December 8, 2025 • 51 mins
The numbers are staggering, but the stories are even more urgent: sex trafficking thrives where demand goes unchecked and myths cloud our judgment. Today we sit down with human rights attorney Yasmin Vafa, co‑founder and executive director of Rights for Girls, to pull the curtain back on how this market really works—and why centering girls’ voices is the key to stopping it. From courtroom biases that turn victims into defendants to the hobby boards where men casually review the people they buy, we map the hidden infrastructures of exploitation with clarity and care.
Yasmin breaks down the “abuse to prison pipeline” and explains how forced criminality and self‑defense cases trap survivors—often Black girls—in adult courts. We discuss adultification bias, the blurred line between trafficking and prostitution, and language that normalizes harm. Then we go straight to the root: demand. Drawing from the report Buyers Unmasked, we examine buyer attitudes, the role of pornography and entitlement, and why credible buyer accountability programs focus on changing beliefs, not just counting arrests.
Policy is where culture meets consequence. We compare full decriminalization—removing penalties for buying, pimping, and brothels—with the survivor model adopted in places like Sweden and Maine, which decriminalizes the sale of sex while holding traffickers and buyers to account. You’ll hear how fines can fund survivor services, how major sporting events attract sex tourism, and why the “Sex Buying Isn’t A Game” campaign tackles this surge head‑on. Practical takeaways include how to support survivor‑led services, advocate for buyer accountability laws, and bring The Right Track documentary to your community.
If this conversation moved you, subscribe, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and leave a review telling us what policy change you’ll champion next.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
The subject matter of this podcast will address
difficult topics, multiple formsof violence, and identity-based
discrimination and harassment.
We acknowledge that this contentmay be difficult and have listed
specific content warnings ineach episode description to help
create a positive, safeexperience for all listeners.
SPEAKER_00 (00:20):
In this country, 31 million crimes.
31 million crimes are reportedevery year.
That is one every second.
Out of that, every 24 minutes,there is a murder.
Every five minutes, there is arape.
Every two to five minutes, thereis a sexual assault.
Every nine seconds in thiscountry, a woman is assaulted by
someone who told her that heloved her, by someone who told
(00:41):
her it was her fault, by someonewho tries to tell the rest of us
it's none of our business.
And I'm proud to stand heretoday with each of you to call
that perpetrator a liar.
SPEAKER_02 (00:56):
Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women.
I'm Maria McMullen.
Today we confront one of themost urgent human rights crises
of our time (01:03):
sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.
Every year, millions of girlsand young women are trafficked.
Statistics reveal staggeringnumbers that underscore the
scale of this injustice.
Behind these numbers are livesshattered by trauma, isolation,
and violence.
Trafficking doesn't justdevastate individuals.
(01:24):
It imposes a heavy cost onsociety, eroding communities,
fueling organized crime, andperpetuating cycles of poverty
and abuse.
I'm joined today by Yasmin Waffato explore the uncomfortable
truth about sex buyers and thedemand that drives this industry
and why stronger laws andpolicies targeting traffickers
(01:45):
and buyers are essential toaccountability.
We'll also challenge the myththat decriminalizing
prostitution solves the problem.
Spoiler alert, it doesn't.
Instead, it often leavessurvivors more vulnerable and
traffickers more empowered.
Most importantly, we'll amplifythe voices of survivors, their
stories, their resilience, andtheir leadership in shaping
(02:07):
solutions.
Because when victims arecriminalized instead of
supported, the system failstwice, by allowing exploitation
and then by punishing those whoendured it.
Learn with us as we unpack theserealities, examine what's
working and what isn't, anddiscuss how we can all be a part
of ending sex trafficking andcommercial sexual exploitation.
(02:29):
Yasmin Waffa is an award-winninghuman rights attorney and the
co-founder and executivedirector of Rights for Girls, a
national organization dedicatedto ending gender-based violence.
Her work centers on theintersections of race, gender,
and violence, with a focus onadvocating for marginalized
girls and young women.
Ms.
(02:49):
Vafa has driven key legislativereforms at the federal and state
levels, resulting in tens ofmillions of dollars for victim
services and increasedprotections for survivors.
She has testified before theUnited States Senate, state
legislators, and internationalhuman rights bodies, and
co-authored influential reportsexposing the systemic
criminalization of survivors ofsexual violence.
(03:12):
Her work and advocacy have beenfeatured in the New York Times,
The Washington Post, Los AngelesTimes, NPR, ABC News, and other
major media outlets.
In addition to her advocacywork, Yasmin serves as adjunct
faculty for the National Councilof Juvenile and Family Court
Judges, where she helps lead theNational Judicial Institute and
(03:33):
the National MultidisciplinaryInstitute on Child Sex
Trafficking.
She is also a founding co-chairof World Without Exploitation,
the nation's largestanti-trafficking coalition,
representing over 200organizations committed to
ending human trafficking andsexual exploitation.
(03:55):
Thank you for having me.
It's good to be with you.
And our topic today is about sextrafficking, in particular, sex
trafficking, sex buying, and thedangers of decriminalization.
And you are the executivedirector of Rights for Girls
with emphasis on girls.
And I'd like to understand whythe focus on girls is so
(04:16):
significantly critical, not justin the trafficking movement in
general, but from a human rightsperspective.
SPEAKER_01 (04:22):
Well, when we first started Rights for Girls more
than 15 years ago, there weren'tmany organizations, particularly
in the United States, that hadan emphasis on girls and
particularly on the issue ofgirls from a domestic human
rights lens.
We felt it was really importantto center young women and girls
(04:43):
here in the United States, theirexperiences, their lives from a
human rights perspective,because in all of the different
spaces that we were working in,whether it was youth justice,
domestic violence, humantrafficking, girls' lives were
really invisible.
When we were advocating in thejuvenile justice space, the
emphasis was really on youngboys.
(05:04):
When we were talking about humantrafficking, it was really on
foreign nationals.
When we talked about domesticviolence, of course, the focus
was on adult women.
And in all of these spaces,girls' lives and experiences
were really rendered invisiblewhen they were being very
adversely affected by all ofthese different issues.
(05:24):
And so we felt it was reallyimportant to start a movement
that really centered the voicesand experiences of these young
girls.
And we've come to know that allof these issues are generational
and that girls themselves arethe experts of their own
experiences.
At the time, there weren't manyorganizations that really
focused on young girls here inthe United States, and certainly
(05:47):
not from a human rights lens.
Now we're thrilled to see thatthere's so many other
organizations that do take thatperspective.
But for us, it was reallyimportant to take a specific
girls-focused lens to all ofthese different issues.
And now, all these years later,we see that there are
organizations that focus ongirls of color, marginalized
(06:08):
girls, and really do focus onthat perspective.
But at the time there reallyweren't many.
And so now we think it's reallyimportant.
Several of them don't reallytake that intersectional
perspective looking at thosedifferent systems.
But for us, it's always beenvery important to really lift up
girls' voices across all ofthese different issues and
(06:28):
spaces.
SPEAKER_02 (06:29):
Yeah, that makes sense to me.
I'm curious, what is the agerange of girls that experience
sex trafficking?
SPEAKER_01 (06:38):
We've worked with girls as young as nine, and
unfortunately, it can beincredibly women who are in
their 50s or older.
For us, we're typically workingwith young women in their 20s.
We've worked with teenagers aswell who've been exploited when
they've been 10, 12, 16.
(06:59):
So it really varies.
But we've worked with serviceproviders here in the
Washington, D.C.
area who've served very younggirls in 9, 10, 12.
So it really does vary.
But I think again, and I knowwe'll talk about this more, it
comes down to the demand foryoung girls.
SPEAKER_02 (07:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
And we do need to dig into thatpart of this conversation as
well.
Can you describe for us themission of Rights for Girls and
the specific work that you andyour team do through the
organization?
SPEAKER_01 (07:29):
Of course.
So our work is really centeredon protecting the dignity and
rights of young women and girlsso that every girl can live a
life and live out their fullpotential without fear of
violence or exploitation.
And we do a series of differentthings here at Rights for Girls.
We do state and federal policyadvocacy, research, training and
technical assistance, andcoalition building.
(07:52):
And a lot of our work reallyfocuses on elevating the voices
and experiences of girls andsurvivors of gender-based
violence themselves, whetherthat's through the federal space
or through the state process andthrough legislative advocacy,
testifying, and making suretheir voices are heard through
different processes, or justmaking sure that their
(08:15):
experiences are reflected in thedifferent policies that we're
advocating for, or in theresearch and fact sheets and
reports that we're putting out.
And that is really central tothe work that we do.
We also have a series ofjudicial institutes and
multidisciplinary institutesthat we hold throughout the
year, where we train judges,child welfare professionals,
(08:38):
prosecutors, law enforcement,probation officers, and others
on how to recognize and betterequip them on how to deal with
survivors of child sextrafficking and abuse and to
improve their response towardsthis population so that they're
not relying on punitive measuresand really improving the
(08:58):
outcomes for this population.
And there's a whole host ofdifferent things that we do at
Rights for Girls.
We do campaigns and awarenesscampaigns as well.
But our work is really focusedon elevating the voices of this
population.
SPEAKER_02 (09:12):
Yeah, I've been on your website and it is very
robust.
There are a lot of resources,and I've read through some of
the reports as well.
I encourage listeners to take alook at the website, and we'll
mention that again here at theend of the episode.
Now, also on that website andthroughout the work you do, you
note that there are an abundanceof myths, misconceptions, and
lies about girls and women whoare in the sex trade, who are
(09:35):
sexually trafficked, or who aresexually exploited, such as
through prostitution.
What historical and currentfacts can you share that debunks
these untruths?
SPEAKER_01 (09:45):
I mean, I think there's just a lot of stigma for
individuals who find themselvesin the sex trade, whether it's
through sex trafficking orsexual exploitation.
I think in recent years there'sbeen a lot of emphasis on not
conflating prostitution with sextrafficking.
There's a lot of emphasis onyou're conflating the two.
There's a big difference betweenthe two.
(10:06):
And yes, there, as a lawyer,there are legal differences
between prostitution and sextrafficking.
But as many survivors tell us,the line between the two,
practically speaking, is veryblurry.
And there are survivors who willtell us that whereas sex
trafficking might be the means,prostitution is the ultimate
(10:26):
end.
And that practically speaking,many adults in the sex trade
first entered the sex industrywhen they were minors.
And so legally speaking, theywere child sex trafficking
victims.
But what happens when thoseindividuals turn 18?
Does it automatically becomethis empowered career choice?
Those are really importantquestions we have to grapple
(10:48):
with.
And another importantconsideration is that the buyers
cannot meaningfully distinguishwhether the people they're
soliciting are consent or not.
And so it's not as if there'sthis market for trafficked
individuals and consentingindividuals, right?
This is all happening in thesame ecosystem.
It's important for people torealize that whereas there might
be legal distinctions, anindividual in the sex industry
(11:11):
can transcend the line betweenprostitution and sex trafficking
many times during the course ofa month, a week, and certainly
years.
And so it's important tounderstand this is all happening
in the same ecosystem and thatoftentimes the word choice and
agency are very meaninglesswhen, you know, there's only one
party who holds all thefinancial power, social power,
(11:35):
and oftentimes physical power.
So it's very important for thoseof us who work in the sexual
assault space, the anti-violencespace, to really examine what
we're talking about when wethink of consent in the
traditional sense here.
And I think we really need toapply that to the sex trade and
really do away with some ofthese traditional tropes around
(11:57):
choice and choice feminism whenit comes to this issue, because
a choice out of no other optionsisn't really agency.
And that's what we'veconsistently heard from so many
of these survivors who virtuallyall of them have histories of
childhood sexual abuse, incest,foster care involvement, extreme
levels of aces, adversechildhood experiences.
(12:20):
And when you consistently hearthe same type of narrative over
and over, it makes it verydifficult to argue that this was
something that people willinglychose.
And it was more of an act ofsurvival or a choice out of no
other options, and really ameans of survival.
And that is what we've come tosee over the years, and still
(12:42):
extreme violence experiencedduring the course of that time
in the industry.
And so a lot of the stigmathat's attached to the
individual who has beenprostituted, whether through sex
trafficking or through sexualexploitation or prostitution,
really ought to be directed tothe people who have all of the
choice and agency, right?
(13:03):
The people who are purchasingthem, the people who are
profiting off theirexploitation.
And so that is often what weseek to do is to provide that
individual with services andsupport, argue that they ought
not to be punished orcriminalized for what amounts to
their own survival, and reallyfocus on getting them support
(13:23):
and services.
SPEAKER_02 (13:25):
Yeah, I think for the longest time, until
organizations like Rights forGirls and others came along, all
of this was known asprostitution or people who were
prostitutes.
And I'd like to explore that alittle bit because the adage
that prostitution is the oldestprofession is something that is
a kind of a hanger-on from abygone era of talking about what
(13:47):
sex work actually is and how itoccurs, how it's how people are
trafficked.
So why is referring toprostitution as a profession so
demeaning?
And how does it disrespectsurvivors and conflict with
efforts to end sexualexploitation?
SPEAKER_01 (14:04):
I think even just that phrase, the oldest
profession, is such aninteresting term that is just
stuck.
And I think a lot of peopledon't even realize that term in
and of itself is a colonialconstruct.
So the oldest profession wasactually coined by Rudyard
Kipling, who is the same writerwho wrote The White Man's Burden
(14:25):
and Us and Them and the JungleBook.
So he's known as the imperialistpoet.
And so he was a big proponent ofimperialism, the West's kind of
conquering of the East.
And he actually coined this termin one of his stories called On
the City Wall, where he talksabout intergenerational
(14:46):
prostitution in India andbasically uses this as an excuse
for why the East could notmanage its own affairs.
And even this term, in and ofitself, it was coined in the
19th century, is a perfectexample of a colonial construct.
And when people use it, theyneed to be aware that they are
just perpetuating these tropesand really need to understand
(15:08):
that in and of itself it's anoffensive term.
A lot of our indigenous partnerswill tell us that there is no
word for prostitution in theirmother tongue because it did not
exist as a concept untilEuropean colonizers brought it
to these shores and to manyother nations.
It did not exist in manysocieties.
And so it's really important toeven unpack some of those terms
(15:30):
and terminologies becausethey're used to kind of
perpetrate this type of violencethat didn't exist in many
cultures and continues tosubjugate brown and black women
for the profit and pleasure ofpredominantly white men.
And it's important to realizethat because it is
disproportionately black andbrown women who are exploited in
the sex trade.
(15:51):
And it is overwhelmingly whitemen of means who are the sex
buyers.
And we go through all of thisdata in our reports, we have it
all over our fact sheets.
And most people who are very inthe weeds on the sex trade and
sex trafficking are aware ofthis data.
We're talking overwhelmingly,like 74% of sex buyers in
Pennsylvania are white men, 75%of sex buyers in Ohio are white
(16:14):
men, 73% of sex buyers inSeattle are white men.
Again, these are states thathave started disaggregating
their populations of sex buyersto prostituted people.
And so again, this isn't justwe're not pulling it out of thin
air.
This is really what we'reseeing.
And to use an example from thesame jurisdiction in Seattle,
King County, in that samejurisdiction where 73% of sex
(16:37):
buyers are white men, whitepeople are only 66% of the
population.
In that same jurisdiction, 44%of child trafficking victims are
black children.
And black people are 7% of thepopulation, just to give you a
sense of thatdisproportionality.
So we're talking about asituation that stems in this
(16:58):
country from colonialism, fromthe slave trade.
And so when we use terms likethe oldest profession to justify
or rationalize this violentindustry, we have to understand
that there's a reason why peopleare vested in sustaining this
industry.
And so I think it's reallyimportant to understand that.
(17:19):
And terms like sex work andterms that seek to normalize
prostitution as a job like anyother really do a disservice.
And we've had many survivorstell us it wasn't sex and it
wasn't work, you know, and toseek to normalize it and
sanitize it as a job like anyother really is a disservice.
And the people who did coin theterm sex work were sex industry
(17:42):
profiteers, right?
They were people with a vestedinterest in seeking to normalize
it like a job like any other.
But what other job has theoccupational hazards of you
know, rape, murder, prostitutionhas a homicide rate of 200 times
that of the normal generalpopulation, unwanted pregnancies
and forced abortions, and it'sincredibly violent.
(18:04):
We go into all these stats, wehave them on our website, we
have them in our reports, and soit's just incredibly demeaning
to survivors to pretend likeit's flipping burgers or any
other type of quote unquoteprofession.
SPEAKER_02 (18:18):
Yeah, absolutely.
I want to talk a little bitabout survivors now, because
there's this criminalizationthat goes on of women who are
forced into sex work, and weneed to dive into that.
And from everything that you'vejust told me about this
construct of providing a conceptthat prostitution is some type
of profession that's beenthrough the ages, it sounds as
(18:42):
if it was set up to createcriminals and then punish them
for having to do the things thatyou're asking them to do.
So let's just focus on girls andtalk about your 2023 publication
for the Center on Gender Justiceand Opportunity at Georgetown
Law entitled CriminalizedSurvivors Today's Abuse to
(19:05):
Prison Pipeline for Girls.
Can you help us understand whata criminalized survivor is
within a trafficking context?
SPEAKER_01 (19:14):
Sure.
So this report was actually anupdate of our first report
called the Abuse to PrisonPipeline, the girls story.
And so criminalized survivorswas looking at this phenomenon
several years out, post the MeToo movement, post Black Lives
Matter, post-pandemic, andsaying, where are we in terms of
the abuse to prison pipelinetoday?
(19:36):
And this concept of thecriminalized survivor really
arose out of this term that wecoined, the abuse to prison
pipeline, that really is a termto describe the pathways of
gender based violence that fuelthe criminalization of girls and
predominantly young women andgirls of color as a direct
result of their victimization.
And so a criminalized survivorin the trafficking context is
(19:59):
really.
A trafficking victim who iscriminalized and pushed into the
legal system, whether it's thejuvenile or adult legal system,
oftentimes more likely the adultcriminal justice system, because
they are a trafficking victim.
And so either they have beenforced to commit another crime
(20:19):
at the behest of theirtraffickers, and this is what we
call forced criminality, or theyhave committed a crime against
their trafficker as a form ofself-defense or as a means to
escape.
And so these are the two formsof criminalized survivorship
that we covered in this report.
And so we outlined several casestudies that really looked into
(20:44):
these types of scenarios in moredetail.
We have worked on several ofthese cases across the country.
And again, we're typicallytalking about survivors of
color, and we can get into whythat is.
There are several examples ofthe forced criminality.
We have seen instances all overthe country of survivors,
oftentimes young girls, minorsbeing forced to commit acts of
(21:07):
trafficking, kidnap, recruitmentof other girls or young people
at the behest of theirtraffickers, sometimes armed
robbery, sometimes white-collarcrimes.
We have many survivors right nowthat have federal convictions
because they were forced tocommit all types of crimes
because of their traffickershave figured out that they can
get their victims to commit allsorts of offenses.
(21:30):
And so it's very important forprosecutors, judges, law
enforcement to be educated onthis and understand that they
need to consider the full depthof the power and control
dynamics between a victim andtheir trafficker in order to
assess culpability in thesetypes of scenarios.
And then in the self-defensecases, I think Centoya Brown
(21:53):
Long was probably the mostwell-known of these cases.
But usually what happens is thata young survivor, again,
typically a minor, commits anact of violence in order to
protect themselves against theirtrafficker or adult sex buyer
and is charged with homicide.
So either murder or involuntarymanslaughter, typically a very
(22:15):
serious charge.
Typically, they're charged as anadult, unless there's some
extraordinary advocacy or a veryenlightened uh DA in this case.
So it's very rare.
Typically, these are childrenwho are tried as adults.
So we saw Crystal Kaiser inKenosha, Wisconsin.
She's now serving 11 years forthe death of her adult
(22:38):
trafficker.
This guy, Randy Voller, wasknown to be making videos of
multiple little black girls allover their town in Wisconsin.
And police knew and were awarethat he was doing this.
He had hundreds of videos ofother children and was never
taken into custody, never tried.
And then Crystal ended up, itwas the last straw for her.
(22:59):
She killed him, she set hishouse on fire.
And despite all of the evidencethat was presented and
protective laws in Wisconsin,she was ultimately took a plea
deal.
And she's serving 11 years in anadult facility.
I think she was just 16 or 17when the crime occurred.
Had the police done what theywere charged to do, we wouldn't
(23:21):
even be in this situation.
Hyper Lewis, Alexis Martin,there's dozens of cases just
like that, and several that wetalk in our report.
SPEAKER_02 (23:28):
I think it's important for people to
understand, too, that very oftenthese victims of sex trafficking
have no way out.
They have no choice but toremain in the situation that
they are in, whether it's due tothreats against their lives or
lives of people they love orfriends and so on, or just no
(23:52):
other options, no way to escape.
They're not only beingtrafficked, they're being
tracked on a regular basis.
And thanks to technology, thatbecomes very easy for
traffickers to monitor the everymove of the people that they are
trafficking.
So you mentioned self-defensecrimes that survivors are from
(24:13):
time to time they are punishedfor and sentenced to prison time
for.
But let's dive into that.
Why is the understanding of asurvivor self-defense against
their abuser or trafficker suchan elusive concept for the
criminal justice system?
SPEAKER_01 (24:29):
I think, you know, it's twofold.
One is anytime you have avictim, survivor who is involved
in the sex trade, there's thatstigma.
So I think they're battling thatto begin with.
And then you also have thisnotion that when we're dealing
with survivors of color andparticularly black girls, you
(24:49):
have this concept ofadultification bias.
And we talk about this in ourreport.
And this is a concept that hasbeen written about again at
length.
And our partners at theGeorgetown Law Center for Gender
Justice and Opportunity wrote anexcellent report on this called
Girlhood Interrupted.
And they looked at this conceptand did a survey, and they
(25:13):
ultimately found that when itcomes to black girls, adults
perceive them as less innocentand less in need of comfort and
nurturing than their whitepeers.
They also found that black girlsare seen to be more
knowledgeable about topics,mostly adult topics like sex,
from a much younger age,including age five to nine.
(25:36):
So what they subsequently found,and what subsequent studies have
found, is that when it comes toissues of sexual abuse, sexual
exploitation, sex trafficking,black girls are seen to be not
as traumatized by sexual abuseas their white peers, and in
fact are seen as complicit inthat abuse.
(25:57):
So when they experience thattype of exploitation and
violence, they are more likelyto be seen as offenders.
And so when it comes to thesesituations of exploitation,
self-defense type crimes,they're not perceived as
victims.
They're more likely to be seenas offenders in these types of
(26:18):
scenarios.
It's not surprising to see thatthey're not perceived as
children, right?
Because they're already seen asolder and less innocent, but
they're also not seen as crimevictims in these scenarios
because of that adultificationbias.
It's a form of intersectionalbias and it's implicit, right?
So that's why it's so importantfor all of these practitioners
(26:40):
to be trained on this form ofbias as part of the implicit
bias trainings that we all do inthese types of fields.
But it's been proven, andthere's been appellate courts
that have talked aboutadultification bias at this
point.
I would encourage listeners totake a look at this report,
Girlhood Interrupted, to read upon this.
There's been subsequent studiesthat have looked at this, but
(27:00):
it's a very real phenomenon.
And again, it's implicit bias,so it's unconscious bias that
many of us have from beingsocialized in this culture.
But this is why these particularvictims, I think girls of color,
but black girls in particular,suffer from this form of bias.
And a lot of this comes from thebiases that we have about adult
(27:23):
black women that are projectedonto young black girls, but a
very important phenomenon to befamiliar with.
SPEAKER_02 (27:30):
Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up.
Let's focus now a little bit onthe inner workings of sex
trafficking and lead into thetraffickers and the buyers of
commercial sex, who are reallythe people who are fueling this
market and some of these beliefsthat you just mentioned.
You also co-authored the 2025publication Buyers Unmasked,
(27:51):
Exposing the Men Who Buy Sex andSolutions to End Exploitation.
Can you tell us what themotivation was to concentrate on
that angle of putting thebuyer's voice on display?
SPEAKER_01 (28:02):
Sure.
So, you know, this report was abig departure from the typical
reports that we put out atRights for Girls.
We typically focus on reportsthat really tell the stories of
young women and girls, andparticularly young women and
girls who are marginalized andexperience violence.
But this report really focuseson sex buyers and buyers in
their own words, as we like tosay.
(28:24):
And it really arose out of a lotof the advocacy that we've been
doing over the last few years instates across the country that
have been seeking to fullydecriminalize the sex trade.
And for those who might notknow, these are efforts that
seek to not only decriminalizethe sale of sex, but also
decriminalize acts of pimping,sex buying, and brothel owning.
(28:46):
And we have been reallysurprised by how robust these
efforts have been and organizedand across dozens of states.
And in many cases, people saythese are just consenting
adults.
We don't want to be concernedabout what individuals are
doing, and there's nothing wrongwith sex buying.
So we have just heard the otherperspective from so many
(29:06):
survivors, both adults andchildren, all across the
country.
And we felt it was veryimportant to dispel with the
myths that these are shy guyswho can't get a date.
And really felt that it wasimportant to show that across
the country these attitudes areconsistent.
You don't have to look very farto show the attitudes of these
(29:29):
individuals.
And that if we as a society feelthat it's important not to be
racist, not to be misogynist,not to be violent and
objectifying, and all of theseattitudes that we feel in a
civilized society are not to betolerated, why do these
individuals get a pass?
Why do we think that this isokay?
(29:49):
And so we felt like it wasn'tlanding when we or even
survivors would talk tolawmakers and stakeholders about
their experiences and how theseindividuals would treat them and
how they behaved.
So we thought, why not let themspeak for themselves?
And so what we did was go onwhat are known as these review
(30:10):
boards or hobby boards, whichfor those who don't know
function as a sort of Yelp forprostitution.
There are many of thesedifferent review boards all
across the country.
We went on two of them that arefree.
There's many paid ones as well.
And these are websites.
Yeah, websites across thecountry where buyers go online
(30:31):
and they candidly talk amongstthemselves and review the
people, mostly women and girls,that they purchase for sex and
candidly talk to each otherabout this one was great.
Like, where do I find this one?
And they'll be like, where can Ifind some pot Latinas?
Or where do I find a quoteunquote black provider?
They call them providers, andthey'll say this one was
(30:52):
terrible or this one looks grossright now, and very candid.
How to evade law enforcement, orthere's a lot of stings in this
area tonight.
And you search by city, right?
So it's down to the city, andyou don't have to look very far.
We looked at just like the firstcouple pages of these cities,
and we organize it by region.
So like Northeast, SouthernUnited States, West Coast,
(31:14):
Midwest, and wanted to just showhow interchangeable uh the
attitudes were by region andwanted to let them speak for
themselves.
And these are pretty PG comparedto what really is out there.
And people can look forthemselves, but this is who they
are.
SPEAKER_02 (31:34):
Yes, I can attest to all of that.
I did read the report beforehaving this conversation with
you today, and it is PG, but yetI still had to look away on some
of it.
It was very revealing, and inmany ways, just the depravity of
humanity at times is stillshocking.
I already know the answer tothis, but what was the
(31:55):
commonality among the buyer interms of demographics?
SPEAKER_01 (31:59):
We couldn't really tell because they don't
necessarily reveal theirdemographics here, but they were
overwhelmingly men here.
We don't know in terms of raceor ethnicity or income level on
our report, but we have some ofthat data based on other
jurisdictions.
So we were able to, we do havesome demographic data from
(32:20):
jurisdictions that I sharedpreviously that we did put in
the report as compared tosurvivor or victim data from
other jurisdictions.
We have a lot of that racialdisparity and demographic data
on our website as well, ifpeople are interested in that.
But the hobby boards don'tnecessarily reveal that
(32:41):
information.
It's mostly just men talkingcandidly about their exploits
and what they're looking foronline.
SPEAKER_02 (32:48):
I've heard other reports and talked with other
experts on this topic who'vetold me it's overwhelmingly
married white middle-aged men.
SPEAKER_01 (32:58):
Yes, that's consistent with what we've heard
as well.
SPEAKER_02 (33:01):
Yeah.
It's not really all thatsurprising since maybe the
construct that we talked about alittle while ago of prostitution
being the oldest profession wasput forward by a white man, and
it kind of fuels white malesupremacy, which is rampant in
the United States of America.
Not all that surprising, not allthat revealing in that sense,
(33:25):
but the report itself is veryrevealing.
I'd like to talk a little bitabout the attitudes and the
mentality that these buyershave.
What motivates them to continueto buy sex?
SPEAKER_01 (33:40):
Yeah, so we have these quotes from the hobby
boards, and then we also have aseries of conversations with
what we call the section we callmarket disruptors, and these are
volunteers from someorganizations that seek to
discourage sex buyers at thepoint of purchase.
They're volunteers who aretrained and they seek to text
(34:02):
with a sex buyer who's thinksthey're texting with a person
that they're seeking to solicitand will discourage them and
say, have you considered thatthis person might be trafficked,
or have you considered whatyou're doing perpetuates
trafficking?
And those conversations oftendon't go well either.
Occasionally they might have asuccess, but we included several
of those conversations that areeye-opening as well.
(34:24):
And they basically often say,She's an object put there by
society for me to use and moveon with life, and things like
that.
A lot of it is just deeplyingrained misogyny in cell
culture.
And some of these folks, it'sunclear how they get to the
point where they're at.
We have worked with, and in thereport, we talk about some of
these buyer accountabilityprograms.
(34:46):
And some of our partners who runthis program have said it
varies.
Some of these men wereconditioned by their fathers or
the military and never thoughttwice about it.
Others, pornography has reallyfueled their desire to purchase
and up the annie.
And others, it's just a deeplyingrained sense of that incel
(35:07):
culture.
Whereas others might neverchange, many can and have gone
through some of these programsand have, and we quote one of
those buyers who says, Thisprogram saved my marriage and
it's made me a better person.
And I think it's important torealize some of these folks can
be reached.
And this is not only toxic forthe community and for obviously
(35:28):
the women that they're harming,but for themselves and for their
families.
And so it's important to realizemany of these men can be reached
and changed, while othersprobably will never change.
But it is, it's that maleentitlement.
I think it's that maleentitlement that is really at
the root of this, and I thinkvery important to understand and
(35:48):
to tackle.
And one of the warnings that weput out in this report is we're
at a cultural inflection point.
And I think we really need tounderstand that absent greater
interventions and us payingattention to what's happening
right now, the manosphere andthis kind of burgeoning men's
rights movement, we really needto understand that things could
(36:11):
get a lot worse.
And especially with the economytipping downwards, people get
desperate.
And I think that women and girlswho are vulnerable could really
be on the receiving end of somuch of this male violence and
entitlement.
SPEAKER_02 (36:26):
Yeah, I agree with everything that you said.
And I have so many questionsabout so many different things.
And one of them being has buyersunmasked and some of the results
and outcomes from it been putforward to legislators?
And what has their response beento that?
SPEAKER_01 (36:45):
Yes.
So we actually went to theNational Conference of State
Legislators this past summer.
It was like their 50thanniversary, and we brought the
report and it flew off theshelves.
I will say state legislatorsloved it.
And it flew off the shelves.
We ran out of copies.
Folks were very interested init.
We've had great responses fromstate legislators.
(37:07):
We have introduced numerousbills this past year and will in
the upcoming legislative sessionas well, many of which deal with
buyer accountability.
This past legislative session,we passed laws in New Hampshire,
in California, and had billsintroduced in other states as
well that would introduce finesfor sex buyers that would go
(37:30):
into survivor services.
Some of them would alsointroduce a buyer accountability
course as well.
So I think there's a lot ofinterest right now in increasing
buyer accountability.
And given that federal dollarsare scarce and state budgets are
uncertain, there is more of anopenness to finding sex buyers
(37:51):
and putting those resources intovictim services.
And then hopefully introducingsome sort of buyer
accountability.
And we outline like the elementsof what type of buyer
accountability course that wouldbe, not your typical John school
that we found doesn't reallyhave very good outcomes.
You can't really measure it byrecidivism because buyers
typically don't get arrested,much less arrested twice.
(38:14):
So you have to really measurethem by changes in attitude or
cultural outcomes.
We outlined elements of what oneof those types of programs
should be.
But yeah, we've had a lot ofinterest.
And so we're continuing to buildon that.
SPEAKER_02 (38:28):
Yeah, I think that's great.
And one of the terms you used acouple of minutes ago was the
cultural inflection point.
And I think we can't have thatinflection point or continue to
have it if we don't continue tohave these conversations and put
this information from survivorsand what their experience is
really like out in the publicforum for everyone.
And that includes buyers, thatincludes legislators, and many
(38:51):
others who can help to turn thetide on the situation.
So keeping on policy andlegislation for a minute, one of
the policies that now we brieflydiscussed this, but we're going
to dive in a little bit more.
One of the policies that seemsto have an adverse or negative
consequence to combatingtrafficking and commercial sex
exploitation is fulldecriminalization.
(39:13):
Could you please describe whatthat means in a trafficking
framework and how it favors thetrafficker and buyer and why it
is so detrimental to victims andsurvivors?
SPEAKER_01 (39:26):
Sure.
This is a concept that's morecommonly known as
decriminalizing sex work.
And so in progressive circles,we hear this and it sounds
great, right?
Because we hear it and we thinkthis protects the quote-unquote
sex worker.
It decriminalizes prostitutionfor the victim.
And many people instinctivelysupport it.
(39:47):
But what many people don'trealize is that decriminalizing
sex work or fulldecriminalization does a lot
more than that.
Not only does it decriminalizethe act of selling sex, but it
also decriminalizes Acts ofpimping, sex buying, and
brothels.
So it's a full decriminalizationmodel.
And the problem with that isthat the combination of those
(40:10):
forces actually increases sextrafficking and expands the
entire commercial sex market.
People don't really realizethis, and it's actually been
introduced in a number of statesacross the country.
Since 2019, we've worked indozens of states trying to
defeat these measures.
People often think like there'sno way that legislators would
(40:30):
try to decriminalize pimping.
We defeated a bill in Illinoisthis session, in New York this
session, in Vermont thissession, in Massachusetts.
I mean, they are absolutelyintroducing these bills in
multiple states.
We had a ballot initiative inOregon a couple years ago,
bankrolled by a self-professedsex buyer, Aaron Boonshoff,
multimillionaire.
(40:51):
It's happening all across thecountry where people are trying
to decriminalize sex work, whichmeans legalize or decriminalize
the entire industry.
So it's very problematic in manyways.
And the reason why it is becauseirrespective of how you feel
about, again, sex buying, wealready have a sex trafficking
problem in every communitybecause the demand for
(41:13):
commercial sex already outpacesthe supply.
So what that means is that eventhough it's illegal to buy sex
in virtually every state in thiscountry, except for a handful of
counties in Nevada, there arealready enough men who are
content to break the law to buysex, that there's already not
enough willing adultparticipants to provide that
(41:36):
quote unquote service, that thedemand already outpaces the
supply.
So traffickers already have totraffic, manipulate, lure
victims to meet the demand thatit already exists.
Irrespective of how you feelabout purchasing sex, you can't
responsibly decriminalize itbecause if you did, more men
(41:58):
would enter the market as newclients, not just from that
state, but through sex tourism.
That's what we see in Amsterdam.
It's what we see in Nevada.
And so who would then berequired to meet that new surge
in demand?
It's not as if whendecriminalization happens, a ton
of women line up and say, I'mready to enter the sex industry
(42:18):
as a sex worker.
SPEAKER_02 (42:19):
Yeah, because they were avoiding it because they
were afraid they would beimprisoned for it.
Because it was illegal, right?
SPEAKER_01 (42:23):
It's not legality that drives women into it.
It's childhood abuse, structuraloppression, right?
It's poverty.
It's trafficking victims will berequired, right, to meet that
sudden surge in demand.
And so that's why we cannotdecriminalize patronizing or sex
buying.
And then, of course, it'sterrible to repeal pimping off
(42:46):
the books.
Those are lesser penalties fortrafficking.
It makes it much more difficultto prosecute.
And we have examples of thisfrom all over the world.
And we talk about these casestudies in our buyer's report.
And people can look morecarefully at those examples.
We use case studies for why fulldecriminalization is a failure.
Rhode Island is an example of astate that tried it and reverted
(43:07):
their laws back.
A lot of people don't know.
We have a homegrown example ofit.
All this to say it's nothyperbole, it's happening every
session, and there's groups andsurvivors who are working to
defeat it.
But there is a better approach,and it's called the survivor
model.
It decriminalizes and offersservices to people in
prostitution.
(43:27):
So those who are selling sex areseen as people who are acting as
a means of survival.
It would decriminalize only theact of selling sex, offer those
individuals services should theychoose, but maintain the
prohibitions against pimping,purchasing, and brothels in
order to keep the industry incheck.
(43:48):
And so it's a partial approach.
And this is one that's shown toreally work given the different
approaches globally.
It's the leading global policyapproach to reforming the sex
trade.
SPEAKER_02 (44:00):
Is that the policy in the state of Maine?
SPEAKER_01 (44:03):
Yes.
And Maine was the first US statethat basically experimented with
this approach.
They passed it, I think, in2023, and they're still working
on implementation.
They could do a little bitbetter with services, that's for
sure, because Maine doesn't havethe most robust services.
But Maine was the first US stateto decriminalize just
prostituted people, but maintainthe prohibitions against
(44:26):
pimping, buying, and brothels.
SPEAKER_02 (44:29):
And it is a model that started in Scandinavia,
correct?
SPEAKER_01 (44:33):
Correct, correct.
And for those like us who dojustice reform, we look to
Scandinavia as a model for ourjustice reform policies, our
prison policies.
And so it's no surprise thatthis is a model that was really
developed there.
SPEAKER_02 (44:48):
Aaron Powell Yeah, there's some references to those
models on your website as well,if people are unfamiliar with
the concepts, but these havebeen tested in Sweden and other
places and have proven to havepositive outcomes.
And basically, Sweden declaresthat they do not have a sex
trade culture any longer becauseof it.
SPEAKER_01 (45:09):
Right.
Sweden, Norway, Iceland, thesecountries consistently rank
highest for gender equality,Canada, Ireland, Northern
Ireland.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02 (45:18):
It was more or less abolitionist movements.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
So now Rights for Girls also haslaunched a sex buying isn't a
game public awareness campaign.
And this also touches a littlebit on what you mentioned about
sex tourism, because I want toexplore that as well.
Now the billboards specificallyfor this campaign are so
(45:39):
powerful and attention grabbingbecause a sports theme is the
backdrop, and that doesdefinitely get attention.
So what motivated you to spreadawareness about sex buying
through a genre like sports andhow does that intersect with sex
tourism?
SPEAKER_01 (45:55):
So we decided to launch this campaign in
conjunction with some of themajor sports events that were
happening.
And we launched first with theMarch Madness games because we
really wanted to shed light onthe fact that when it comes to
major events and of coursesporting events, but it could be
(46:15):
any type of major event thatdraws thousands of out-of-town
visitors and predominantly mento any host city, traffickers
will seek to capitalize off thepotential for increased demand.
And so we wanted to raiseawareness around the fact that
just as with the increases inride shares and hotel bookings
(46:36):
and all the events andactivities and festivities,
there can also be this darkunderbelly of sexual
exploitation that takes placewith all of the celebrations.
And we did this billboardcampaign with March Madness to
begin with in eight cities thatwere hosting the games with
basketball-themed messages onthe billboards.
(46:57):
So for March Madness, I think itwas like it's madness to think
sex buying is just a game, orit's madness to think buying sex
is a victimless crime.
And once people saw thebillboards, they could come to
our website and then they wouldsee a series of statistics and
more information, or it'smadness to think buying sex
won't land you a penalty, andthen they would see how many
(47:18):
states that this legislativesessions had made sex buying a
felony, for example, andunderstanding like the different
things they could lose theirlicense, they could lose like
custody rights and childvisitation and all of these
different facts about therealities of buying sex and the
sex trade.
And we felt it was reallyimportant to just understand the
connection between these issuesand for the media to shed light
(47:41):
on the role of sex buyers infueling exploitation.
Because again, when we talkabout sex trafficking, we always
picture the victim, we alwayspicture traffickers, but we fail
to really understand that thirdpart of the equation when every
dollar that's generated in thismulti-billion dollar industry is
fueled by the sex buyer.
(48:02):
And so we felt it was reallyimportant to shine a light on
the buyer and understand theirrole in perpetuating sex tourism
and trafficking.
SPEAKER_02 (48:12):
Yeah.
It's brilliant, really.
And I recently, within the pastseveral years, interviewed Rita
Smith, who formerly worked withthe NFL, and we talked about
these things like the SuperBowl.
And it's the same scenario aswhat you mentioned with March
Madness, the World Series, whichwe just had here in the United
States just a week or two ago.
(48:34):
That's another example of wheresex trafficking and sex buyers
travel specifically to thesegames and seek out the purchase
of sex.
Understanding all of this, howcan people get involved, get
educated, and take action?
SPEAKER_01 (48:50):
Folks can definitely follow us online.
Our website isrightsforgirls.org, follow us on
social media, on Instagram, onFacebook, on X, all of our
social media is up to date.
There they can take action ondifferent advocacy issues, make
sure that they're attending anyof our events.
We do events all over thecountry.
(49:10):
We'll definitely have things forhuman trafficking month in
January, and we are slated tohave events all over the country
coming up in California,Illinois, probably Texas soon.
Definitely stay tuned for that.
And we'll be poised to beworking on legislative
initiatives all over the countryas well.
So definitely stay tuned.
SPEAKER_02 (49:29):
Excellent.
And just to quickly, Rights forGirls was recently featured in a
documentary film entitled TheRight Track, a project
spearheaded by the JensenProject that highlights the
realities of experiencing andliving the life of a trafficking
victim or survivor.
Do you have any details abouthow our listeners can access and
(49:50):
watch the film?
SPEAKER_01 (49:52):
They can go to the righttrackfilm.com.
Hopefully they will be able tosee any upcoming screenings.
We will hopefully be doing ascreening in Chicago in January,
I believe.
And I think there'll be someother screenings coming up.
We hope to get it on a streamingservice, I know.
But it's an excellent film.
If you have the opportunity tosee it, we definitely recommend
(50:14):
it.
I know we'll be hosting ascreening in the spring in
Washington, D.C.
at some point, but definitelystay tuned.
I know we'll be announcing onRights for Girls social media
when we'll be do hostingscreenings.
And I know the Jensen projectwill be as well.
But hopefully we can get it on astreaming service.
It's an excellent documentary,really moving.
(50:34):
We were honored to be a part ofit from the perspective of so
many sex trade survivors.
And it's just, it's verycompelling, I think.
If you have a chance to see it,don't miss it.
SPEAKER_02 (50:44):
I also recommend the film and learning more about
this topic.
Yasmin, thank you so much fortalking with me today and for
the work you're doing.
Thank you so much for having me.
It was my pleasure.
Thanks so much for listening.
Until next time, stay safe.
The 21st Annual Conference onCrimes Against Women will be
held May 18th through the 21st,2026, in Dallas, Texas.
(51:08):
Learn more at conferencecaw.organd be the first to know about
all conference details, as wellas the latest on the Institute
for Coordinated CommunityResponse, Annual Conference
Summit, Beyond the Bounds, andthe National Training Center on
Crimes Against Women.
When you follow us on socialmedia at NationalCCAW.
The subject matter of this podcast will address
difficult topics, multiple formsof violence, and identity-based
discrimination and harassment.
We acknowledge that this contentmay be difficult and have listed
specific content warnings ineach episode description to help
create a positive, safeexperience for all listeners.
SPEAKER_00 (00:20):
In this country, 31 million crimes.
31 million crimes are reportedevery year.
That is one every second.
Out of that, every 24 minutes,there is a murder.
Every five minutes, there is arape.
Every two to five minutes, thereis a sexual assault.
Every nine seconds in thiscountry, a woman is assaulted by
someone who told her that heloved her, by someone who told
(00:41):
her it was her fault, by someonewho tries to tell the rest of us
it's none of our business.
And I'm proud to stand heretoday with each of you to call
that perpetrator a liar.
SPEAKER_02 (00:56):
Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women.
I'm Maria McMullen.
Today we confront one of themost urgent human rights crises
of our time (01:03):
sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.
Every year, millions of girlsand young women are trafficked.
Statistics reveal staggeringnumbers that underscore the
scale of this injustice.
Behind these numbers are livesshattered by trauma, isolation,
and violence.
Trafficking doesn't justdevastate individuals.
(01:24):
It imposes a heavy cost onsociety, eroding communities,
fueling organized crime, andperpetuating cycles of poverty
and abuse.
I'm joined today by Yasmin Waffato explore the uncomfortable
truth about sex buyers and thedemand that drives this industry
and why stronger laws andpolicies targeting traffickers
(01:45):
and buyers are essential toaccountability.
We'll also challenge the myththat decriminalizing
prostitution solves the problem.
Spoiler alert, it doesn't.
Instead, it often leavessurvivors more vulnerable and
traffickers more empowered.
Most importantly, we'll amplifythe voices of survivors, their
stories, their resilience, andtheir leadership in shaping
(02:07):
solutions.
Because when victims arecriminalized instead of
supported, the system failstwice, by allowing exploitation
and then by punishing those whoendured it.
Learn with us as we unpack theserealities, examine what's
working and what isn't, anddiscuss how we can all be a part
of ending sex trafficking andcommercial sexual exploitation.
(02:29):
Yasmin Waffa is an award-winninghuman rights attorney and the
co-founder and executivedirector of Rights for Girls, a
national organization dedicatedto ending gender-based violence.
Her work centers on theintersections of race, gender,
and violence, with a focus onadvocating for marginalized
girls and young women.
Ms.
(02:49):
Vafa has driven key legislativereforms at the federal and state
levels, resulting in tens ofmillions of dollars for victim
services and increasedprotections for survivors.
She has testified before theUnited States Senate, state
legislators, and internationalhuman rights bodies, and
co-authored influential reportsexposing the systemic
criminalization of survivors ofsexual violence.
(03:12):
Her work and advocacy have beenfeatured in the New York Times,
The Washington Post, Los AngelesTimes, NPR, ABC News, and other
major media outlets.
In addition to her advocacywork, Yasmin serves as adjunct
faculty for the National Councilof Juvenile and Family Court
Judges, where she helps lead theNational Judicial Institute and
(03:33):
the National MultidisciplinaryInstitute on Child Sex
Trafficking.
She is also a founding co-chairof World Without Exploitation,
the nation's largestanti-trafficking coalition,
representing over 200organizations committed to
ending human trafficking andsexual exploitation.
(03:55):
Thank you for having me.
It's good to be with you.
And our topic today is about sextrafficking, in particular, sex
trafficking, sex buying, and thedangers of decriminalization.
And you are the executivedirector of Rights for Girls
with emphasis on girls.
And I'd like to understand whythe focus on girls is so
(04:16):
significantly critical, not justin the trafficking movement in
general, but from a human rightsperspective.
SPEAKER_01 (04:22):
Well, when we first started Rights for Girls more
than 15 years ago, there weren'tmany organizations, particularly
in the United States, that hadan emphasis on girls and
particularly on the issue ofgirls from a domestic human
rights lens.
We felt it was really importantto center young women and girls
(04:43):
here in the United States, theirexperiences, their lives from a
human rights perspective,because in all of the different
spaces that we were working in,whether it was youth justice,
domestic violence, humantrafficking, girls' lives were
really invisible.
When we were advocating in thejuvenile justice space, the
emphasis was really on youngboys.
(05:04):
When we were talking about humantrafficking, it was really on
foreign nationals.
When we talked about domesticviolence, of course, the focus
was on adult women.
And in all of these spaces,girls' lives and experiences
were really rendered invisiblewhen they were being very
adversely affected by all ofthese different issues.
(05:24):
And so we felt it was reallyimportant to start a movement
that really centered the voicesand experiences of these young
girls.
And we've come to know that allof these issues are generational
and that girls themselves arethe experts of their own
experiences.
At the time, there weren't manyorganizations that really
focused on young girls here inthe United States, and certainly
(05:47):
not from a human rights lens.
Now we're thrilled to see thatthere's so many other
organizations that do take thatperspective.
But for us, it was reallyimportant to take a specific
girls-focused lens to all ofthese different issues.
And now, all these years later,we see that there are
organizations that focus ongirls of color, marginalized
(06:08):
girls, and really do focus onthat perspective.
But at the time there reallyweren't many.
And so now we think it's reallyimportant.
Several of them don't reallytake that intersectional
perspective looking at thosedifferent systems.
But for us, it's always beenvery important to really lift up
girls' voices across all ofthese different issues and
(06:28):
spaces.
SPEAKER_02 (06:29):
Yeah, that makes sense to me.
I'm curious, what is the agerange of girls that experience
sex trafficking?
SPEAKER_01 (06:38):
We've worked with girls as young as nine, and
unfortunately, it can beincredibly women who are in
their 50s or older.
For us, we're typically workingwith young women in their 20s.
We've worked with teenagers aswell who've been exploited when
they've been 10, 12, 16.
(06:59):
So it really varies.
But we've worked with serviceproviders here in the
Washington, D.C.
area who've served very younggirls in 9, 10, 12.
So it really does vary.
But I think again, and I knowwe'll talk about this more, it
comes down to the demand foryoung girls.
SPEAKER_02 (07:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
And we do need to dig into thatpart of this conversation as
well.
Can you describe for us themission of Rights for Girls and
the specific work that you andyour team do through the
organization?
SPEAKER_01 (07:29):
Of course.
So our work is really centeredon protecting the dignity and
rights of young women and girlsso that every girl can live a
life and live out their fullpotential without fear of
violence or exploitation.
And we do a series of differentthings here at Rights for Girls.
We do state and federal policyadvocacy, research, training and
technical assistance, andcoalition building.
(07:52):
And a lot of our work reallyfocuses on elevating the voices
and experiences of girls andsurvivors of gender-based
violence themselves, whetherthat's through the federal space
or through the state process andthrough legislative advocacy,
testifying, and making suretheir voices are heard through
different processes, or justmaking sure that their
(08:15):
experiences are reflected in thedifferent policies that we're
advocating for, or in theresearch and fact sheets and
reports that we're putting out.
And that is really central tothe work that we do.
We also have a series ofjudicial institutes and
multidisciplinary institutesthat we hold throughout the
year, where we train judges,child welfare professionals,
(08:38):
prosecutors, law enforcement,probation officers, and others
on how to recognize and betterequip them on how to deal with
survivors of child sextrafficking and abuse and to
improve their response towardsthis population so that they're
not relying on punitive measuresand really improving the
(08:58):
outcomes for this population.
And there's a whole host ofdifferent things that we do at
Rights for Girls.
We do campaigns and awarenesscampaigns as well.
But our work is really focusedon elevating the voices of this
population.
SPEAKER_02 (09:12):
Yeah, I've been on your website and it is very
robust.
There are a lot of resources,and I've read through some of
the reports as well.
I encourage listeners to take alook at the website, and we'll
mention that again here at theend of the episode.
Now, also on that website andthroughout the work you do, you
note that there are an abundanceof myths, misconceptions, and
lies about girls and women whoare in the sex trade, who are
(09:35):
sexually trafficked, or who aresexually exploited, such as
through prostitution.
What historical and currentfacts can you share that debunks
these untruths?
SPEAKER_01 (09:45):
I mean, I think there's just a lot of stigma for
individuals who find themselvesin the sex trade, whether it's
through sex trafficking orsexual exploitation.
I think in recent years there'sbeen a lot of emphasis on not
conflating prostitution with sextrafficking.
There's a lot of emphasis onyou're conflating the two.
There's a big difference betweenthe two.
(10:06):
And yes, there, as a lawyer,there are legal differences
between prostitution and sextrafficking.
But as many survivors tell us,the line between the two,
practically speaking, is veryblurry.
And there are survivors who willtell us that whereas sex
trafficking might be the means,prostitution is the ultimate
(10:26):
end.
And that practically speaking,many adults in the sex trade
first entered the sex industrywhen they were minors.
And so legally speaking, theywere child sex trafficking
victims.
But what happens when thoseindividuals turn 18?
Does it automatically becomethis empowered career choice?
Those are really importantquestions we have to grapple
(10:48):
with.
And another importantconsideration is that the buyers
cannot meaningfully distinguishwhether the people they're
soliciting are consent or not.
And so it's not as if there'sthis market for trafficked
individuals and consentingindividuals, right?
This is all happening in thesame ecosystem.
It's important for people torealize that whereas there might
be legal distinctions, anindividual in the sex industry
(11:11):
can transcend the line betweenprostitution and sex trafficking
many times during the course ofa month, a week, and certainly
years.
And so it's important tounderstand this is all happening
in the same ecosystem and thatoftentimes the word choice and
agency are very meaninglesswhen, you know, there's only one
party who holds all thefinancial power, social power,
(11:35):
and oftentimes physical power.
So it's very important for thoseof us who work in the sexual
assault space, the anti-violencespace, to really examine what
we're talking about when wethink of consent in the
traditional sense here.
And I think we really need toapply that to the sex trade and
really do away with some ofthese traditional tropes around
(11:57):
choice and choice feminism whenit comes to this issue, because
a choice out of no other optionsisn't really agency.
And that's what we'veconsistently heard from so many
of these survivors who virtuallyall of them have histories of
childhood sexual abuse, incest,foster care involvement, extreme
levels of aces, adversechildhood experiences.
(12:20):
And when you consistently hearthe same type of narrative over
and over, it makes it verydifficult to argue that this was
something that people willinglychose.
And it was more of an act ofsurvival or a choice out of no
other options, and really ameans of survival.
And that is what we've come tosee over the years, and still
(12:42):
extreme violence experiencedduring the course of that time
in the industry.
And so a lot of the stigmathat's attached to the
individual who has beenprostituted, whether through sex
trafficking or through sexualexploitation or prostitution,
really ought to be directed tothe people who have all of the
choice and agency, right?
(13:03):
The people who are purchasingthem, the people who are
profiting off theirexploitation.
And so that is often what weseek to do is to provide that
individual with services andsupport, argue that they ought
not to be punished orcriminalized for what amounts to
their own survival, and reallyfocus on getting them support
(13:23):
and services.
SPEAKER_02 (13:25):
Yeah, I think for the longest time, until
organizations like Rights forGirls and others came along, all
of this was known asprostitution or people who were
prostitutes.
And I'd like to explore that alittle bit because the adage
that prostitution is the oldestprofession is something that is
a kind of a hanger-on from abygone era of talking about what
(13:47):
sex work actually is and how itoccurs, how it's how people are
trafficked.
So why is referring toprostitution as a profession so
demeaning?
And how does it disrespectsurvivors and conflict with
efforts to end sexualexploitation?
SPEAKER_01 (14:04):
I think even just that phrase, the oldest
profession, is such aninteresting term that is just
stuck.
And I think a lot of peopledon't even realize that term in
and of itself is a colonialconstruct.
So the oldest profession wasactually coined by Rudyard
Kipling, who is the same writerwho wrote The White Man's Burden
(14:25):
and Us and Them and the JungleBook.
So he's known as the imperialistpoet.
And so he was a big proponent ofimperialism, the West's kind of
conquering of the East.
And he actually coined this termin one of his stories called On
the City Wall, where he talksabout intergenerational
(14:46):
prostitution in India andbasically uses this as an excuse
for why the East could notmanage its own affairs.
And even this term, in and ofitself, it was coined in the
19th century, is a perfectexample of a colonial construct.
And when people use it, theyneed to be aware that they are
just perpetuating these tropesand really need to understand
(15:08):
that in and of itself it's anoffensive term.
A lot of our indigenous partnerswill tell us that there is no
word for prostitution in theirmother tongue because it did not
exist as a concept untilEuropean colonizers brought it
to these shores and to manyother nations.
It did not exist in manysocieties.
And so it's really important toeven unpack some of those terms
(15:30):
and terminologies becausethey're used to kind of
perpetrate this type of violencethat didn't exist in many
cultures and continues tosubjugate brown and black women
for the profit and pleasure ofpredominantly white men.
And it's important to realizethat because it is
disproportionately black andbrown women who are exploited in
the sex trade.
(15:51):
And it is overwhelmingly whitemen of means who are the sex
buyers.
And we go through all of thisdata in our reports, we have it
all over our fact sheets.
And most people who are very inthe weeds on the sex trade and
sex trafficking are aware ofthis data.
We're talking overwhelmingly,like 74% of sex buyers in
Pennsylvania are white men, 75%of sex buyers in Ohio are white
(16:14):
men, 73% of sex buyers inSeattle are white men.
Again, these are states thathave started disaggregating
their populations of sex buyersto prostituted people.
And so again, this isn't justwe're not pulling it out of thin
air.
This is really what we'reseeing.
And to use an example from thesame jurisdiction in Seattle,
King County, in that samejurisdiction where 73% of sex
(16:37):
buyers are white men, whitepeople are only 66% of the
population.
In that same jurisdiction, 44%of child trafficking victims are
black children.
And black people are 7% of thepopulation, just to give you a
sense of thatdisproportionality.
So we're talking about asituation that stems in this
(16:58):
country from colonialism, fromthe slave trade.
And so when we use terms likethe oldest profession to justify
or rationalize this violentindustry, we have to understand
that there's a reason why peopleare vested in sustaining this
industry.
And so I think it's reallyimportant to understand that.
(17:19):
And terms like sex work andterms that seek to normalize
prostitution as a job like anyother really do a disservice.
And we've had many survivorstell us it wasn't sex and it
wasn't work, you know, and toseek to normalize it and
sanitize it as a job like anyother really is a disservice.
And the people who did coin theterm sex work were sex industry
(17:42):
profiteers, right?
They were people with a vestedinterest in seeking to normalize
it like a job like any other.
But what other job has theoccupational hazards of you
know, rape, murder, prostitutionhas a homicide rate of 200 times
that of the normal generalpopulation, unwanted pregnancies
and forced abortions, and it'sincredibly violent.
(18:04):
We go into all these stats, wehave them on our website, we
have them in our reports, and soit's just incredibly demeaning
to survivors to pretend likeit's flipping burgers or any
other type of quote unquoteprofession.
SPEAKER_02 (18:18):
Yeah, absolutely.
I want to talk a little bitabout survivors now, because
there's this criminalizationthat goes on of women who are
forced into sex work, and weneed to dive into that.
And from everything that you'vejust told me about this
construct of providing a conceptthat prostitution is some type
of profession that's beenthrough the ages, it sounds as
(18:42):
if it was set up to createcriminals and then punish them
for having to do the things thatyou're asking them to do.
So let's just focus on girls andtalk about your 2023 publication
for the Center on Gender Justiceand Opportunity at Georgetown
Law entitled CriminalizedSurvivors Today's Abuse to
(19:05):
Prison Pipeline for Girls.
Can you help us understand whata criminalized survivor is
within a trafficking context?
SPEAKER_01 (19:14):
Sure.
So this report was actually anupdate of our first report
called the Abuse to PrisonPipeline, the girls story.
And so criminalized survivorswas looking at this phenomenon
several years out, post the MeToo movement, post Black Lives
Matter, post-pandemic, andsaying, where are we in terms of
the abuse to prison pipelinetoday?
(19:36):
And this concept of thecriminalized survivor really
arose out of this term that wecoined, the abuse to prison
pipeline, that really is a termto describe the pathways of
gender based violence that fuelthe criminalization of girls and
predominantly young women andgirls of color as a direct
result of their victimization.
And so a criminalized survivorin the trafficking context is
(19:59):
really.
A trafficking victim who iscriminalized and pushed into the
legal system, whether it's thejuvenile or adult legal system,
oftentimes more likely the adultcriminal justice system, because
they are a trafficking victim.
And so either they have beenforced to commit another crime
(20:19):
at the behest of theirtraffickers, and this is what we
call forced criminality, or theyhave committed a crime against
their trafficker as a form ofself-defense or as a means to
escape.
And so these are the two formsof criminalized survivorship
that we covered in this report.
And so we outlined several casestudies that really looked into
(20:44):
these types of scenarios in moredetail.
We have worked on several ofthese cases across the country.
And again, we're typicallytalking about survivors of
color, and we can get into whythat is.
There are several examples ofthe forced criminality.
We have seen instances all overthe country of survivors,
oftentimes young girls, minorsbeing forced to commit acts of
(21:07):
trafficking, kidnap, recruitmentof other girls or young people
at the behest of theirtraffickers, sometimes armed
robbery, sometimes white-collarcrimes.
We have many survivors right nowthat have federal convictions
because they were forced tocommit all types of crimes
because of their traffickershave figured out that they can
get their victims to commit allsorts of offenses.
(21:30):
And so it's very important forprosecutors, judges, law
enforcement to be educated onthis and understand that they
need to consider the full depthof the power and control
dynamics between a victim andtheir trafficker in order to
assess culpability in thesetypes of scenarios.
And then in the self-defensecases, I think Centoya Brown
(21:53):
Long was probably the mostwell-known of these cases.
But usually what happens is thata young survivor, again,
typically a minor, commits anact of violence in order to
protect themselves against theirtrafficker or adult sex buyer
and is charged with homicide.
So either murder or involuntarymanslaughter, typically a very
(22:15):
serious charge.
Typically, they're charged as anadult, unless there's some
extraordinary advocacy or a veryenlightened uh DA in this case.
So it's very rare.
Typically, these are childrenwho are tried as adults.
So we saw Crystal Kaiser inKenosha, Wisconsin.
She's now serving 11 years forthe death of her adult
(22:38):
trafficker.
This guy, Randy Voller, wasknown to be making videos of
multiple little black girls allover their town in Wisconsin.
And police knew and were awarethat he was doing this.
He had hundreds of videos ofother children and was never
taken into custody, never tried.
And then Crystal ended up, itwas the last straw for her.
(22:59):
She killed him, she set hishouse on fire.
And despite all of the evidencethat was presented and
protective laws in Wisconsin,she was ultimately took a plea
deal.
And she's serving 11 years in anadult facility.
I think she was just 16 or 17when the crime occurred.
Had the police done what theywere charged to do, we wouldn't
(23:21):
even be in this situation.
Hyper Lewis, Alexis Martin,there's dozens of cases just
like that, and several that wetalk in our report.
SPEAKER_02 (23:28):
I think it's important for people to
understand, too, that very oftenthese victims of sex trafficking
have no way out.
They have no choice but toremain in the situation that
they are in, whether it's due tothreats against their lives or
lives of people they love orfriends and so on, or just no
(23:52):
other options, no way to escape.
They're not only beingtrafficked, they're being
tracked on a regular basis.
And thanks to technology, thatbecomes very easy for
traffickers to monitor the everymove of the people that they are
trafficking.
So you mentioned self-defensecrimes that survivors are from
(24:13):
time to time they are punishedfor and sentenced to prison time
for.
But let's dive into that.
Why is the understanding of asurvivor self-defense against
their abuser or trafficker suchan elusive concept for the
criminal justice system?
SPEAKER_01 (24:29):
I think, you know, it's twofold.
One is anytime you have avictim, survivor who is involved
in the sex trade, there's thatstigma.
So I think they're battling thatto begin with.
And then you also have thisnotion that when we're dealing
with survivors of color andparticularly black girls, you
(24:49):
have this concept ofadultification bias.
And we talk about this in ourreport.
And this is a concept that hasbeen written about again at
length.
And our partners at theGeorgetown Law Center for Gender
Justice and Opportunity wrote anexcellent report on this called
Girlhood Interrupted.
And they looked at this conceptand did a survey, and they
(25:13):
ultimately found that when itcomes to black girls, adults
perceive them as less innocentand less in need of comfort and
nurturing than their whitepeers.
They also found that black girlsare seen to be more
knowledgeable about topics,mostly adult topics like sex,
from a much younger age,including age five to nine.
(25:36):
So what they subsequently found,and what subsequent studies have
found, is that when it comes toissues of sexual abuse, sexual
exploitation, sex trafficking,black girls are seen to be not
as traumatized by sexual abuseas their white peers, and in
fact are seen as complicit inthat abuse.
(25:57):
So when they experience thattype of exploitation and
violence, they are more likelyto be seen as offenders.
And so when it comes to thesesituations of exploitation,
self-defense type crimes,they're not perceived as
victims.
They're more likely to be seenas offenders in these types of
(26:18):
scenarios.
It's not surprising to see thatthey're not perceived as
children, right?
Because they're already seen asolder and less innocent, but
they're also not seen as crimevictims in these scenarios
because of that adultificationbias.
It's a form of intersectionalbias and it's implicit, right?
So that's why it's so importantfor all of these practitioners
(26:40):
to be trained on this form ofbias as part of the implicit
bias trainings that we all do inthese types of fields.
But it's been proven, andthere's been appellate courts
that have talked aboutadultification bias at this
point.
I would encourage listeners totake a look at this report,
Girlhood Interrupted, to read upon this.
There's been subsequent studiesthat have looked at this, but
(27:00):
it's a very real phenomenon.
And again, it's implicit bias,so it's unconscious bias that
many of us have from beingsocialized in this culture.
But this is why these particularvictims, I think girls of color,
but black girls in particular,suffer from this form of bias.
And a lot of this comes from thebiases that we have about adult
(27:23):
black women that are projectedonto young black girls, but a
very important phenomenon to befamiliar with.
SPEAKER_02 (27:30):
Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up.
Let's focus now a little bit onthe inner workings of sex
trafficking and lead into thetraffickers and the buyers of
commercial sex, who are reallythe people who are fueling this
market and some of these beliefsthat you just mentioned.
You also co-authored the 2025publication Buyers Unmasked,
(27:51):
Exposing the Men Who Buy Sex andSolutions to End Exploitation.
Can you tell us what themotivation was to concentrate on
that angle of putting thebuyer's voice on display?
SPEAKER_01 (28:02):
Sure.
So, you know, this report was abig departure from the typical
reports that we put out atRights for Girls.
We typically focus on reportsthat really tell the stories of
young women and girls, andparticularly young women and
girls who are marginalized andexperience violence.
But this report really focuseson sex buyers and buyers in
their own words, as we like tosay.
(28:24):
And it really arose out of a lotof the advocacy that we've been
doing over the last few years instates across the country that
have been seeking to fullydecriminalize the sex trade.
And for those who might notknow, these are efforts that
seek to not only decriminalizethe sale of sex, but also
decriminalize acts of pimping,sex buying, and brothel owning.
(28:46):
And we have been reallysurprised by how robust these
efforts have been and organizedand across dozens of states.
And in many cases, people saythese are just consenting
adults.
We don't want to be concernedabout what individuals are
doing, and there's nothing wrongwith sex buying.
So we have just heard the otherperspective from so many
(29:06):
survivors, both adults andchildren, all across the
country.
And we felt it was veryimportant to dispel with the
myths that these are shy guyswho can't get a date.
And really felt that it wasimportant to show that across
the country these attitudes areconsistent.
You don't have to look very farto show the attitudes of these
(29:29):
individuals.
And that if we as a society feelthat it's important not to be
racist, not to be misogynist,not to be violent and
objectifying, and all of theseattitudes that we feel in a
civilized society are not to betolerated, why do these
individuals get a pass?
Why do we think that this isokay?
(29:49):
And so we felt like it wasn'tlanding when we or even
survivors would talk tolawmakers and stakeholders about
their experiences and how theseindividuals would treat them and
how they behaved.
So we thought, why not let themspeak for themselves?
And so what we did was go onwhat are known as these review
(30:10):
boards or hobby boards, whichfor those who don't know
function as a sort of Yelp forprostitution.
There are many of thesedifferent review boards all
across the country.
We went on two of them that arefree.
There's many paid ones as well.
And these are websites.
Yeah, websites across thecountry where buyers go online
(30:31):
and they candidly talk amongstthemselves and review the
people, mostly women and girls,that they purchase for sex and
candidly talk to each otherabout this one was great.
Like, where do I find this one?
And they'll be like, where can Ifind some pot Latinas?
Or where do I find a quoteunquote black provider?
They call them providers, andthey'll say this one was
(30:52):
terrible or this one looks grossright now, and very candid.
How to evade law enforcement, orthere's a lot of stings in this
area tonight.
And you search by city, right?
So it's down to the city, andyou don't have to look very far.
We looked at just like the firstcouple pages of these cities,
and we organize it by region.
So like Northeast, SouthernUnited States, West Coast,
(31:14):
Midwest, and wanted to just showhow interchangeable uh the
attitudes were by region andwanted to let them speak for
themselves.
And these are pretty PG comparedto what really is out there.
And people can look forthemselves, but this is who they
are.
SPEAKER_02 (31:34):
Yes, I can attest to all of that.
I did read the report beforehaving this conversation with
you today, and it is PG, but yetI still had to look away on some
of it.
It was very revealing, and inmany ways, just the depravity of
humanity at times is stillshocking.
I already know the answer tothis, but what was the
(31:55):
commonality among the buyer interms of demographics?
SPEAKER_01 (31:59):
We couldn't really tell because they don't
necessarily reveal theirdemographics here, but they were
overwhelmingly men here.
We don't know in terms of raceor ethnicity or income level on
our report, but we have some ofthat data based on other
jurisdictions.
So we were able to, we do havesome demographic data from
(32:20):
jurisdictions that I sharedpreviously that we did put in
the report as compared tosurvivor or victim data from
other jurisdictions.
We have a lot of that racialdisparity and demographic data
on our website as well, ifpeople are interested in that.
But the hobby boards don'tnecessarily reveal that
(32:41):
information.
It's mostly just men talkingcandidly about their exploits
and what they're looking foronline.
SPEAKER_02 (32:48):
I've heard other reports and talked with other
experts on this topic who'vetold me it's overwhelmingly
married white middle-aged men.
SPEAKER_01 (32:58):
Yes, that's consistent with what we've heard
as well.
SPEAKER_02 (33:01):
Yeah.
It's not really all thatsurprising since maybe the
construct that we talked about alittle while ago of prostitution
being the oldest profession wasput forward by a white man, and
it kind of fuels white malesupremacy, which is rampant in
the United States of America.
Not all that surprising, not allthat revealing in that sense,
(33:25):
but the report itself is veryrevealing.
I'd like to talk a little bitabout the attitudes and the
mentality that these buyershave.
What motivates them to continueto buy sex?
SPEAKER_01 (33:40):
Yeah, so we have these quotes from the hobby
boards, and then we also have aseries of conversations with
what we call the section we callmarket disruptors, and these are
volunteers from someorganizations that seek to
discourage sex buyers at thepoint of purchase.
They're volunteers who aretrained and they seek to text
(34:02):
with a sex buyer who's thinksthey're texting with a person
that they're seeking to solicitand will discourage them and
say, have you considered thatthis person might be trafficked,
or have you considered whatyou're doing perpetuates
trafficking?
And those conversations oftendon't go well either.
Occasionally they might have asuccess, but we included several
of those conversations that areeye-opening as well.
(34:24):
And they basically often say,She's an object put there by
society for me to use and moveon with life, and things like
that.
A lot of it is just deeplyingrained misogyny in cell
culture.
And some of these folks, it'sunclear how they get to the
point where they're at.
We have worked with, and in thereport, we talk about some of
these buyer accountabilityprograms.
(34:46):
And some of our partners who runthis program have said it
varies.
Some of these men wereconditioned by their fathers or
the military and never thoughttwice about it.
Others, pornography has reallyfueled their desire to purchase
and up the annie.
And others, it's just a deeplyingrained sense of that incel
(35:07):
culture.
Whereas others might neverchange, many can and have gone
through some of these programsand have, and we quote one of
those buyers who says, Thisprogram saved my marriage and
it's made me a better person.
And I think it's important torealize some of these folks can
be reached.
And this is not only toxic forthe community and for obviously
(35:28):
the women that they're harming,but for themselves and for their
families.
And so it's important to realizemany of these men can be reached
and changed, while othersprobably will never change.
But it is, it's that maleentitlement.
I think it's that maleentitlement that is really at
the root of this, and I thinkvery important to understand and
(35:48):
to tackle.
And one of the warnings that weput out in this report is we're
at a cultural inflection point.
And I think we really need tounderstand that absent greater
interventions and us payingattention to what's happening
right now, the manosphere andthis kind of burgeoning men's
rights movement, we really needto understand that things could
(36:11):
get a lot worse.
And especially with the economytipping downwards, people get
desperate.
And I think that women and girlswho are vulnerable could really
be on the receiving end of somuch of this male violence and
entitlement.
SPEAKER_02 (36:26):
Yeah, I agree with everything that you said.
And I have so many questionsabout so many different things.
And one of them being has buyersunmasked and some of the results
and outcomes from it been putforward to legislators?
And what has their response beento that?
SPEAKER_01 (36:45):
Yes.
So we actually went to theNational Conference of State
Legislators this past summer.
It was like their 50thanniversary, and we brought the
report and it flew off theshelves.
I will say state legislatorsloved it.
And it flew off the shelves.
We ran out of copies.
Folks were very interested init.
We've had great responses fromstate legislators.
(37:07):
We have introduced numerousbills this past year and will in
the upcoming legislative sessionas well, many of which deal with
buyer accountability.
This past legislative session,we passed laws in New Hampshire,
in California, and had billsintroduced in other states as
well that would introduce finesfor sex buyers that would go
(37:30):
into survivor services.
Some of them would alsointroduce a buyer accountability
course as well.
So I think there's a lot ofinterest right now in increasing
buyer accountability.
And given that federal dollarsare scarce and state budgets are
uncertain, there is more of anopenness to finding sex buyers
(37:51):
and putting those resources intovictim services.
And then hopefully introducingsome sort of buyer
accountability.
And we outline like the elementsof what type of buyer
accountability course that wouldbe, not your typical John school
that we found doesn't reallyhave very good outcomes.
You can't really measure it byrecidivism because buyers
typically don't get arrested,much less arrested twice.
(38:14):
So you have to really measurethem by changes in attitude or
cultural outcomes.
We outlined elements of what oneof those types of programs
should be.
But yeah, we've had a lot ofinterest.
And so we're continuing to buildon that.
SPEAKER_02 (38:28):
Yeah, I think that's great.
And one of the terms you used acouple of minutes ago was the
cultural inflection point.
And I think we can't have thatinflection point or continue to
have it if we don't continue tohave these conversations and put
this information from survivorsand what their experience is
really like out in the publicforum for everyone.
And that includes buyers, thatincludes legislators, and many
(38:51):
others who can help to turn thetide on the situation.
So keeping on policy andlegislation for a minute, one of
the policies that now we brieflydiscussed this, but we're going
to dive in a little bit more.
One of the policies that seemsto have an adverse or negative
consequence to combatingtrafficking and commercial sex
exploitation is fulldecriminalization.
(39:13):
Could you please describe whatthat means in a trafficking
framework and how it favors thetrafficker and buyer and why it
is so detrimental to victims andsurvivors?
SPEAKER_01 (39:26):
Sure.
This is a concept that's morecommonly known as
decriminalizing sex work.
And so in progressive circles,we hear this and it sounds
great, right?
Because we hear it and we thinkthis protects the quote-unquote
sex worker.
It decriminalizes prostitutionfor the victim.
And many people instinctivelysupport it.
(39:47):
But what many people don'trealize is that decriminalizing
sex work or fulldecriminalization does a lot
more than that.
Not only does it decriminalizethe act of selling sex, but it
also decriminalizes Acts ofpimping, sex buying, and
brothels.
So it's a full decriminalizationmodel.
And the problem with that isthat the combination of those
(40:10):
forces actually increases sextrafficking and expands the
entire commercial sex market.
People don't really realizethis, and it's actually been
introduced in a number of statesacross the country.
Since 2019, we've worked indozens of states trying to
defeat these measures.
People often think like there'sno way that legislators would
(40:30):
try to decriminalize pimping.
We defeated a bill in Illinoisthis session, in New York this
session, in Vermont thissession, in Massachusetts.
I mean, they are absolutelyintroducing these bills in
multiple states.
We had a ballot initiative inOregon a couple years ago,
bankrolled by a self-professedsex buyer, Aaron Boonshoff,
multimillionaire.
(40:51):
It's happening all across thecountry where people are trying
to decriminalize sex work, whichmeans legalize or decriminalize
the entire industry.
So it's very problematic in manyways.
And the reason why it is becauseirrespective of how you feel
about, again, sex buying, wealready have a sex trafficking
problem in every communitybecause the demand for
(41:13):
commercial sex already outpacesthe supply.
So what that means is that eventhough it's illegal to buy sex
in virtually every state in thiscountry, except for a handful of
counties in Nevada, there arealready enough men who are
content to break the law to buysex, that there's already not
enough willing adultparticipants to provide that
(41:36):
quote unquote service, that thedemand already outpaces the
supply.
So traffickers already have totraffic, manipulate, lure
victims to meet the demand thatit already exists.
Irrespective of how you feelabout purchasing sex, you can't
responsibly decriminalize itbecause if you did, more men
(41:58):
would enter the market as newclients, not just from that
state, but through sex tourism.
That's what we see in Amsterdam.
It's what we see in Nevada.
And so who would then berequired to meet that new surge
in demand?
It's not as if whendecriminalization happens, a ton
of women line up and say, I'mready to enter the sex industry
(42:18):
as a sex worker.
SPEAKER_02 (42:19):
Yeah, because they were avoiding it because they
were afraid they would beimprisoned for it.
Because it was illegal, right?
SPEAKER_01 (42:23):
It's not legality that drives women into it.
It's childhood abuse, structuraloppression, right?
It's poverty.
It's trafficking victims will berequired, right, to meet that
sudden surge in demand.
And so that's why we cannotdecriminalize patronizing or sex
buying.
And then, of course, it'sterrible to repeal pimping off
(42:46):
the books.
Those are lesser penalties fortrafficking.
It makes it much more difficultto prosecute.
And we have examples of thisfrom all over the world.
And we talk about these casestudies in our buyer's report.
And people can look morecarefully at those examples.
We use case studies for why fulldecriminalization is a failure.
Rhode Island is an example of astate that tried it and reverted
(43:07):
their laws back.
A lot of people don't know.
We have a homegrown example ofit.
All this to say it's nothyperbole, it's happening every
session, and there's groups andsurvivors who are working to
defeat it.
But there is a better approach,and it's called the survivor
model.
It decriminalizes and offersservices to people in
prostitution.
(43:27):
So those who are selling sex areseen as people who are acting as
a means of survival.
It would decriminalize only theact of selling sex, offer those
individuals services should theychoose, but maintain the
prohibitions against pimping,purchasing, and brothels in
order to keep the industry incheck.
(43:48):
And so it's a partial approach.
And this is one that's shown toreally work given the different
approaches globally.
It's the leading global policyapproach to reforming the sex
trade.
SPEAKER_02 (44:00):
Is that the policy in the state of Maine?
SPEAKER_01 (44:03):
Yes.
And Maine was the first US statethat basically experimented with
this approach.
They passed it, I think, in2023, and they're still working
on implementation.
They could do a little bitbetter with services, that's for
sure, because Maine doesn't havethe most robust services.
But Maine was the first US stateto decriminalize just
prostituted people, but maintainthe prohibitions against
(44:26):
pimping, buying, and brothels.
SPEAKER_02 (44:29):
And it is a model that started in Scandinavia,
correct?
SPEAKER_01 (44:33):
Correct, correct.
And for those like us who dojustice reform, we look to
Scandinavia as a model for ourjustice reform policies, our
prison policies.
And so it's no surprise thatthis is a model that was really
developed there.
SPEAKER_02 (44:48):
Aaron Powell Yeah, there's some references to those
models on your website as well,if people are unfamiliar with
the concepts, but these havebeen tested in Sweden and other
places and have proven to havepositive outcomes.
And basically, Sweden declaresthat they do not have a sex
trade culture any longer becauseof it.
SPEAKER_01 (45:09):
Right.
Sweden, Norway, Iceland, thesecountries consistently rank
highest for gender equality,Canada, Ireland, Northern
Ireland.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02 (45:18):
It was more or less abolitionist movements.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
So now Rights for Girls also haslaunched a sex buying isn't a
game public awareness campaign.
And this also touches a littlebit on what you mentioned about
sex tourism, because I want toexplore that as well.
Now the billboards specificallyfor this campaign are so
(45:39):
powerful and attention grabbingbecause a sports theme is the
backdrop, and that doesdefinitely get attention.
So what motivated you to spreadawareness about sex buying
through a genre like sports andhow does that intersect with sex
tourism?
SPEAKER_01 (45:55):
So we decided to launch this campaign in
conjunction with some of themajor sports events that were
happening.
And we launched first with theMarch Madness games because we
really wanted to shed light onthe fact that when it comes to
major events and of coursesporting events, but it could be
(46:15):
any type of major event thatdraws thousands of out-of-town
visitors and predominantly mento any host city, traffickers
will seek to capitalize off thepotential for increased demand.
And so we wanted to raiseawareness around the fact that
just as with the increases inride shares and hotel bookings
(46:36):
and all the events andactivities and festivities,
there can also be this darkunderbelly of sexual
exploitation that takes placewith all of the celebrations.
And we did this billboardcampaign with March Madness to
begin with in eight cities thatwere hosting the games with
basketball-themed messages onthe billboards.
(46:57):
So for March Madness, I think itwas like it's madness to think
sex buying is just a game, orit's madness to think buying sex
is a victimless crime.
And once people saw thebillboards, they could come to
our website and then they wouldsee a series of statistics and
more information, or it'smadness to think buying sex
won't land you a penalty, andthen they would see how many
(47:18):
states that this legislativesessions had made sex buying a
felony, for example, andunderstanding like the different
things they could lose theirlicense, they could lose like
custody rights and childvisitation and all of these
different facts about therealities of buying sex and the
sex trade.
And we felt it was reallyimportant to just understand the
connection between these issuesand for the media to shed light
(47:41):
on the role of sex buyers infueling exploitation.
Because again, when we talkabout sex trafficking, we always
picture the victim, we alwayspicture traffickers, but we fail
to really understand that thirdpart of the equation when every
dollar that's generated in thismulti-billion dollar industry is
fueled by the sex buyer.
(48:02):
And so we felt it was reallyimportant to shine a light on
the buyer and understand theirrole in perpetuating sex tourism
and trafficking.
SPEAKER_02 (48:12):
Yeah.
It's brilliant, really.
And I recently, within the pastseveral years, interviewed Rita
Smith, who formerly worked withthe NFL, and we talked about
these things like the SuperBowl.
And it's the same scenario aswhat you mentioned with March
Madness, the World Series, whichwe just had here in the United
States just a week or two ago.
(48:34):
That's another example of wheresex trafficking and sex buyers
travel specifically to thesegames and seek out the purchase
of sex.
Understanding all of this, howcan people get involved, get
educated, and take action?
SPEAKER_01 (48:50):
Folks can definitely follow us online.
Our website isrightsforgirls.org, follow us on
social media, on Instagram, onFacebook, on X, all of our
social media is up to date.
There they can take action ondifferent advocacy issues, make
sure that they're attending anyof our events.
We do events all over thecountry.
(49:10):
We'll definitely have things forhuman trafficking month in
January, and we are slated tohave events all over the country
coming up in California,Illinois, probably Texas soon.
Definitely stay tuned for that.
And we'll be poised to beworking on legislative
initiatives all over the countryas well.
So definitely stay tuned.
SPEAKER_02 (49:29):
Excellent.
And just to quickly, Rights forGirls was recently featured in a
documentary film entitled TheRight Track, a project
spearheaded by the JensenProject that highlights the
realities of experiencing andliving the life of a trafficking
victim or survivor.
Do you have any details abouthow our listeners can access and
(49:50):
watch the film?
SPEAKER_01 (49:52):
They can go to the righttrackfilm.com.
Hopefully they will be able tosee any upcoming screenings.
We will hopefully be doing ascreening in Chicago in January,
I believe.
And I think there'll be someother screenings coming up.
We hope to get it on a streamingservice, I know.
But it's an excellent film.
If you have the opportunity tosee it, we definitely recommend
(50:14):
it.
I know we'll be hosting ascreening in the spring in
Washington, D.C.
at some point, but definitelystay tuned.
I know we'll be announcing onRights for Girls social media
when we'll be do hostingscreenings.
And I know the Jensen projectwill be as well.
But hopefully we can get it on astreaming service.
It's an excellent documentary,really moving.
(50:34):
We were honored to be a part ofit from the perspective of so
many sex trade survivors.
And it's just, it's verycompelling, I think.
If you have a chance to see it,don't miss it.
SPEAKER_02 (50:44):
I also recommend the film and learning more about
this topic.
Yasmin, thank you so much fortalking with me today and for
the work you're doing.
Thank you so much for having me.
It was my pleasure.
Thanks so much for listening.
Until next time, stay safe.
The 21st Annual Conference onCrimes Against Women will be
held May 18th through the 21st,2026, in Dallas, Texas.
(51:08):
Learn more at conferencecaw.organd be the first to know about
all conference details, as wellas the latest on the Institute
for Coordinated CommunityResponse, Annual Conference
Summit, Beyond the Bounds, andthe National Training Center on
Crimes Against Women.
When you follow us on socialmedia at NationalCCAW.
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