Tony At 10: SEXUAL ABUSE OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN: BLOG #2085; MAY19,2017

THE MESSAGE:

For some perplexing reason in certain countries, there exists a statute of limitations on the crime of sexually abusing young children. Equally offensive is the difficulty and embarrassment associated with coming forward and reporting these abuses for both young children and women in our societies.

For me, it is one thing that these atrocities do occur in third world countries or in religious societies that denigrate women and deny them dignity and equality. However, for these crimes, it is particularly disturbing to hear of their occurrence in Western societies that are supposedly enlightened.

Recently, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo delivered a strong support for the Child Victims Act. Versions of this Act have been proposed in the New York State Legislature for years without receiving enough votes to become law. The Act would essentially do away with the statute of limitations on prosecutions of child sexual abuse, and extend to 50 years, the time limit in which a civil suit could be brought. For some reason, passage of the Act meets much opposition.

'WOMEN IN THE WORLD'

The three-day Women in the World Summit, held at New York City’s Lincoln Center, presents powerful new female role models whose personal stories illuminate the most pressing international issues. They range from CEOs and world leaders to artists, activists, peacemakers, and firebrand dissidents.

THE EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN

When we talk about the exploitation of women and the use of the Internet we are not merely speaking of Internet porn. The exploitation of women via the Internet holds a host of threats to women and children. The following definition of sexual exploitation is offered by Donna Hughes, a well-known researcher in the area of Women’s Studies and woman’s advocate from the University of Rhode Island, she claims it combines several issues with far reaching effects.

A practice by which a person achieves sexual gratification, financial gain or advancement through the abuse or exploitation of a person’s sexuality by abrogating that person’s human right to dignity, equality, autonomy, and physical and mental well-being.

Trafficking includes prostitution, prostitution tourism, mail-order-bride trade, pornography, stripping, battering, incest, rape and sexual harassment.
Sexual exploitation preys on women and children made vulnerable by poverty and economic development policies and practices.
It is inclusive of refugee and displaced persons and women in the migrating process.
Sexual exploitation eroticizes women’s inequality and is a vehicle for racism and "first world" domination. It disproportionately victimizes minority and "third world" women.
Sexual exploitation violates the human rights of anyone subjected to it, whether female or male, adult or child, Northern or Southern.”

THE BLURB:

WE SHALL OVERCOME!

PROSTITUTION AS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Although many non-government organizations (NGOs) view trafficking in women as an important issue; there is disagreement on whether prostitution is actually violence against women. There is also discrepancy surrounding the manner in which cases of trafficking and prostitution are handled. The key conflict lies in differing viewpoints on prostitution.

Some organizations want to treat trafficking and prostitution as aspects of the same problem and consequently fight both at the same time. This causes problems for organizations wanting to stop trafficking in women but to legalize prostitution.

Many arrive at a consistent conclusion. When examining the nature of prostitution, its health effects and dynamics, it is clear that legalizing it is incompatible with maintaining the dignity of a human being. They argue that prostitution and trafficking are not victimless crimes, or just another form of work for pimps and apologists in the sex industry.

Even when women voluntarily enter into these situations, in hope of making money or finding a better life, the dynamics are brutal.

Often the illegal claws of the sex industry leave the women with few other options. They become powerless to leave!

The common practice of treating international adoption as a business has resulted in violations of standards and laws. To deal with this problem, human rights must be protected, community development programs must be expanded, and standards and laws must be strengthened.

SWEDEN

In 1998, Sweden passed a law on violence against women that created a new offence labeled 'Gross Violation of a Woman's Integrity. As of January 1, 1999, the "purchase of sexual services" was prohibited, punishable by fines and/or imprisonment up to six months. The Swedish government was clear that the new law demonstrated that Sweden viewed prostitution as an "undesirable social phenomenon" and an act of violence against women. The country aims to eliminate acts of violence that stand in the way of equality for women. Sweden's approach recognizes the harm done to women under conditions of sexual exploitation. Legalization of prostitution is sometimes thought to be a solution to trafficking in women, but evidence seems to show that legalized sex industries actually result in increased trafficking to meet the demand for women to be used in the legal sex industries. Increased activity of organized crime networks also accompanies increases in trafficking.

THE INTERNET

It has become the latest place for promoting the global trafficking and sexual exploitation of women. The 'net' is used to actively engage in the buying and selling of women and children. Catalogs promote mail order brides, commercial sex tours and video-conferencing of live strip shows in a network that is largely unregulated. Currently, there are details on finding and buying prostitutes available for several European cities. Each day people are bombarded with email requests for meetings with various individuals offering alluring encounters.

THE UNITED STATES

A few countries in Europe and the United States have now made it possible to press charges against men for their sexual abuse of children while visiting other countries. In New York State, when someone is sexually exploited as a child, that child, with rare exceptions, has only until the age of 23 to bring criminal or civil proceedings against an abuser. This is in spite of the fact that mental-health professionals repeatedly inform us that it can take many agonizing years, accompanied with anxiety, depression, or substance abuse, for victims to understand what had happened to them and come forward to report the crime.

Lawmakers in several countries are scrambling to catch-up to new technologies. Their problems are exacerbated by internet users who have adopt and defend an unbridled libertarianism. Any kind of regulation or restriction is met with vigorous protest. In the face of these protesters it is imperative that societies define the sexual exploitation of women and children as 'human rights violations' and 'crimes against women and children' which should not exist in our communities or on the Internet.

Strategies aimed at the trafficking of sexual victims should focus on the criminal nature of this activity and those perpetrators, rather than on the activity of the 'victims of trafficking'. The human rights of these victims must be assured. Every country should have such a law, and enforce it. In addition, it should be illegal to use the Internet to post information on the advertisement and sexual exploitation of women and children.

RUSSIA and ORGANIZED CRIME

Ineffective privatization, the lack of law enforcement, lack of rule of law the professionalization of organized crime, and the absence of a legal culture have allowed organized crime to flourish from the trafficking of women. Russian crime gangs have been exposed in a two-year study by the Washington-based non-profit group Global Survival Network (GSN)through the use of undercover interviews with gangsters, pimps and corrupt officials.

In Russia today, there are over 5,000 gangs, 3,000 hardened criminals, 300 mob bosses, and 150 illegal organizations with international connections. Approximately 40,000 Russian business and industrial enterprises are controlled by organized crime. Their combined output is higher than the gross national product of many members of the United Nations.

The Russian mafia is estimated to turn over in excess of $10 billion a year. The situation in the other Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union is worse, with criminal gangs even controlling the value of some national currencies.

As the influence of criminal networks deepens, the corruption goes beyond an act of occasionally ignoring illegal activity to providing protection by blocking legislation that would hinder the activities of the groups. As law enforcement personnel and government officials become more corrupt and members of the crime groups gain more influence, the line between the state and the criminal networks starts to blur. This merging of criminal networks and the government seems to have occurred in many of the states that have emerged from the Soviet Union. Under these circumstances it is difficult to intervene in the succession of corruption, collaboration, crime and profit.

The efficient, brutal routine endured by trafficked women in dozens of countries, rarely varies. Women are held in apartments, bars and makeshift brothels; there they service, by their own count, as many as 15 clients a day; often they sleep in shifts, four to a bed. Few ever testify against their traffickers. Those who do, risk death.

In 1998 in Istanbul, Turkey, according to Ukrainian police investigators, two women were thrown to their deaths from a balcony while six of their Russian friends watched. In Serbia, in 1998, a woman who refused to work as a prostitute was beheaded in public. As Senator Sam Nunn of the USA has argued, "Crime, and particularly organized crime, has become one of the most dangerous forces to arise from the collapse of the Soviet system".

The United Nations has estimated that 4 million people (both men and women) are trafficked annually, resulting in profits to criminal groups of up to $7 billion. In Russia, a country already suffering from political and economic disaster, it is reported that an estimated 80 percent of the private enterprises and commercial banks are forced to pay a tribute of 10 to 25 percent of their profits to organized crime. They use the banks to launder money and avoid paying taxes desperately needed by the government to pay salaries and debts. All too often we hear of government and military personnel in Russia not being paid for months. To further cripple the economy, these crime groups dominate economic sectors, such as petroleum distribution, pharmaceuticals and consumer products distribution.

CANADIAN ISSUES

The over-representation of Aboriginal women and girls in sexual exploitation and trafficking in Canada has been explored on repeated occasion through a span of years. The identified root causes never seem to change.

These root causes are identified as: 1. the impact of colonialism on Aboriginal societies, 2. the legacies of the residential schools and their inter-generational effects, 3. family violence, 4. childhood abuse, 5. poverty, 6. homelessness, 7. lack of basic survival necessities, 8. race and gender-based discrimination, 9. lack of education, 10. migration, and 11. substance addictions.

In some Aboriginal communities, these root causes, coupled with rural/remote living conditions create a complex environment that contributes to the increased risk among Aboriginal women and girls of being sexually exploited and trafficked.

Schools, that were traditionally intended to be paths to education and self-improvement, are being used as convenient locations in which to find Aboriginal young girls who are susceptible to promises of gifts and a better life.

According to key informants, young Aboriginal girls in a new city looking to be connected with and meet up with other Aboriginals will head to bars in hopes of ending their isolation. Certain key informants suggest that many of the Community Centres where these young girls could have visited in lieu, are closed too early in the day. In bars, the traffickers will recruit them with offers to help them connect with other Aboriginals. The offer soon turns into sexual exploitation.

Traffickers who pretend to be boyfriends is a frequent example of recruitment. These traffickers mask their true intensions by claiming to care about the girl. The exploitation may start out with the use of expensive gifts to enhance the attraction. Some traffickers deliberately get the victim hooked on drugs to maintain their ultimate control.

Sometimes girls are made to recruit other girls. They may be motivated not their own profit but by a fear of violence from their own trafficker if they refuse or fail to bring in someone else. Some victims are Aboriginal girls who are strategically moved many times across provincial boundaries to 'work' until they have become disconnected from their friends and family.

Aboriginal girls, who resort to hitchhiking in an attempt to relocate or travel, are often picked up by traffickers and pushed into a life of sexual exploitation. Many of them are never heard from again.

THE RCMP REPORTS and FINDINGS

TRAFFICKERS

Traffickers force victims to provide sexual services to customers primarily in hotels/ private residences and in adult entertainment establishments.
Traffickers who force their victims to provide sexual services in hotels/private residences acquire clients primarily through online advertising. External agencies (escort and dancer placement agencies) are also used by traffickers to acquire clients, but not to the extent of online advertising.
Traffickers usually take all of their victims' profits: victims typically earn between $500 and $1,000 per day.
The majority of traffickers are male, Canadian citizens, between the ages of 19 and 32 years, and are of various ethnicities or races.
Adult females and individuals under the age of 18 years (especially those who are female) are increasingly becoming involved as human traffickers for sexual exploitation.
Female traffickers usually work with at least one male and this partnership is sometimes relationship-based.
Traffickers who are under the age of 18 years commonly work in partnership with adults.
In approximately 50 percent of specific cases of domestic human trafficking for sexual exploitation, traffickers are associated with street gangs. However, intelligence does not indicate that human trafficking is an organized street gang activity.
The proportion of traffickers who work alone and those who work with other individuals is almost equal.
Traffickers work with friends, trusted associates, family members, boyfriends/girlfriends, or other females involved in prostitution.

VICTIMS

Victims are female, Canadian citizens, between the ages of 14 and 22 years, and are typically Caucasian.
Individuals are most susceptible to traffickers when they need financial support and/ or gain, or they desire love and affection.
Individuals who are under the age of 18 years or engaged in dancing in adult entertainment establishments and/or prostitution, are more vulnerable to recruitment by traffickers as well as their control tactics. However, anyone can become a victim of human trafficking.
Approximately 50 percent of victims do not have previous experience dancing in adult entertainment establishments and/or prostituting.
In recent years, individuals with relatively stable backgrounds are increasingly becoming victims of human trafficking.
Victims who are trafficked by individuals under the age of 18 years are usually under 18 years old themselves.

HOW THEY WORK

Victims usually meet traffickers directly, or through mutual friends or acquaintances. A small portion of victims meet traffickers over the Internet through social networking websites such as Facebook.
Traffickers mostly recruit victims from hotels/residences (commonly parties), bars/ clubs (including adult entertainment establishments), and the streets.
Traffickers commonly initially gain and then maintain control over their victims by establishing trust through false friendship and romance, psychological control, threats, intimidation and violence.
Traffickers often move their victims within and across provinces. Major hubs include the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta, with victims commonly trafficked between the neighbouring provinces.

MEXICO

More than 30,000 people are missing in Mexico after disappearing under suspicious circumstances.

Daniela was a 22-year-old seamstress working to feed her children and her mother in Nicaragua when, in 2008, the drug wars that were ravaging Mexico and other Central American countries arrived at her door. She was attending a meeting about receiving a loan with some 15 other young women near the border of Honduras when armed men from the Zetas drug cartel in Mexico took all of their identification cards, gave them identical clothes, and forced them into a van, kidnapping them.

Daniela told VICE that she was driven north into Mexico, forced to work at a brothel, and then was taken to a large house with a cellar in northern Mexico where she remembers seeing five other young women bound to pillars, surrounded by men who had paid to rape and torture them. She was held in Nuevo Laredo, a town near Texas, and was forced to work as a dancer and prostitute at a club frequented by U.S. tourists, and then as a drug smuggler. When she was taken as a sex slave by one Zeta leader, the cartel put a chip in her foot to be able to geo-locate her.

“I saw lots of people die, and die in horrible ways,” she said. “I want to talk because people have to know what is happening on the border to the girls who are disappeared, and with lots of the girls who are working in the sex trade in narco areas.”

THE QUESTION: