes between two other countries, and women being trafficked in from still other countries. Most countries, however, sit either side of the origin/destination divide, with the former being characterized by poverty and the latter by relative affluence (IOM, 1996b; Skrobanek 1996; Konig, 1997; Escaler 1998; Kalayaan, 1999). Strong “outflows” of women are directly linked to an increase in women’s poverty, limited employment opportunities, an increasing marginalization of women economically, and poverty more broadly. War, internal conflict, economic instability, decline and destruction with its associated losses of sufficient income for economic survival, and as a consequence reduction in family support, contribute to the marginalization of some members of society. These major social factors heighten the vulnerability of women and girls to illegal trafficking and economic exploitation (Kalayaan, 1999; Kelly and Regan, forthcoming). The trafficking of women and girls is the largest single category of illegal migration into European Union countries (IOM 1999). Many women trafficked into European Union countries may not be aware that they are being sent for the purposes of prostitution, but rather are led to believe that they are being recruited for legitimate jobs. Occasionally they may have been taken abroad forcibly, thus absolutely violating their fundamental humans rights. They may find themselves in a foreign country without passports or identification documents, with no economic resources or independence. They may be forced by traffickers to provide sexual services through threats of violence or intimidation against themselves and/or their families (Kelly and Regan, forthcoming). These are all human rights violations. The induced vulnerability of trafficked women and girls is often exacerbated by inadequacies in the delivery of services to those who have been trafficked both in sending and receiving countries. In mid-1997 in Queens New York police were informed of more than 60 Mexican immigrants including 12 children ranging in age from 6 months to 6 years, held in “involuntary servitude”. (Deborah Sontag, “Deaf Mexicans are Found in Forced Labor.” New York Times, 29 June 1997). How big a problem is sex trafficking? The exact number of women trafficked are, of course, difficult to obtain. It is a criminal activity carried on across international borders in many different languages. But in September 2000, the United Nations estimated that four million women and girls are bought and sold into slavery, marriage, and prostitution every year. Two million girls 5 between the ages of 5-l5 are introduced into the sex industry every year. Eighty percent of the victims are female. The United Nations also estimates that the profit from trafficking is 3.5 billion dollars a year. An individual can earn l-8 million in 1-6 years. A sex trafficker can make four times the amount of money that same person can make trafficking drugs. Trafficking today is the third most lucrative international criminal activity, after drugs and arms trafficking. They often use the same routes and personnel. Interpol data, sketchy as it is, indicates that: 39% are from Central Europe, 22% are from Eastern Europe, and 17% are from the Balkans. The two most pressing problems facing the women in those countries are poverty and economic depression. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) estimates there are between 2,000-5,000 mail-order bride marriages in the U.S. annually. For 1997, 21% of all immigrants were spouses of U.S. citizens, a substantial number were women. It is estimated that 40,000 people, primarily women and children, are trafficked to the U.S. annually. (Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, Trafficking in Persons Report, July 2001) In February 1998, there was a raid of brothels in rural south Florida where Mexican girls, some as young as 13, were forced to have sex with dozens of men a day. The evidence of beatings, drug addiction, and forced abortions prompted one federal judge to call this trafficking case “one of the most base, most vile, most despicable, most reprehensible crimes” he had ever encountered. (Of Human Bondage: Kate O’Beirne, National Review, March 18, 2002) What is