Links between pornography and sex trafficking
Robert Peters of Morality in Media presentation at the Houston Human Trafficking Conference: “What I did come to say is that there is a very substantial evidence to support the assertion that the proliferation of hardcore adult pornography is contributing to the demand for prostitution and thus for women and children trafficked into prostitution. I am also here to say that it is counterproductive (foolish) for law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to pour endless resources into combating sexual trafficking while totally ignoring the proliferation of hardcore adult pornography.”
9th Circuit: Nevada has right to restrict brothel advertising
Coyote Publishing, Inc. v. Miller, No. 07-16633 (9th Cir. March 11, 2010)
At issue in this case is whether Nevada’s “restrictions on advertising by legal brothels” violate the First Amendment.
Janice Shaw Crouse: What’s wrong with legalizing prostitution?
Janice Shaw Crouse writing at The American Thinker: “Any discussion of prostitution must center on a basic fact: Control and exploitation of another person is slavery. Pimps control 80%-95% of all forms of prostitution. Nearly 70% of those in prostitution entered before age 16. In the U.S., the average age of entry is 12. Twelve!”
Expert: Child traffickers target runaways, “throwaways”
“Polaris Project, a nonprofit organization that studies human trafficking, has more frequently seen cases in which children were sold by family members ‘out of desperation in developing countries’ such as Cambodia or sub-Saharan African nations, said executive director and CEO Mark Lagon . . . More common in the United States are traffickers who exploit abused runaways or so-called ‘throwaways’ — children abandoned by their parents and living on the streets, Lagon said.”
White Ribbon Against Pornography Week
“According to Bob Peters of Morality in Media, our nation is facing a moral crisis, including, among other things, teen promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases (including AIDS), abortion, illegitimacy, divorce, sexual abuse of children, rape, trafficking in women and children, on-the-job sexual harassment and lost worker productivity. And what is fueling this crisis is the spread of hardcore pornography, on the Internet and elsewhere.”
India: The failure of anti-trafficking efforts
“The fact that the numbers of the trafficked are going up and the ages coming down displays the failure of those government and non-government strategies which only focus on HIV/AIDS management and half hearted rescue operations combined with shelters for victims. These ignore the root cause, which is the demand for women and girls for sexual exploitation.”
The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking
“Acknowledging that strategic responses to sex trafficking require comprehensive understanding of the local situation, Shared Hope International aligned with the U.S. Department of Justice-funded human trafficking task forces to assess domestic minor sex trafficking and the access to victim services in ten U.S. locations . . . The key findings of the study can be grouped into four components of domestic minor sex trafficking: identifying the victims; prosecuting the traffickers; combating demand; and providing protection, access to services, and shelter for victims.”
State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2009
The report is available in HTML format (see link above) and in PDF format as a single file [PDF: 22 MB]. Due to its large size, the PDF has been separated into sections for easier download: Introduction; Country Narratives: A-C, D-K, L-P, Q-Z/Special Cases;Relevant International Conventions.
Trafficking Bibliography
From the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse, a bibliography of trafficking resources by Yukiko Nakajima (last update in 2004).
2009: A Critical Year for Protecting Children
Public Discourse: “Reported instances of suspected online child sexual exploitation continue every year, surpassing 500,000 such events in 2007. Child pornography is a multi-billion-dollar industry, appearing in many media, including on computers and cellular phones, items to which a significant portion of youth have access.”
