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USA - TRAFFICKING - LATINAS, AFRICAN
AMERICANS, & INDIGENOUS WOMEN DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED
Human
Trafficking (Photo Shutterstock)
By Teresita Chavez
Pedrosa/Hispanic National Bar Association
“Latinas, African-Americans and
indigenous women are disproportionately affected by human trafficking,” Norma
Ramos, Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)
a non-profit organization dedicated to abolishing modern day slavery, told
those attending the Hispanic National Bar Association’s 2nd Annual Human
Trafficking Conference at the
“The worse thing about the movie Taken,”
said Miami Springs Councilman Dan Espino, referring to the 2008 film starring
Liam Neeson in which his on-screen daughter is abducted in
“Everything that makes
Victim-based view of prostitution
“Prostitution is the oldest
oppression,” said Ramos, who believes that calling prostitution a profession
implies that its existence is inevitable. Panelists agreed that the incidence
of prostitution was exacerbated by poverty, but was caused by factors that
include gender-based inequalities and vulnerabilities. According to
Some women, including college
co-eds, are made to believe that prostitution is a glamorous form of earning extra cash.
Although expressly forbidding communications regarding cash in exchange for sex
on their sites, sugar daddy web-based dating services are gaining visibility
among university students. Catherine A. Mackinnon, Professor of Law at the
A person prostituted through
force, fraud or coercion, is a victim under federal law. “Victimizing her
(under the law) raises her status,” said MacKinnon, while “criminalizing him
lowers his privilege.” The law is broad enough to prohibit the non-physical
versions of force, fraud and coercion, such as mental manipulation. Minors are
considered victims even in the absence of force, fraud and coercion. Actual
physical transfer of the victim is not necessary to meet the federal law’s
definition of human trafficking.
Like with the racketeering laws that
once helped the government reach and prosecute the heads of major crime
families, the human trafficking federal laws target the enterprise. “The bodies
and lives of these women are appropriated for them to be exploited by organized
crime,” said Ramos, who distinguished these pimps from free speech groups who
in some capacity actually defend women.
“We should all be offended,” said Espino, acknowledging all the opportunities that his Cuban parents, and him as a first-generation American, have enjoyed as a result of hard work and study. “These (human) traffickers have turned the land of freedom and opportunity into one of oppression and torture.”
Protecting children from
human trafficking
“The average age when girls enter prostitution is 13—maybe 12,”
said Ramos. Making another argument for why prostituted women should be treated
with the same compassion extended to children, MacKinnon explained that the
prostituted child and adult do not represent two different peoples. “You are
talking about the same group of people at two different points in time. In
order to help one group you have to help the other,” MacKinnon added.
Ramos believes that those who would only help children should
remember that generally, “it is women who protect children.”
Gail Dines, Professor of Sociology and Women Studies at Wheetlock
College, author of the newly-released book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, and
co-founder of StopPornCulture.org argued that it is crucial that children be
shielded from the effects of pornography. “I never thought I would say this,
but Playboy and Hustler were the good old days of pornography,”
said Dines. “Free porn is the worst thing that has happened to the internet.”
Dines argued that the porn industry has taken a page out of the
tobacco playbook by making themselves available to young and impressionable
“clients” whose “template” they can shape. Shocking images of women gagging and
vomiting while mascara-tinged tears run down their face, are accompanied by
challenges to a boy’s masculinity meant to keep him watching. “Are you man
enough?” ask some websites.
“I do not believe boys go to porn as women haters, but they do
come away as such,” said Dines. “Most boys look at pornography with an erection
and don’t think of the horror behind it.”
“We support this education because combating human trafficking is
one of our top priorities,” said U.S. Prosecutor for the Southern District of
Florida Wifredo A. Ferrer, who wants the community to understand that human
trafficking is real and that “those who commit these crimes will be brought to
justice.”
A federal task force will be working with Miami-Dade schools to
develop an educational curriculum on this topic. This summer, Dines will have a
slide show available for parents and educators on her website
StopPornCulture.org. “Some younger defendants are shocked to learn that (human
trafficking) is a crime,” said Martinez.
“We have to start uprooting these things out,” said Espino. “Human
trafficking is not something that only Liam Neeson can take care of.