British National Party members outside of Liverpool Crown Court as 9 gang members sentenced for child exploitation.

Prostitution around the world is linked to organized crime. In Las Vegas massage parlors, pay day loan stores, and escort agency prostitution are known to be run by organized criminals. Across the United States, massage parlors are destination points for trafficking victims. In locations with decriminalized or legalized prostitution (e.g. New Zealand, the Netherlands and Australia) legal pimps partner with organized crime to increase their profits.

Julie Bindel's article highlights the relationship between prostitution and organized crime--and the way in which gangs select, manipulate and groom victims for sexual exploitation. She notes the societal complacency about organized sexual exploitation, which is increasingly problematic as we look at the increase of organized crime in areas in which prostitution is legal.

Bindel suggests that we listen to survivors in order to further understand organized crime--how gangs operate, where they prostitute victims, and what happens to the money they make--in order to better protect victims and secure convictions against perpetrators.

Click here to read Julie Bindel's article

I recently went to Las Vegas for a business conference. As I walked through the prestigious casino, I quickly felt lustful eyes on me, a feeling that I once felt 20 years ago as a prostitute. I thought to myself, How can I feel this way? I'm dressed up in a conservative manner. I'm educated with a graduate degree and years of corporate experience and now I'm a CEO. Knowing my truth, I asked a young man about the lustful stares. He explained to me that because I'm black and walking through the casino, I'm thought to be a prostitute. He continued but his words were drowned out by my father's voice spoken over me when I was young, "You look like a prostitute."

The following week I went out to a movie and as I waited for my movie to start, I sat at the bar deciding what to get from the happy hour menu. I asked two white men next to me what was good on the menu.

We had small talk and then one man said to me, "What's your deal?"

I said, "Huh?"

He said, "What's your angle? Why are you in this part of town?" He giggled with his partner and then said, "My partner wants you to suck his dick."

I said, "I'm not a prostitute."

He said, "Well I thought you were since you were in this part of town."

I took note of the area that I was in. It was a predominantly white neighborhood, just like where the prestigious hotel and casino had been. All I could hear this time louder were the words from my father, "You look like a prostitute." My dad's words made me question my identity as a little black girl and now these two situations made me question it again. In my mind, I held stereotypes about the little white girls living their childhoods as princesses, playing tea party 7 days a week, since for me it was a different reality. It wasn't until Bill Cosby's TV show aired in 1984 that I saw another view - I never saw Bill Cosby abuse his on-screen daughter Vanessa or call her a prostitute. He was a black man that cherished his wife and loved his family, especially his daughters. No matter how beautiful the image was that Bill Cosby showed every Thursday night, that was neither my reality nor many other little black girls' realities either.

A false stereotype of black woman being devalued continues to linger still today that attaches a for sale sign to our backs. A hidden tragedy of stereotypes and perceptions traces back to slavery when black women were considered property and because of it were legally raped. I don't blame my father, in general people, make decisions based on learned behavior or what is perceived from the past to be true about themselves and others, and in turn reflect their belief on to their children and society--feeding racism and prostitution in America today.

By Stella Marr, survivor of prostitution
May 1, 2012

Survivors Connect Network, an international online network of trafficking/prostitution survivors, now has 44 members from seven different countries. It's been recognized that the absence of survivor leaders in most major anti-trafficking NGOs has created a void. Survivor knowledge and insight is essential. But it's become increasingly clear to the NGOs that survivor leadership will make the movement's success inevitable. Demand Abolition is setting an example by inviting seven survivors to participate in their Arresting Demand colloquium May 3rd and 4th in Boston. We are extraordinarily grateful.

An exciting example of collaboration among survivor groups involves the Bedford case. Sister survivors in the Aboriginal Women's Action Network, Educating Voices, LaCLES, and SexTrade101 have been valiantly educating the public about the harms of the Bedford ruling -- which upholds the criminalization of prostitutes on the street -- who are almost always crime victims- while it empowers and legitimizes their predators, the male and female pimps who own brothels and escort services.

So we survivors recently voted to issue a statement against the Bedford decision. Dozens of us joining our voices in political action is a big deal. Here's the statement:

We the members of Survivors Connect Network stand with the women of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network, SexTrade101, La Concertation des Luttes Contre L'Exploitation Sexuelle (CLES), and Educating Voices. We are sad and shocked by the Bedford ruling. It's especially troubling that this decision upholds the criminalization of prostitutes selling sex on the street, as these women are almost always traumatized crime victims who need support not arrest. Meanwhile the ruling empowers the male and female pimps who terrorize and exploit women in prostitution by making it legal to own brothels or escort services.

Researchers have found the women in prostitution suffer from the same levels of trauma symptoms as the victims of state-sponsored torture. It forever changes how we face the world. After going through trafficking/prostitution everything you do is an act of will -- you must summon and form a new self from your fragments. And yet as the survivors of torture or trafficking/prostitution rebuild our selves and find our voice, we can develop extraordinary abilities to connect with, inspire, and understand others.

Nelson Mandela exemplifies this type of rebirth. Most everyone understands that Mandela's experiences of being held 27 years in a prison infamous for torture make him unique. When he was finally released few denied the vast injustice done to him. No one expected him to act like everyone else. Instead South Africa and the world stepped back, and waited to see how this extraordinary man would transform the terrible wrongs he'd been through -- they gave him a chance to bring something new into being.

As more trafficking/prostitution survivors speak out, the public will recognize we're people society has wronged. They'll understand we've been changed by the pain and harshness we've experienced. At present public denial of the sex industry's violence and prostitute-blaming forces many of us into hiding. But as more survivors lead, we'll be empowered to bring something new and beautiful into being.

Prostitution hurts women in it, including the women in Cartagena's legal brothels. NPR's Scott Simon has been rethinking his understanding of prostitution - it's heartening to hear that while he previously thought it was harmless, now he sees prostitution as exploitive and frequently a result of desperate poverty, coercion, and trafficking. Janice Raymond points out these same connections and wonders why, when the US has a policy against military use of women in prostitution - the Secret Service appears to be exempt. While there has been extensive coverage on the US Secret Service scandal and its connection to terrorism, the potential danger to Obama, and the harms to the careers of the men involved--there has been no mention of the harms to the women in prostitution used by the agents.

Raymond and Simon ask why aren't the cases of the prostituted women being investigated for evidence of trafficking? Why is an international summit being held in a place where the exploitation of women is considered a normal activity? How is it that half of the people involved in the scandal are being ignored by the government, the media, and the public at large?

If the United States is serious about ending human trafficking, we should enforce existing policy. Swedish law, which understands that all prostitution - whether legal or not - is violence against women, would arrest the agents, probably fire them, and return them to Sweden. The challenge for us right now, as Simon and Raymond point out is to recognize the harms intrinsic to prostitution and then to take the next step--apply the laws to the sex buyers.

Kudos to Scott Simon and Janice Raymond for these excellent articles.

Take action: Call President Barack Obama and call on the U.S. government to implement a government-wide zero tolerance policy on the demand for commercial sex that fuels sex trafficking.

Phone: (202) 456-1111
Fax: (202) 456-2461

Click here to read complete articles

Link to Nickels

Debbie Peagler was serving a life sentence for her involvement in her boyfriend's murder - a boyfriend who was abusive and had forced her into prostitution.

Her case was picked up pro bono by two San Francisco area lawyers, Joshua Safran and Nadia Costa, after a law was passed in 2003 that allowed incarcerated women who were victims of domestic violence to introduce new evidence.

Berkeley filmmaker Yoav Potash spent years chronicling the case, and the result is the documentary "Crime After Crime," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, played recently at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and opens in theaters Friday. It has also been picked up by the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Potash, Safran and Costa sat down with The Chronicle at the SFJFF screening at the Castro Theatre.

Potash: You meet (Peagler), and you can immediately tell she'd been through hell with all the abuse she's suffered, all the injustices she's suffered, and yet she's an inspiring, uplifting person to be around.

Costa: We thought it would be 3 to 6 months; 7 1/2 years later, here we sit!

Potash: There's a lot that we'd like to see in terms of domestic violence laws in America. (The laws) are an outgrowth of the women's movement, which itself is not that old of a phenomenon. California is the only state that has this particular law that allows incarcerated survivors of domestic violence to present their evidence to the court proactively. New York state has a similar resolution that's been proposed; hopefully that will be passed, and with California and New York the models, other states will follow suit. So what we're engaged in is a nonprofit project called "Debbie's Campaign," where we're using the film to help reduce domestic violence, to reduce unlawful incarceration and to support full and fair consideration of those kinds of laws.

Costa: Abuse against women and children today exist because as a society we want to look away. As long as we do that, it will continue.

Starts August 5, 2011 at San Francisco area theaters.

Neither candidate for US Senate has made a public statement about legal prostitution in the state.

- Melissa Farley

Sunday October 24th 2:00pm
The Women's Building Audre Lorde Room, 2nd Floor
3543 18th Street San Francisco, CA 94110
$5-$10

Barry previously wrote Female Sexual Slavery, Prostitution of Sexuality: Global Exploitation of Women, Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist, Vietnamese Women in Transition

"How can we end war if we don't understand the makings of war? Kathleen Barry's Unmaking War, Remaking Men is a remarkable blend of history, current war-making and soul-searching that unravels the very structures of war. Her fascinating questions--ranging from "Why don't the Geneva Conventions protect the rights of combatants?" to "Why are women in the peaceful nation of Costa Rica subjected to outrageous levels of masculine violence?"--lead to her analysis that the unmaking of war requires the rehumanization of men. Read it, get energized and join us in Barry's ultimate challenge: replacing the paradigm of war with a paradigm of shared human consciousness based on empathy."
--Medea Benjamin, cofounder, CODEPINK and Global Exchange

For event information:
(415) 355-0300
nancymancias@codepink.org

Step One - 'Us and Them'

Step Two - 'Obey'

Step Three 'Do Them Harm'

Step 4 'Apathy'

Step 5 - 'Exterminate'

SAN FRANCISCO, May 20 (UPI) -- An advertisement placed in a California newspaper said Craiglist's adult services section is "the choice of traffickers" in sex with underage girls.

The half-page ad, addressed to Craigslist founder Craig Newmark in Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle, calls for Craigslist to discontinue its adult services section, which generated $36 million in revenues this year, and included the experiences of two teenage girls who said they were forced into prostitution via Craigslist, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday.

They say prostitution is a choice? How did I choose prostitution? I didn't choose prostitution, it chose me. Just as child sexual assault and neglect had chose me. I was not a willing participant, but lured into a life I saw as my only option. The words choose means to select from a number of possibilities; pick by preference. Choose is a term loosely used when referring to woman in prostitution, most of the time poverty ignorance or pimps lure women into prostitution by selling them dreams. Most of the times a lifetime of poverty play a role in the choice.

My story is about a childhood cut short, quickly interrupted with sex, drugs, neglect and mental abuse. Some people inherit money, ethics, values or property from their family. I inherited generations of ignorance. My grandmother and mother were uneducated, neglected and abused. Early on the torch was passed down to me. My story is about a child who knew before she could reach the tall shelf in the kitchen, that my greatest asset was my body.

A Guide for Mothers, Grandmothers, and Others, for Helping a Girl Caught in Prostitution or Sex Trafficking. download manual

Guida dirigida a madres, abuelas y otras personas para ayudar a juvenes atrapadas en la prostitucion o la trata. download manual

Did Missing DNA Thwart Hunt For Serial Killer

posted by Jeanette R, blogger for Prostitution Research & Education

posted by Elisabeth Rainsberger, blogger for Prostitution Research & Education

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