Sex Trafficking, Not Pimping
Thomas Bodström, he head of the Swedish parliament’s judicial committee, wants to abolish the crime of pimping, in order to force courts to impose harsher sentences. Bodström wants pimps to be punished for sex trafficking, for smuggling foreign women into Sweden for the sex trade. Some courts have recently imposed lighter sentences for pimping only – claiming there was no solid proof that the women were tricked into prostitution and were not necessarily held against their will by the traffickers. Bodström, who was Minister of Justice in the former Social Democratic government, says the present law against pimping is outdated – from the past when a pimp and the prostitute worked together – and does not reflect the present system of sex slavery. |