Comments

1

What's an effective definition of "trafficking"?

2

Don't we have enough sex workers in this country already? We really need to import them? Men are disgusting primitive animals.

3

@2 I don't know, if we're talking 'disgusting' it is tough to beat the righteous puritanical shits who have a feverish obsession with policing the sexual proclivities of consenting adults.

4

Great stuff, thanks Katie

5

The only women earning $10,000 a month are engaged in sex acts, primarily. Earning does not mean keeping. They keep about 10% of what they earn. If you would visit these places yourself, you would find these women sleeping in a room in back, or on a table when closed. They are eating noodles cooked over a hot plate, because they don’t have money to pick up prepared food. They are often sick due to chronic malnutrion. They have often paid $20,000 just to get to the US, and that has to be paid back. Their families are under threat. Yes, these women want to come to the US, and in that sense they are to trafficked. But the jobs and working conditions are not what they are told, despite the fact that it may be a step up from what they would face in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand or Indonesia.

6

Maybe they were charged with prostitution and money laundering as those are charges that they have statutes that they can file charges on?

8

Human trafficking in the US is an exaggerated problem with often inflated statistics that incorporate absurdly broad definitions (one study years ago listed all female runaways nationwide as victims of human trafficking), but it definitely does occur. Within sex work, the one place it is found to most commonly occur in my past LE experience is Asian massage parlors.

Are women kidnapped off the street in Seoul, tied up and shipped over here? No, but they do come over often with false promises of good wages only to be terribly exploited and held all but captive in many of these AMP's. If voluntary travel in response to false incentives and subsequent virtual imprisonment is human trafficking, then they are trafficked.

@5 is right. I would also add that the 3-year timeline for the investigation is weird; the 6-month one in Florida is not. Promoting Prostitution is a serious charge and far easier charge to prove and that's why prosecutors typically go with it; it's also a state charge rather than federal. I have no idea if these particular AMP's were committing this form of human trafficking or not, but I can't help but have a "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck" view of it.

I would think sex worker advocates would get behind stamping out this form of human trafficking, indentured servitude or whatever one cares to call it, if only because the practice casts a bit of a pall over sex work generally and makes their advocacy that much more difficult.

9

@8 Sex work advocates are certainly, like just about everyone, for 'stamping out this form of human trafficking'. The fundamental problem here, which you sort of hint at, is that our state-sanctioned Taliban has absolutely zero credibility on this issue. Zero.

It is as clear as the sun in the sky that the term 'trafficking' has been seized upon by our legions of morality police, twisted, contorted every which way so that all sex work can be so labeled. If they are actually concerned about bringing abusers to justice then they should stop perpetuating fraud, dismantle the regime of prohibition and focus resources on those actually engaged in violent and/or coercive activity. They aren't and they won't.

10

I know it's trendy to portray sex workers as glamorous self starters who are doing what they love and getting paid for it, but these aren't hipster rent boys working the sugar daddies on grindr for money to buy crystal meth.

11

Katie Herzog, apologist for the Mob.

12

To add to what @5 and others said: even in their increasingly beefed-up forms, human trafficking laws are still really difficult for law enforcement and prosecutors to use. The elements of the crime more or less requires the full cooperation of the victim, and in a lot of cases the perpetrators still have way more leverage over the victims than the authorities do. That's definitely the case in the typical AMP situation, where the traffickers are still active in the home country even if they get temporarily shut down on the US end.

So the whole argument that Katie seems to be making here that because the cops didn't actually charge anyone with human trafficking it means human trafficking didn't likely occur is either disingenuous or extremely naive.

13

@9 - Yeah, my last sentence should have clarified that I meant the sex worker advocates quoted by Katie in her story. They seem carefully selected to support her stance here...or maybe just some of what they said was cherry-picked to support her stance.

16

@12 Yeah this seems to be getting repeated here but with scant evidence to back it up.

Can you demonstrate how human trafficking laws are 'really difficult for law enforcement and prosecutors to use'? I frankly find this to be a highly dubious claim. We live in a society where prosecutors have extremely wide latitude to do as they please and the term 'human trafficking, as I noted above, has been redefined by those with ulterior motives as to be so broad it can be applied to just about any illegal activity where one person is in some approximation of an employer/employee relationship with another. It seems very likely that the only thing that prosecutors would need to prove to indict for 'human trafficking' is that the massage parlor owners or those associated with them sponsored the sex workers, brought them over here illegally. How could this be 'difficult to prove'?

I'm more inclined to believe that if they decline to press such charges it is because existing draconian laws against prostitution are more than enough to completely fuck over who they are going after, and they don't want to complicate matters.

17

@16: There’s a reason why Al Capone went to jail for not paying his taxes, as opposed to (insert tediously long laundry list of violent crimes here).

18

@16 - You essentially said what I said, that Compelling Prostitution is enough to fuck over its target, and trying for a federal Human Trafficking case "complicates matters." Thus, the former is easier to prove. If you consider all the aspects of both charges, common sense alone would tell you the former is easier to prove. There are more elements to the offense of Human Trafficking than there are to Compelling Prostitution, which is actually pretty simple and straightforward. It's far more of a "sure thing," something every prosecutor everywhere craves.

In any case, I'm just speculating, as I don't know the details of this particular case. There are any number of reasons they're pursuing the prosecution strategy they are. It could be what I suggested, it could be that the human trafficking component is bullshit, or it's real but the case itself is weak, that they want to keep it as a state case rather than a federal one for any one of several possible reasons, or for a reason neither of us can guess at.

19

@12, I think you're conflating human trafficking laws with the various "promoting prostitution" laws.

The "promoting prostitution" laws (or pimping/pandering/whatever laws) tend to be fairly vague, and are not too difficult to prove if the cops can show a money trail leading to a sex worker. The sex worker themselves doesn't need to be a participant in the prosecution, and of course they usually aren't.

Human trafficking on the other hand is a very specific crime. The federal crime (which most states now echo) is: "it is a crime to make people work by use of force, coercion or fear." The "force, coercion or fear" element of the crime is basically impossible to prove without the victim testifying.

With the latest push for getting tough on human trafficking, the only changes being made to laws are increasing the penalties and giving law enforcement more tools to protect victims in hopes of securing their cooperation. The basic elements of the crime hasn't changed, and it pretty much can't given the rules of due process. (If you think there is a more vague statute out there somewhere, well, let's see it.)

I think you're totally right that a somewhat squishy definition of "human trafficking" is being used to secure funding and other resources that in fact get used to enforce regular old prostitution laws, but the actual human trafficking laws themselves are still pretty specific.

20

This is a fascinating debate conducted with a great deal of passion and a remarkable paucity of actual, like you know, fact and information. Who are these women, where are they now, how are they being taken care of, have they fallen into the clutches of ICE, are they being held incomunicado, how much money was actually paid per day for their services, and what was their cut? $10,000 / month "gross billing" would be $385 per shift for a 26 day work month, which does not seem impossible at $100 per wank. ( I do not know the typical fee). How much money do they send home? Are the parlor owners / managers evading taxes? Unless they are named Manafort, that should put them away for a long stretch. So many questions, so little real info. It seems like these splashy arrests are made, and you never hear again of the fates of the players. The 3-1/2 year investigation time frame is telling. I find it hard to believe that if these were truly starving slaves toiling away in a fetid sex dungeon the police and prosecuters would take such a leisurely approach. At least I hope not. Dig on, journalists!

21

As many Sloggers know, I live on North Beacon Hill, and for many years I worked at the Seattle Municipal Tower. It was my habit to walk home from work, and I was witness to the proliferation of massage parlors both in the Little Saigon neighborhood and on Beacon Hill.

One evening, I was walking by the Mayflower spa when suddenly the door flew open, and a young man yanked a young woman out the door and threw her against a car. She was wearing a miniskirt and a tube top and was sobbing. The young man raised his fist as if to strike her and suddenly noticed me standing there observing them. He told me where to go (Hell) and what to do (fuck off), so I got my phone out and called the cops. He pushed her into the car and again told me where I should go and sped off (I was interviewed by the police and later told that the license plate on the car was stolen).

To be clear, I'm all for legalized prostitution. I want sex workers to be registered and unionized and have all the protections of a regular workplace. Until then, I'm not going to give these places the benefit of the doubt.

22

So, I found these:

RCW 9A.40.100 (Trafficking)
https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9A.40.100
RCW 9.68A.101 (Promoting commercial sexual abuse of a minor—Penalty—Consent of minor does not constitute defense.)
https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.68A.101

Now we can all, like, read the laws? To find out how trafficking is defined (for you, @1)? Or to see if there seems to be any particularly stringent evidentiary requirement?

23

Maybe someone should actually interview the women. Is that impossible for some reason?

24

@24: Another reason for police & prosecutors to allege trafficking is it allows them to release the workers without prosecuting them. If the situation remains unclear, it gives the authorities greater leeway.

25

More great reporting Katie. It's so refreshing to see your fact based reporting in our click bait journalist culture.

You raise an interesting question via Elizabeth Nolan Brown:

"Writer Elizabeth Nolan Brown brought this up when reporting on the Florida bust for Reason, writing, "It's hard to reconcile the cops' timeline with their heroic rhetoric. If the women employed at these businesses were really the victims of 'modern slavery,' why did police take six months to get them out of that situation?"

I'm more familiar with the TRB case, but I think it's instructive for the recent Jupiter, FL and Seattle Spa case that both involved elaborate long term investigations with multiple undercover police visits over an extensive period of time.
In the TRB case, many of the Korean sex workers arrested in 2016 had been working in Seattle since 2006 and were well known to the King County Sheriff vice squad for a decade. According to their own police reports, the Sheriff vice unit would regularly arrest these women, humiliate them by prying into their sex lives to get their jollies, take all their money through asset forfeiture, then releasing them back to sex work to raise more asset forfeiture money for the Sheriff department for the next bust. It would be called pimping if the civilian did that, but when a vice cop from King County Sheriff department does it they call it a rescue operation and give themselves awards.

The King County Sheriff office, despite a long history of sexual involvement with sex workers (the head of King County Sheriff Vice unit Dan Ring who liked to arrest sex workers, then use his position to have free sex with them; the Sheriff who had sex with the Barista owner employees in exchange for warning them about upcoming police busts, etc) Only recently has the media bought the ridiculous claim that these cops, despite dozens of unmonitored under cover poli ce operations with these women never, ever had sex with with them.
Fast forward to the beginning of 2015 when the King County Sheriff Vice Unit receives a large STOP Grant for $130,000 in overtime to investigate violence against women (A grant they were directed to by Demand Abolition via Prosecutor Val Richey). By claiming they were going after underage sex trafficking in the language of the grant, even when the youngest Korean sex worker they ever met was 28 and most were much older. Over a 10 month overtime intensive investigation full of undercover operations and planned media recordings, according to their own police documents all the women claimed to be independent, make (and keep) $200 an hour and not be in debt, or handled by anyone. They were indies and they had no information to the contrary beyond the racist view of Asian women they brought to the investigation. By defining all sex work as violence, the police were able to access this federal STOP grant and stretch the investigation out for 10 month to milk every penny of overtime STOP grant money. Once the grant was all used up, they magically decided this was all sex slavery to justify the spending on an elaborate investigation focused more on public shaming than prosecutions.

Washington happens to have the most permissive and expansive "promoting prostitution" statute in the country. Under Washington law, anyone who even attempts to promote or advance prostitution in any way is guilty of actual pimping. That means a cop could overhear you talking to a divorced sexually frustrated buddy in a bar "you know, I think you should see a sex worker" and that police officer could charge you with promoting prostitution and by all accounts Dan Satterberg would prosecute with the same zest he once prosecuted kid with an ounce of Marijuana as drug traffickers.
Fast forward to the 2000's when potential law enforcement and prosecutor money is literally sloshing around for any prosecutor or cop unethical enough to conflate sex work with human trafficking and you see prosecutors and police falling all over each other to push the trafficking narrative for money and media attention. They claim to be going after pimps, but they are in reality targeting family members, land lords, hotel owners and friends of the sex workers who fall under their extremely expansive interpretation of this pre-internet law.

26

Aurellaur, that is an astonishing number of words to devote to a comment section. Are you yourself a pimp or john? If not, why do you care so much?

27

(continued) Because, by your own standards, there's no shame in being a pimp or a john, so there shouldn't be any stigma if you answer my question.

28

@27 Indeed it is all about shame isn't it? And yet you are absolutely not coming from a place of severe puritanical neurosis. No way no how.

What is shameful are your misrepresentations, the fraud you are tirelessly pushing, the ludicrous fiction that infantilizing unenlightened women is any way shape or form feminist.

29

@25 reason.com is a publication that pushes Mob propaganda. For example:

http://reason.com/archives/2018/02/21/dont-feed-the-russian-troll-hysteria

http://reason.com/blog/2018/02/03/republicans-arent-the-only-ones-prone-to

http://reason.com/blog/2018/10/25/when-it-comes-to-sowing-discord-in-ameri

etc. If you are reading that trash, you are being tricked.

30

What absolute crock. For Ms. Herzog to believe sex trafficking might be bad is if these women were shackled, beaten up (but have to prove to her it wasn’t some sex game first), starved, unpaid, blond, crying in misery and not in ecstasy. Rape apologists would love her guidelines because to them it’s only rape if it’s violent or the victim is dead.

According to Ms.Herzog, these must be happy hookers excited to suck thousands of dicks and have unprotected sex because it’s lucrative and they don’t look like they are in bad shape. It’s more like an adventure abroad. No doubt these women are Iiving in luxury, driving Range Rover, free to travel while living the hooker high life. They should make an uplifting, funny documentary about this. After all, it couldn’t be because these women are here sucking dicks because they are poor and desperate.

Tucker Carlson can’t wait to embrace this brand of feminism.

31

Lets just legalize prostitution. And then the city code and business licensing divisions can do things like prohibit on site residence. And create reasonable* sex worker licensing laws, workplace inspections, etc.. If the women have to go home at the end of their shift, it is much less likely that they can be abused. Just don't show up for work the next day.

Back in the heyday of Rick's Cabaret and the Colacurcio empire, Seattle city law actually required dancers to turn their performers licenses over to the business for the duration of their 'employment' (they are actually independent contractors). This is, according to some women's advocacy groups, one sign of trafficking. As it locks the performers into into one employer. And it was Seattle policy. So you'll have to excuse me if I don't take the cities altruistic motives seriously. Once the license forfeiture rules were relaxed, I knew a few performers who, having a pretty good nose for when the sht was about to hit the fan, jumped ship from Ricks before the cops shut it down. They managed to have pretty good careers in the industry by taking their dancing/massage/whatever licenses with them any time things started to look grim at one establishment. And they took home that $10,000 per month.

33

Let me add more context here.

Does Ms. Herzog think these women will be embraced by the Chinese and the Chinese government if they know the real reason why these women were deported back? So perhaps our law enforcement, who actually know the reality what these women endured and what going back means, would prefer NOT to make it more difficult for these women. And THAT is what should matter. These women and their situation should not be used to help some cause Ms. Herzog wants to champion.

BTW, legalizing prostitution does not make sex trafficking go away. Germany continues to have sex trafficking problem and prostitution is still a dangerous job as long as the image of the brutalized sex slave is the standard to enforce the laws and there are people willing to do it because they are poor.

Sex trafficking is not about power sharing or power balance. Sex trafficking is about exploitation.

34

@18: One reason Capone went to jail for income tax evasion, and not for the illegal sources of income upon which he failed to pay his taxes, was that income tax evasion was a federal offense, not a state or local one. He'd corrupted the local law enforcement to the point where federal intervention had become necessary (at least according to the Hollywood version of his story).

Likewise, trafficking of foreign persons into our country would bring with it the risk of federal intervention, and our local law enforcement may not have wanted to give their game away to the feds, especially if that game has been as chronically corrupt as @25 claims.

35

Did anyone edit this article? It has a few grammatical errors and it is strange that these slid by.

36

@34 I think you, as well as several other people here, are just engaging in pure speculation.

The only thing we do know is that miserable shits like Petey Holmes and Dan Satterberg are fond of righteously holding forth about how they are taking on traffickers and yet no actual trafficking charges are ever forthcoming.

37

@28, that's correct, I think pimps and johns should be shamed.

38

What's the difference between the working girl on Aurora and the 18 year old dating an 80 year old on an allowance?
Their income bracket.

39

Can the intersection where carceral feminists engage with militarized humanitarianism continue to exist in an era that calls for the downsizing of the prison industrial complex? Maybe the carceral feminists have a solution in their call for public shaming; however, public shaving, stockades, and scarlet letters do not seem very progressive, do they?

Regarding rape culture, The Stranger uncovered an individual who had portrayed himself to be something he was not, a story about rape by deception. How can a carceral feminists justify law enforcement's pretending to be something they are not? That by its very nature is support for rape culture.

Eliminating the structures of illegality is the only pathway away from rape culture. Give these individuals legal identities and workplace rights. Give them a community of supportive health professionals and not the current day moral entrepreneurs looking to secure more federal anti-trafficking grants with their false narratives and militarized rhetoric. Enough polemics.

If you care about those most impacted start here: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/5bd754_bbd71c0235c740e3a7d444956d95236b.pdf

Thank you Katie for being as bold as you are!!!

40

wait Upside used the term “carceral feminists”! I think Aurellaur used that term a few times in the past. they are clearly the same person.

41

29: I'm not aware that any news organization (Reason or otherwise) has covered the corrupt misallocation of the federal STOP Grant the King County Sheriff Office milked to justify having sex with sex workers over a 10 month period that they referred to as "saving them."

They information on the STOP Grant overtime King County vice police used to pay for sex with Korean women over 10 months before declaring them saved came from a public disclosure request. I note that none of the reason articles you cited above make reference to what I discussed here because reason did not cover this issue.

Ideolog is not excuse to ignore and your weird hang up with Reason that no one mentioned is just that, weird. Start focusing on facts and you will do better at keeping up with the conversation.

42

26: I just laid spelled out broad based corruption and the misallocation of federal funding within the King County Sheriff vice unit and your red herring response is is "your a pimp or a john."

Oh touché; aren't you clever. Your quick witted response to my identification of police corruption within the King County vice unit is "you must be a pimp." Right, if I'm a pimp then that makes police corruption and misappropriation of funding based on lie OK?

Please keep it up with your oh so clever bankrupt non-responses to real issues. I think the more the general public reads your responses the faster it moves them to decriminalization.

43

34:

"Likewise, trafficking of foreign persons into our country would bring with it the risk of federal intervention, and our local law enforcement may not have wanted to give their game away to the feds, especially if that game has been as chronically corrupt as @25 claims."

You are deeply misinformed. Local law enforcement openly admits federal agencies like the FBI and Home Land Security were involved in this prostitution sting regardless of the charges. Local law enforcement regularly works with ICE agents during these investigations as well. Knowing how the Seattle public feels about ICE they don't broadcast that fact, but if you think ICE is following up with these women after local police have sex with them, take all their money through the asset forfeiture they brag about and force them out onto the street, you're kidding yourself.

44

@40 How do we know you are not Rolando? You sound an awful lot like her. 'Prostituted women'?

Actually I suspect you were both merely processed through a very similar dour, unimaginative, reactionary women's studies program. Absolutely lacking in any evidence whatsoever that you can think for yourselves. Equally committed to your specious rationalizations for your baked in puritanical neurosis. Both of you seem to lack the ability to argue your points as well, leaning on mocking other's verbosity because, apparently, you ain't got much.

45

@44 you might be missing some context from a different thread. Upside seemed to think another poster and I were the same person because we had similar positions, so I made fun of her/him here by comparing her/him to another poster.

as for the rest of your post, you seem to be making some pretty big generalizations considering I have like 5-10 posts on this blog in total, but whatever. Time will tell I suppose.

46

@44, I'm pretty sure AMMW's comment #40 is making fun of Upside because on another thread, he posited (without evidence) that AMMW and I are the same person.

I can't speak for AMMW, but being a lefty who opposes prostitution pretty much guarantees that one is capable of thinking for oneself, so I'd say your "analysis" falls flat.

47

cross post. I see I was right though.

48

@42: Your explanation might be plausible if you posted long screeds elsewhere about law enforcement's putative misbehavior on other fronts. Your post history is inaccessible, so I don't know if you have done so, but I doubt it since you have only 40 posts on SLOG and I'd guess at least half of those have been mouth-frothing book-length condemnations of anyone who wants to end prostitution. I conclude that you have a special interest in prostitution and are concerned about law enforcement only insofar as it involves prostitution.

Now, I too have a special interest in prostitution. The difference is that I've clearly and repeatedly explained why.

49

I think it's interesting that no one has stepped in to object to comment #38. That's what contempt for "sex workers" looks like, folks. Not anything I've said.

50

God @49 you’re a broken record. Yawn.

51

JRoll555 has 3 posts, all criticizing rolando74 for posting about prostitution. JRoll555 must be the same person as Upside and Aurellaur! I mean the only reason posters agree with each other is if they’re the same person.

52

48, and........, Rolando dodges the issue of local law enforcement corruption once again.

For those keeping score, that's 3 times I have provided examples of how corruption within law enforcement has resulted in a harm escalation system directed against the very sex workers you, at your convenience feign concern for.
Every time I provide an example of law enforcement corruption, you attempt to switch the topic to my imagined motives, meaning you have no credible response to the actual issues I raised. Responding to issues with speculation on motives is not just lazy, it's cheap.
But by all means please keep the obfuscation up. There's no question in my mind that we are moving towards a more inclusive society with fewer marginalized groups. The future belongs to decriminalization and every time you make a cheap attempt to shift the topic from the real harms the Nordic Model inflicts on sex workers you despise the more it reveals your lack of interest in policies that actually help sex workers.
This is were you try to distract from the very real issue of the police using tax payer money to have sex with sex workers over a 3 year period before taking all their money and declaring them saved by calling me a pimp and/or a john. Rinse, repeat.

53

All these comments, no one offers a moral/ethical framework for what trafficking is/isn't.

54

Aurellaur: "Responding to issues with speculation on motives is not just lazy, it's cheap."

Aurellaur 3 seconds later: "every time you make a cheap attempt to shift the topic from the real harms the Nordic Model inflicts on sex workers you despise the more it reveals your lack of interest in policies that actually help sex workers."

OK then!

55

Aurellaur: "The future belongs to decriminalization."

I also support decriminalization - of people who sell sex. The only difference between your position and mine is that I think pimps and johns should be prosecuted and you think pimps and johns are A-OK. I know you don't like that formulation, but it's the plain truth.

56

"The only difference between your position and mine is that I think pimps and johns should be prosecuted and you think pimps and johns are A-OK."
I believe consensual adult customers and owners are fine as long as sex workers freely agree to employ them. They typically provide the support law enforcement denies sex workers in a criminalized environment.
The real difference in our views is your conflation of violence with consent the way homosexuality was once conflated with pedophilia. I do appreciate you owning the nordic harm escalation model. That it is a policy of harm escalation is not speculation on your motives, but a fact born out by the data and what literally all practicing sex workers are screaming for everyone but you to hear.
There are far too many peer reviewed studies confirming that the nordic model you support leads to harm escalation of sex workers to imagine otherwise. That's why law enforcement and rent seeking NGOs are the only supporters of the nordic model while everyone in health care and human rights in opposed. Raping sex workers is not OK with most members of the public simply because the rapist is wearing a badge and carrying a gun. "Prosecute the customer" leads to higher STI rates, increased dangers for sex workers by corrupt police officers that exploit them without fear that those "johns and pimps" that have you fainting on your couch will report them. remember, your "pimps" were telling the police who Gary Ridgeway was, but the police did not value these women enough to intercede until scores of them were dead.
The model you propose has been proven time and again to harm sex workers. Pointing that out is hardly speculation on your motives.

57

While everyone's trying to insult each other and digging in on their positions, there are actual child abuse and human trafficking horrors being perpetrated every day. But instead of doing the hard work, law enforcement--enabled by the state legislators, continue to exploit and harass sex workers engaged in consensual adult activities. This "trafficking" is conflated with prostitution because that is what's really going on here: prostitution abolition. Fundamentalists are hell-bent on ending the sex trade because they don't like it and feel justified in imposing their beliefs on the public at large. What ever happened to the separation of church and state? At this point it appears the federal government is doing the church's bidding!

If you want to know what REAL trafficking looks like, listen to the testimony of REAL survivors who have been through hell and yet no one cares about, let alone attempts to rescue. They are testifying at the International Tribunal of Natural Justice (ITNJ). https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=itnj

But like I said, these abolitionists don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. And while they talk a good game, they cannot provide names of people they've helped because they never help anyone. They just hope no one does their due diligence and exposes them for the liars they are. It's pretty pathetic when moral crusaders have to resort to lying to increase moral fabric of our nation.

Before you take a stand, do your homework. There are many reputable, intelligent academic professionals who have studied the commercial sex industry for decades, their papers and books are peer-reviewed and their perspectives are based in reality. This is where legislators should go for information before drafting new laws--and stop basing them on "feelings" of self-serving abolitionists.

58

@57, I'm an atheist.

59

@56, I'm not defending the police. I'm saying that prostituted women should not be prosecuted and pimps and johns should. End.


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