Sexual trafficking on the rise

Christian Century, April 19, 2000

TAKING AIM at those who bring an estimated 50,000 women and children each year into the U.S. for forced sexual slavery, two senators introduced legislation April 13 aimed at stopping the international selling of women and children into sexual slavery. "It's time to change this evil practice known as trafficking," said Sam Brownback (R., Kan.).

Brownback's proposal calls for a review process that would let the president impose sanctions on countries that do not make "a good faith effort" to stop the selling of women and children for sex within their own borders, though sanctions could be waived under some conditions. Paul Wellstone (D., Minn.) introduced similar legislation on April 12, according to his office.

"Trafficking in human beings is not just some problem over there--it's a problem over here," said Wellstone, like Brownback a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This gross human rights abuse--and we must acknowledge trafficking in persons as the horrific abuse that it is--is a worldwide problem that must be confronted here in our country even as we continue to fight it on the international front. We too must do our part. We need this bill enacted into law this year."

Both bills call for life imprisonment for those who force children under the age of 14 into the sex trade, and mandate as many as 20 years in prison in cases involving people 14 and older. The two proposals also allow victims to remain in the U.S. under a temporary visa even if they have been brought into the country illegally. Wellstone's legislation permits the president to impose sanctions on a case-by-case basis instead of calling for mandatory sanctions, a move designed to forestall possible White House objections. Wellstone and Brownback said they will support whichever bill is approved by the Foreign Relations Committee--and hope the committee will vote before the congressional session ends.

The new legislation follows on the heels of recent Senate hearings on the issue. Testifying February 22 before the Near Eastern and South Asian affairs subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, Frank Loy, undersecretary of state for global affairs, said that the number of victims involved in sexual and other forms of trafficking began to grow in the early 1990s and now totals about 700,000 yearly across borders and from 1 million to 2 million overall.

The combined testimony before the subcommittee suggested that the trafficking of women and children, many of whom are forced into prostitution, is a worldwide human rights problem that may involve 2 million people a year. Further information communicated made the trafficking problem seem even more massive:

* The victims are primarily from Asia, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Latin America and Africa.

* An estimated 1 million children, most of them from Asia, will be victims of trafficking this year.

* About 500,000 Brazilian children are forced into prostitution each year.

* An estimated 250,000 women and children from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are transported per year to other countries, including the U.S.

* Almost 200,000 females, most under 18, from Nepal work in brothels in India.

Nearly "every country in the world has a trafficking problem right now," said Laura Lederer, director of the Protection Project of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. The trade in human beings has become so profitable that organized crime groups have shifted from trafficking in drugs to trafficking in people, said Wendy Chamberlin, deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement.

Traffickers succeed through either deceit or coercion, according to testimony at the hearing. Some victims are led to believe they will work in legitimate businesses and then are forced into prostitution or other labor, while others are drugged or otherwise abducted.

A woman identified as "Inez," who testified in sunglasses and with a scarf on her head in order to disguise her identity out of fear for her safety and that of her family in Mexico, told the senators about her coercion into prostitution at the hands of a group of traffickers. In order to help her family financially, at age 18 she accepted an offer to work at a job she was told would be at an American restaurant. She was transported into Texas, then to a trailer in Florida, where she learned her fate. "I would not be working at a restaurant; instead I was told I owed a smuggling fee of about $2,500 and had to pay if off selling my body to men," Inez said in Spanish, with her testimony translated for senators. "I was horrified."

With as many as four young women, some only 14 years old, working in the same trailer, each of them had sex with 32 to 35 men per day, six days a week, at $22 to $25 each, Inez testified. They were constantly guarded and at times beaten and raped by their bosses, she said. She and the other young women were not allowed to leave the trailer, and every two weeks they would be moved to another trailer in an isolated area, Inez said.