ECPAT-USA

Today Ana Morse, president of the ECPAT-USA board of directors, gave testimony to the New York City Council Committee on Women’s Issues concerning Backpage and the $26.7 million dollars in advertising revenue it generates annually for Village Voice Media from prostitution alone.

Recently, Nicolas Kristof has been writing op-eds about children sold for sex on-line through Backpage. His latest article can be found by clicking here, and the Huffington Post’s supporting article can be found by clicking here. These articles have not been written in a vacuum, they are emblematic of the media battle still being waged between people that are against child sex trafficking and the Village Voice. For those that haven’t been following, this current melee was set off by a series of op-eds Mr. Kristof had written giving detailed accounts of how young girls were being sold on Backpage. Mr. Kristof’s articles have lead to a call for the Village Voice to end its role in child sex trafficking through Backpage, signed by 19 US Senators on March 23rd, 2012. and a Nightline expose on the website

John Buffalo Mailer, son of Norman Mailer, one of the co-Founder of Village Voice, protested outside the Village offices. asking them to take down their adult classified ads to help stop the sex trafficking of children. But Nicolas Kristof wasn’t the first to get into a brawl with the Village Voice over the issue of Backpage. The Village Voice tried to take on Ashton Kutcher during his campaign “Real Men Don’t Buy Sex”. It seems fairly innocuous, even down-right helpful, that a celebrity would lend his star power to the fight against sex trafficking and spread awareness of prostituted children. Even if it were just the issue of men shouldn’t solicit prostitutes in general, be they adults or children, that’s a downright wholesome message that should be welcome in the public discourse. Let’s not forget that prostitution is illegal in virtually every part of the country, so an alternate title for his campaign could have been “Real Men Don’t Break the Law”.

The oddity is the vitriol the Village Voice reserves for people who point out that Backpage is used by traffickers to sell children for sex. Yes, it is an adult classified ad website that is intended only for mutually consenting adults, but it has clearly developed into something else and has created the unintended consequence of being a website for sex traffickers to sell children. While there are two sides of the argument to the former issue, about what mutually consenting adults can and should be able to do, there can only be one side to the latter issue, that Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) is wrong, and that it is something we should all be able to agree with openly and publicly. Also, just to repeat, prostitution is still illegal for adults outside of a few of Nevada’s counties, and even there the sex takes place within a brothel and is not, to our knowledge, an on-line delivery service, so we at ECPAT-USA are having a difficult time understanding the Village Voice’s side of this media kerfuffle.

The reason why so many people are calling for Backpage to be shut down is because the Village Voice has not taken the time or effort to effectively police itself, and the real police don’t have the resources to do it for them. The Village Voice has attacked anyone who has criticized them and released article after article in an attempt to minimize and get its readership to ignore the serious problem of prostituted children. They claim to have dedicated staff screening the ads for minors and say they’re working hand in hand with law enforcement when infringements of its honor code are found, but some law enforcement agencies say they’ve received no help in prosecuting cases where Backpage was used to facilitate the commercial sexual exploitation of a child. As for their self-policing efforts, you have a handful of people physically checking the 16,000 – 19,000 personal ads added every month. While they do forward about 400 ads a month to law enforcement, hand checking internet pages is not an effective method this day in age. They have called for support of Senate Bill 596, which addresses the sorely needed funding for shelters, counseling, and rehabilitation for the victims of CSEC, but that’s the equivalent of supporting legislation to compensate drowning victims rather than legislation that supports more lifeguards. Yes, victims of a crime need support, but only when implemented in tandem with greater prevention and enforcement can it be truly effective, otherwise we’ll just continue to spend more and more money on treating more and more victims. We have to address the issue of CSEC head on by dealing with websites like Backpage that facilitate the trafficking of children, and we applaud people like Ashton Kutcher and Nicolas Kristof who are at least trying to do something about the problem.

Real Men Get Their Facts Straight: Ashton and Demi and Sex Trafficking, June 29, 2011, Village Voice
Ashton’s Twitter feed, published by Business Insider, June 30, 2011
Ashton Kutcher Attacks Village Voice in Late Night Twitter Tantrum, June 30, 2011, Village Voice
Ashton Kutcher and the Problem of Underage Prostitutes, July 1, 2011, Village Voice
How Pimps Use the Web to Sell Girls, January 26th, 2012, New York Times
Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods, March 18th, 2012, New York Times
What Nick Kristof Got Wrong: Village Voice Media Responds, March 21st, 2012, Village Voice
Responding to the Village Voice on Sex Trafficking, March 21st, 2012, New York Times
Norman Mailer’s Son Protests Outside the Village Voice, March 29th, 2012, New York Magazine
Financiers and Sex Trafficking, March 31st, 2012, New York Times
Change.org Petition to Tell Village Voice Media to Stop Child Sex Trafficking on Backpage.com
Girls Sold for Sex Online, Backpage.com Defends Decision to Keep Ads Up, April 24, 2012, ABC News
Click here to read Ana Morse’s Testimony

For twenty years ECPAT has been at the forefront of raising awareness and advocating for actions to protect the estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children in the United States at risk of being sexually exploited.

Since its founding in 1991, ECPAT-USA has led national efforts to protect children from sex trafficking, including sponsoring national preparation for the World Congresses against Sexual Exploitation of Children and coordinating NGO responses to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

ECPAT-USA has worked to pass legislation that decriminalizes child prostitution and provides social services for victims. In the past two years New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Illinois, Minnesota and Washington have passed such legislation.

ECPAT-USA trains law enforcement agents, tourism company workers, and service providers to increase their capacity to recognize and report incidents of the sexual exploitation of children.

ECPAT-USA has enlisted the support of the Carlson Companies, Delta Air Lines, Hilton Worldwide and Wyndham Worldwide Corporation as signatories of the Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism.

Our Twentieth Anniversary Celebration will commemorate our successes, layout our plans for fighting child sex trafficking in the coming year, as well as premiere a special performance by Project Girl Performance Collective, a non-profit that specializes in giving teenage girls a voice to speak about issues that are affecting women and girls on a local, national, and global levels.

You can purchase tickets for our twentieth anniversary celebration through Network for Good, as well as by sending us a check to the following address:
ECPAT-USA
157 Montague Street
Brooklyn NY, 11201

Please note that no paper tickets will be mailed to you, your name will be put on a list at the check-in to the event, which will be held at 809 United Nations Plaza, NYC.

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Famed international adventurer Johan Ernst Nilson took a breather from his death-defying exploits to watch our upcoming documentary and comment on why he thinks fighting child sex trafficking is an important issue.
Click here to watch the interview

Marina Colby, our Legislative Advisor, recently wrote a guest blog post for USAID. Click here to read the article

How Many Commercially Sexually Exploited Children Are there in the U.S.?

There is a highly publicized debate going on over the accuracy of statistics quoted by Ashton Kutcher and the Demi and Ashton Foundation (DNA) over the number of sexually exploited children in the United States. While it might be easy to criticize celebrities for lack of substance, the DNA Foundation is in fact using the very same statistics that every advocate, government agency and policy maker uses–including ECPAT-USA.

We use those statistics knowing and admitting that they are dated estimates because everyone–policy makers, media and the public–push to know the number of victims. We use these statistics because these are the most recent and comprehensive numbers we have.

Despite the many appeals made by advocates over the years, there has been no funding for an expansive attempt to count the number of commercially sexually exploitation children (CSEC) in the US since the controversial 2001 University of Pennsylvania study. Partially funded by the US Department of Justice, it remains the most complete published study on the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The current controversy lies in the 100,000 – 300,000 children reported in the study to be at risk in the US for commercial sexual exploitation. The findings were then and continue to be criticized and questioned. But with no similar study to compare it to, it is difficult to draw a conclusion on the accuracy of the figures. In addition, the underground nature of the activities makes them especially hard to measure, leaving us with best estimates.

At present there is a new prevalence study underway by the Center for Court Innovation and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in several U.S. cities. These are the same respected research institutions that published a study of commercial sexual exploitation in New York City alone in 2008. The study counted almost 4,000 child victims in New York City, not counting foreign victims and possibly undercounting pimped girls. We look forward to the publication of this new study.

Funding is difficult to come by because commercially sexually exploited children are barely a blip on the radar screen of the policy world. CSEC victims are largely invisible, and therefore easy to ignore. The lack of funding for research to count and understand them is just one of the many manifestations of this oversight. But it is imperative that there be support for research, not just to count the number of CSEC victims, but to understand their needs and how to prevent the exploitation from happening in the first place.

No one wants new studies to challenge the old findings more than those of us who advocate for the protection of children from sexual exploitation. We eagerly await a new “number” if for no other reason than when we are regularly asked how many commercially sexually exploited children there are in the US we will have a better answer than “Well, there was this one study done ten years ago…“

In the meantime, ECPAT-USA applauds the DNA Foundation for being willing to speak up for the most vulnerable and abused children in America – the invisible, undercounted and under-studied children who should be at the center of the public’s attention.

As part of the Freedom Project, Jim Clancy of CNN interviewed our Executive Director. You can watch the interview here

At the site our search engine page you can search google and raise money for ECPAT-USA. The site also allows you to search through yahoo or bing, and is a great way to find the information you’re looking for while helping a good cause. If you like it, tell your friends to use it, and they can pass it on to their friends. It costs you nothing and can really make a difference in ending child sex trafficking.

WITNESS, the international human rights organization that trains human rights defenders to strategically use video to change practices, will produce with us a 12 to 18 minute advocacy video to protect sexually-exploited children from being treated as criminals in the U.S. Most states judicial systems treat trafficked children as criminal offenders rather than giving them the support and protection they need as victims. Currently, only four states have changed their approach by passing laws that we call “safe harbor” laws. These laws require that the children found in the sex trade be referred for protective services instead of prosecuted. With training and support from WITNESS, this video advocacy campaign will aid in passing strong, protective “safe harbor” legislation in the rest of the United States.

Valentine’s Day marks a day where we celebrate the loved ones in our lives This year when you buy a Valentine’s Gift for your honey, you can generate donations to protect children from sexual exploitation. Causes.com will donate $10 to ECPAT-USA every time one of our supporters buys flowers, chocolates or other Valentines gifts through our Facebook Cause. If you buy your Valentine’s Day Presents through Facebook Causes, they will donate $10 to your favorite Cause at no additional cost to you.

ECPAT-USA Partners With ACTE