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Direct Link to Full 135-Page Report:
USA - COMMERCIAL SEXUAL EXPLOITATION
OF AMERICAN
INDIAN WOMEN & GIRLS -
REPORT - STATE OF MINNESOTA
December 6, 2009
By Madeleine Baran
Three decades ago,
the relatives of an eleven-year-old Native girl in
At an early age, the girl became one of hundreds, maybe thousands, of Native
American children and women forced into prostitution in
“If it was a bunch of white,
blonde hair, blue-eyed girls, believe me, there would be an end to this,” said
Vednita Carter, executive director of Breaking Free, a St. Paul-based nonprofit
serving women involved in prostitution.
In September, the Minnesota Indian Women’s
Advocates say the report’s
findings cast little doubt that the situation has already become a crisis. In a
sample of 95 Native women seeking services from the resource center, 40 percent
reported being the victims of commercial sexual exploitation.
Sixty percent of the women surveyed entered prostitution or pornography before
the age of 18. And about one-fifth had been sexually exploited before their
thirteenth birthday. When the girls become adults, the exploitation often
continues. They remain in prostitution, but the law often no longer views them
as victims, but as criminals.
The 126-page report, called Shattered Hearts, written by esearch scientist
Alexandra Pierce, focuses on women who live outside of reservations. The report
compiles statistics, identifies flaws in the legal system, draws parallels to
the historic exploitation of Native people, and makes dozens of suggestions
about how to address the problem. Pierce incorporated the
“To me, it’s an emotional issue; it’s a financial issue; it’s a justice issue;
it’s a human rights issue,” said Suzanne Koepplinger, the
Although the legal system treats prostitution and trafficking differently, the
report often uses the terms interchangeably, as many advocates believe that
prostitution can never be considered fully consensual. The prostituted woman is
the true victim of the crime, they argue.
“There’s a general acceptance that prostitution is a lifestyle choice, when
it’s actually a federal crime against women,” Koepplinger said.
The report found that Native women have been disproportionally impacted by
sexual exploitation. For example, Native American women make up about 25
percent of all women on probation in
Past treatment of Indian women
Some of the reasons for the staggering numbers are clear. Native Americans have
the state’s highest rates of homelessness, poverty, and alcoholism – what many
call the legacy of hundreds of years of colonialism. But the report also argues
that generational trauma plays a role. White settlers repeatedly raped,
tortured, and murdered Native women over hundreds of years, treating their
bodies as disposable and worthless.
In one account from the 1860s, a white rancher describes a government attack on
the Cheyenne: “I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman’s private parts
and had them for exhibition on a stick…I also heard of numerous instances in
which men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the
saddle-bows and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks.”
Other more recent practices, including the involuntary sterilization of Native
women and the Indian Adoption Project (which removed Native children from their
homes), added to the collective trauma, the report says.
“There’s been so much violence and destruction of families because of
colonization,” said Nicole Matthews, executive director of the Minnesota Indian
Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition.
In
“Girls have conversations with their mothers about their time, when the mothers
were working on the boats,” one advocate said during a round-table discussion
conducted as part of the report. “Many of the girls were conceived out of
working on the boats.”
These historical experiences leave Native women psychologically vulnerable to
exploitation, the report says. Once women enter into prostitution, they
are less likely to ask for help, as violence against women may seem
normal.
Sexual exploitation in the Native community
Advocates say that many Native communities have also normalized sexual
exploitation. Although data is limited, the fact that Native women are often
exploited in childhood suggests that Native men play a significant role in
their abuse. In many close-knit Native communities, women may have difficulty
speaking out.
“It’s a very difficult issue because it’s a very painful issue,” Koepplinger
said. “But not talking about it hasn’t helped us.”
An advocate who was interviewed anonymously as part of the report said that
when she has tried to talk about sexual violence with members of her Native
community, “Some of the elders don’t appreciate that.”
Another participants agreed, saying, “Oh, I know, I know. I was ‘that nasty
girl who talks nasty.’”
Criminalization of victims
If the girls don’t find help before they turn eighteen, the legal system takes
over, often criminalizes their abuse, and fails to effectively stop sex
trafficking, advocates say. But disagreement exists among both advocates and
law enforcement about the best intervention methods.
“Police get a hold of them first,” said Linda Miller, executive director of
Civil Society, a non-profit that provides legal and other assistance to
trafficking victims. “They’ve declared that they’re not going to look
beneath the surface.”
But St. Paul Police spokesperson Paul Schnell points to the federally funded
Gerald D. Vick Human Trafficking Task Force, a police-led effort to coordinate
services for victims of trafficking. The police department trains officers to
recognize signs of human trafficking when they approach criminal situations.
However, many women are distrustful of law enforcement, and Schnell
acknowledges that police officers frequently arrest women engaged in
prostitution.
“In the moment, a case may become a case, “ he said. “But over the course of
time and doing that investigation via prosecution or defense counsel, there are
different places where there can be interventions to address the trafficking
issues.”
Carter, of Breaking Free, said that
Nonetheless, arrests continue, and advocates say that a prostitution conviction
– or even an arrest – can prevent a woman from ever having a decent job or
housing.
“Not many women want to spend the rest of their lives saying that they engaged
in prostitution,” Miller said.
Trafficking laws in
In May 2009, the
As of late October, prosecutors have not convicted any traffickers under the
amended bill. Advocates say the lack of prosecution is not surprising. It’s a
lot easier to arrest the prostitute on the street than investigate what could
be a larger, more organized business, they say.
But sometimes, despite massive investigative efforts, trafficking cases fall
apart. Deputy Chief John Beyer, of the Duluth Police Department, said
that investigators spent hundreds of hours working on a case in 2000, involving
two Native girls being trafficked onto boats in the
Beyer said the case fell apart when the girls stopped cooperating with law
enforcement’s efforts to prosecute the case. “That was really frustrating for
all of us” he said. “We really wanted to go after those guys.”
Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner says her office has not seen any cases
involving the trafficking of Native women in recent years. However, she says
that the lack of cases does not mean that trafficking does not exist, but that
women face barriers to reporting their abuse.
“In my mind as a prosecutor, the barrier is not the language of the statutes,”
she said. “The real barrier is the lack of reports and the lack of awareness by
system’s personnel,” including health care providers and teachers.
Punishing the victims
Many advocates say that law enforcement needs to address not only the
traffickers, but also the individual men who pay for sex. Carter, of Breaking
Free, said she believes that the men should receive felony convictions as a
deterrent.
“We believe it’s about supply and demand,” she said. “And there’s so much focus
on the supply, which is the women. The demand is the men who buy them. That’s
what keeps prostitution thriving is the demand.”
Breaking Free runs a monthly program for men convicted of soliciting a
prostitute, and Carter says the program has had some success. Out of about 400
male participants, only a handful have been re-arrested. But she cautioned that
this might not reflect the true reality. Men may just work harder to avoid
detection, she said.
On the victim’s side, advocates say that women have little incentive to come
forward and share their stories. Few services exist for victims of trafficking.
The situation is often parallel to that of domestic violence victims. Without
adequate support, leaving the situation could place women at greater risk of
violence, including murder, advocates say.
Programs like Breaking Free, Women of Nations, the Minnesota Indian Women’s
“Why would we want to put a woman through that if nothing’s going to happen?”
said Matthews. “You’re kind of opening the wound without doing anything about
it.”
The Minnesota Indian Women’s
The report also recommends other measures, including: raising awareness of the
problem, increasing criminal penalties for purchasers of sexual services,
training health care workers and others to identify signs of sex trafficking,
and providing job opportunities for victims of prostitution.
Although advocates are quick to point out that sexual exploitation is not
unique to Native communities, they say that Native people need to take some
responsibility for addressing the situation. The first step, they say, is
ending the silence that exists in many close-knit Native communities.
“If enough people in the community say this is a problem, then we can get
something done,” Koepplinger said.
Advocates emphasize that Native people can also draw on specific cultural
strengths to confront the problem. For example, the American Indian Community
Housing Organization in Duluth holds traditional full-moon ceremonies every
month to help women begin to heal and recover from their experiences.
“It’s important to provide a safe space where they can feel comfortable saying
that I don’t want this to happen to my daughter,” said Sherry Sanchez-Tibbets,
the agency’s executive director.
Meanwhile, advocates say they hope that agencies will collect more data, which
could be used to secure badly needed funding.
As part of this initiative, the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault
Coalition recently began a project to interview Native victims to learn more
about their struggles, and to ask the women for input about what services would
be useful.
The agency hopes to interview 100 women by February, and intends to hold a
community feast to celebrate the project. Plans are also in the works to create
a quilt in honor of the women and to publicize the problem.
Koepplinger stresses that her agency’s report is just the first step to
identify and begin to more fully address the problem. “I’m not naive enough to
think we can do this in the next two years, but we have to start somewhere,”
she said.
In the meantime, every day Native woman are being prostituted in Minnesota. The
story of the woman who was sold into prostitution at age eleven demonstrates
the challenges of intervention.
The woman did not connect with social services until her mid-‘40s. By that
time, she was entrenched in a cycle of violence. Civil Society has provided her
with emergency help several times over the past few years, but she faces
limited options.
Right now, she is once again in treatment for alcoholism, and Miller, of Civil
Society, said she still hopes the woman can create a healthy life for herself.
But, she added, “Her story, and the other victims we see, are just the tip of
the iceberg.”
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