The Women's Freedom Network Newsletter January/February & March/April 2002, Volume 9, Nos. 1 & 2 WOMEN'S FREEDOM NETWORK NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON STOPPING COMMERCIAL SEXUAL EXPLOITATION The Demand for Trafficked Women and Children in Destination Countries: Focus on the United States by Donna Hughes

Trafficking and prostitution are highly gendered systems that result from structural inequality between men and women on a world scale. Men create the demand and women are the supply. The ultimate consumers of trafficked and prostituted women are men who use women for entertainment, sexual gratification, and acts of violence. In this gendered system of supply and demand, little or no attention is paid to the legitimacy of the demand.

Sex industries use up women physically and emotionally, necessitating fresh supplies of women on a regular basis, which keeps the recruitment and trafficking of women so profitable. Although some women may appear to voluntarily enter prostitution, this number could never meet the demand, because if prostitution were a desirable, rewarding, lucrative job, traffickers would not have to deceive, coerce, and enslave women and children to get them into and keep them in the sex industry.

Whatever the recruitment method, the majority of women do not expect the sexual exploitation and violence that awaits them. Approximately 75% of the women do not realize they are being recruited for prostitution. After the woman has reached the destination country, the trafficker or pimp tells her that she is not going to work as a waitress, nanny, or whatever more agreeable opportunity was offered, but instead will be in prostitution. The methods used to control the women once they reach the destination country include confiscation of travel documents, violence, confinement, threats to harm family members, and debt bondage.

"Whatever the recruitment method, the majority of women do not expect the sexual exploitation and violence that awaits them. Approximately 75% of the women do not realize they are being recruited for prostitution."

In my research with my colleagues, we found that there is an ethnic basis for a lot of the prostitution or the brothels. The men who buy women in prostitution come from all nationalities and races. But many of the brothels housing the international women specifically cater to buyers from within ethnic communities. For example, in NYC's Chinatown, the Chinese houses of prostitution are closed to non-Chinese buyers. Not even Chinese men are allowed into the Fukinese brothels. We found that prostitute buyers have to speak the right dialect in order to gain access to some of the brothels. Restriction of buyers also applies in Mexican establishments, where certain speech patterns are monitored for entry. In the Cadena case in Florida, women and girls were trafficked from Mexico and brought in to service the migrant field workers in rural Florida. Evidence from the men's writing supports racial and national restrictions on men allowed into certain brothels. Asian massage parlors or brothels appear to be more restrictive in limiting their clientele to specific groups. One black man writing about his experience in NY told us, if you happen to be black, sometimes the Korean places just won't let you in.

We also asked the women if they have much choice or are they expected to comply with the men's demands? We found that 82% of the international women and 58% of the U.S. women said, "yes," the men expect them to comply with all of their demands. We also asked them about the men's attitudes towards using condoms. Fifty percent of the international women and 73% of the U.S. women said that men pay more in order to have sex without a condom. Twenty-nine percent of the international women and 45% of the U.S. women said that they have been subjected to violence if the women tried to insist that the men wear or use condoms.

In regards to acts of violence, women were punched, beaten, stabbed, and thrown from cars resulting in some very serious injuries, more than just bruises. We found that 28% of the international women and 86% of the U.S. women had been subjected to physical violence once or frequently. Thirty-six percent of the international women and 80% of the U.S. women had been subjected to sexual assault. Seven percent of the international women and 35% of the U.S. women suffered broken bones. Fifty percent of the international women and 80% of the U.S. women reported bruises. Thirty-six percent of the international women and 53% of the U.S. women reported mouth and teeth injuries.

As for the emotional consequences, around 85% of both groups reported being chronically depressed as a result of their experience. About 50% of both groups said that they felt hopeless and had little hope for the future. Around 31 % of the international women said that they had suicidal ideation, and a number of them attempted suicide at least once. We also found a high level of drug and alcohol use. Approximately 90% of both groups use drugs or alcohol on almost a daily basis. Some people think that women become addicted to drugs then have to enter prostitution in order to pay for their addiction. In fact, that was the case for some of these women. But what is interesting is that in both groups 50% of them said that they did not start using drugs or alcohol on a daily basis until after they had entered the sex industry. The reason for that was that they had to start using drugs or alcohol on a daily basis in order to cope with the unwanted sex that they were subjected to each day from the men.

About 50% of both groups of women told us that they had attempted to escape. They tried ways to resist and they attempted to leave the sex industries altogether. The factors that prevented them from leaving were things like physical violence, drug addictions, having no job skills, or resources. There were also threats to harm the woman or her children. They were literally kidnapped and forcibly returned. One Russian woman who was trafficked to NY said that she frequently witnessed other women around her being sadistically beaten. She told us, "I didn't resist, because I saw others mutilated. Pimps would beat up women for attempts to escape, sometimes mutilate and beat them to death. One girl died in 3 days." So, if one particular woman is singled out for that kind of treatment, it intimidates and controls the other women.

Shifting to pornography in connection to trafficking, pornographers associated with international crime networks use Eastern European women for the production of pornography. Budapest, Hungary has become a center for pornography production. Budapest is also a transit city for trafficking women from Eastern Europe into Western Europe. One pornography producer said this about the women that he can get from Eastern Europe, "They cost less and do more." He said, "even excruciating and humiliating acts usually cost the producer only $200 or $300."

The Internet has enabled rapid and global distribution of child pornography, and Russia has become a favored production site for child pornography. Some of the children are trafficked in from more rural regions of Russia into Moscow in order to be used in the production of child pornography. One of the big problems in Russia is that there are no effective laws against child or adult pornography, and the age of consent is 14. Therefore, if the teenager is 14 or over, since they can consent to sex, they can be used in the production of pornography. Also, in Russia, the distribution of pornography, even child pornography, is not really considered worthy of police or court actions.

"One pornography producer said this about the women that he can get from Eastern Europe, 'They cost less and do more.'"

The child pornographers are also pimps. They establish contact with someone in the U.S. and sell him child pornography. Then after a few sales, he asks if you would like to travel to Russia to be set up with some of these children that are in the videos or with other children. So effectively, they're acting as pimps or child sex tour agents in addition to producing the pornography. The market for the child pornography produced in Russia is Western Europe and the U.S.

Associated with the Internet are the communication technologies that are a significant factor in the globalization of sexual exploitation. The Internet and other types of telecommunications, such as satellite transmission, provide the sex industry with new ways of marketing and delivering women and children as sexual commodities to male buyers. The images of women's sexual exploitation can be transmitted from local sites anywhere in the world to computer servers in countries where the interpretations of law protecting free speech and free expression extend to sexualized images, including acts of violence against women. From there, the images can be transmitted upon request to any other place in the world that has a phone line for an Internet connection. When a new technology is introduced into a system of exploitation, it enables those with power to intensify the harm and expand the exploitation.

The Internet sex industry sites are popular and highly profitable. By 1999, Internet industry analysts estimated that the sex industry revenue from the Internet alone was a billion U.S. dollars a year. The more recent figure last year was about $1.4 billion with the largest web sites making over $100 million a year. Also, 69% of the online content sales are from the sex industry. What that means is, there's content that's actually on the Internet and you buy it. The sex industry sites on the Internet make around 50 to 80% profit. There are approximately 200,000 sex industry sites, although no one really knows exactly how many. That's simply an estimate. The growth and expansion of the sex industry is closely intertwined with new technology. Many of the Internet service providers and online services don't like to admit the extent of the sex industry's importance in the Internet commerce. But, the large Internet service providers profit from the sex industry by carrying their sites and online services. Many of these are located in the U.S, and Western Europe.

Here is a specific example, an American man, Dan, went to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and set up something that he called the Rape Camp. It was a live Asian bondage site on the Internet. He was going to sell the rape and torture of Asian women on pay-per-view basis to customers in the U.S. He said, "I wanted a niche that I knew would sell. There's a big market in the U.S. for Asian women." He used an economic rationale. He said, "when I start making money, I'll pay 10 percent in taxes. If I'm successful, I'll get a lot of other guys doing it and get a lot of tax revenue." When the Minister of Women in Cambodia found out about this, she called for the pornographer's arrest. She said it's an act against the dignity and value of Cambodian women and children. Dan was arrested and put in jail. But, through the intervention of U.S. officials, he was released and simply deported rather than charged with any offenses. For at least 6 months after he was arrested, his Rape Camp remained on the Internet on a computer server located in the U.S.

"You can argue that it's been around forever... My response to that, is that so have homicide and battering."

After people hear about a lot of the horrors of trafficking, they ask what can we do about this? A popular response is to legalize prostitution with the hope of being able to regulate it and keep out the worst violence. But, some of the places that have legalized prostitution also have the largest sex industries and also are some of the most frequent destinations for trafficked women, just because once it's legalized it gets bigger and there simply are not enough local women to satisfy the demand. So, legalized prostitution actually increases trafficking to meet the demand. In fact, reports indicate that along with an increase in demand there is an increase in organized crime as a result of legalized prostitution.

Another problem is that the victims are treated as criminals or illegal immigrants because many countries still have laws in which the victims are treated like criminals. There are few social services for victims who suffer from trauma, poor health, physical injuries, sexually transmitted diseases, and other transmissible diseases. For example, in some countries there is an increase in tuberculosis among girls or women who are in brothels. Most laws and attitudes still blame and punish the victim. And there is a very common idea or acceptance of prostitution as simply being inevitable. You can argue that it's been around forever. Therefore we should just accept it or simply find some way to regulate it. My response to that, is that so has homicide or battering. But as with any crime, you cannot begin to make a difference in decreasing the harm until you say that it is not acceptable.