How can you be certain that the girl you are going to have sex with is not a minor?

You can't, unless she is obviously over 30(?)

How can you be sure she is not being forced under threat to accommodate you?

You can't, although good signs that he or she is not may include a long history of reviews where there are unrushed sessions, no upselling, no hurry to get you out the door, etc. Don't know if  "age" of provider makes a difference here.

What do you do if you realize she is being trafficked?

God help you if this ever occurs. I sure wouldn't know what to do, I think most guys here would be horrified to find themselves in such a situation.

Now I think hobbying is fine, of course. But not when it comes to under age kids. I think that is a very important question:

What do you do if you find or hear of someone being trafficked or forced to accommodate? Especially if they are under age? How could you protect them, if you were so inclined? Can the folks on TER, as a community, find an effective way to deal with this, to help these kids?

I hope more people will contribute to this. Please understand that this post just my 2 cents.
Like death, it is something of a taboo subject. But not talking about it doesn't make it go away.  

Legal Question—How to Protect Yourself from Sex Traffickers Selling Minors?

Perhaps the biggest threat to those who frequent escorts or prostitutes is being mixed up with a minor who is being forced to perform sexual acts. Recent efforts by local police agencies are linking internet sex sites that are offering sex trafficked minors under the guise of being legitimate escorts with sites such as Erotic Review whose listings, although containing lists of reviewed escorts whose activities are illegal in the most of the United States, but whose reviewed escorts are not minors, and criminal penalties for frequenting such escorts, in the rare case where police can make arrests, such charges are usually misdemeanors.

We are witnessing a rash of recent television and radio expose's that have focused on Backpage.com and other sites where these offerings were or are being made now that Craig’s list is not topical. Such expose's show girls of ages of 14 and younger who have been forcibly addicted to drugs and compelled to have sex with many men. Those who resisted were alleged to have been beaten and burned with cigarettes. Not only are women and girls illegally imported into the US but these traffickers also focus on runaways who are in need of shelter and easily converted or duped into performing sex acts while encouraged by drugs usage.


How can you be certain that the girl you are going to have sex with is not a minor?
How can you be sure she is not being forced under threat to accommodate you?  
What do you do if you realize she is being trafficked?

Let us have some discussion and perhaps we can establish some guidelines to deal with this growing problem. Be assured that if you are dealing with such “sex slaves” you will be held to a much more severe punishment if you are caught by LE and lack of knowledge of the girl’s true situation will be no defense.





-- Modified on 11/12/2010 10:05:45 AM

-- Modified on 11/12/2010 10:06:42 AM

[Perhaps the biggest threat to those who frequent escorts or prostitutes is being mixed up with a minor who is being forced to perform sexual acts.]End quote


Here's another problem though... girls are entering the business at a much younger age now-a-days... by themselves, with no one persuading them. They hear about CL(former) and BP and how easy it is to take a pic, post an ad, and make easy $$... and they do it... unbeknown to the men who think she's actually 18 or older.. when in reality she's only 16 or 17.

Another problem, is when I was I was in high school, the number of drop-outs was low.. today, the number of girls I meet in the 18-22 age range, the majority have not graduated high school. So, it's also harder to tell, if say, you visit a gal that you think is of age, and it's during school hours, or late at night.. you automatically assume she must be of legal age, since she's not in school, or it's past her curfew... when in reality, their drop-outs who are living on their own already.

see escorts in their late 20's and older.  

I do know of a girl who was abducted and kept in a closet to groom her.  Her male captive had a "wife" helping him keep this girl captive.  So, the older "wife" was already groomed.  Groomed meaning stockholm syndrome.  

I believe there are plenty of women older than 17 who are just as victimized, but think they're in love with their pimp.  

Another case I'm aware of the man married the woman, they had a child... all the time he was pimping her.  She was caught in a sting, divorced him and now he's facing federal charges.  She also had stockholm syndrome.  

I think the best way to avoid being caught up in these federal "sex trafficing" stings would be to see ladies who are well reviewed and avoid ad's with women who look questionably young.  From my knowledge, these stings would involve a hobbyist seeing a girl at her incall.  So, outcall might be a better bet as well (you get a room, she comes to you).

I really don't know if there's a way to tell if a woman is being forced to see a man.  She doesn't believe she's being pimped herself.  Sad but true.

Take the male abductor or pimp, and castrate him. It may take a while to get the point across, but eventually, the trash that prey on young girls/boys will think twice about crossing that line.

Google Lawrence Taylor and read about the mess he's in. If you get tangled up with a minor, no matter how old you think she looks, you're still screwed.

My opinion is that as as long as this is illegal, we will be operating on a dangerous landscape.  My personal way of avoiding this is to only see well reviewed providers with a long history who are at the very least, in their mid to late 20's.  Even after all of that, I guess there is still some risk.  If we continue to talk about it, maybe we will learn from each other to take precautions that work and that will have some effect on the problem.

Many of the screening sites requires providers to provide drivers license, credit cards, reviews, agency/independent infos ... any illegal immigrants, minors would be hard to get those things.  

When doing the bookings, stick to those established, independent, well-reviewed providers.

If a provider barely speaks any English, works for some agency (e.g. someone who can not independently do business on her own) would be vulnerable for those exploitations.

In general, prostitution being illegal creates these problems.

would assume that the person who placed the ad was over 18yrs old and not be expected to question the girls age unless she was obviously underaged.  or obviously a victim of abuse.

i dont think they can burden you with as much responsibility as they are trying to insinuate.

recent efforts by police will backfire.  we are not doing anything wrong.
we have all "heard" the stories but we havent yet seen any evidence supporting them.

do we really believe that drug addicted, bruised up and cigarette burned flesh of a child is raking in all these huge profits ?   is the "forced against her will" slavery sex a fetish i havent heard about   ?  

i'm thinking thats a really small market.
does any guy want that sooooo bad that he's willing to risk his job, his family, his entire life to purchase it ???     wouldn't it be safer to him to just entice the child and kidnap it like any other pedophile ???? ..... what about just hopping a flight to asia where you can get 10 kids for the price of 1 and totally without risk  ?

so that doesnt make sense to me

i idid see one case where a pimp had some underaged girls... they weren't kids, they were 17 and their pimp told them to lie about their age.   WHY ????   knowing that HUGE demand for minor p*ssy that supposedly exists here in the us, that wouldve been seriously stupid to throw away all those potential dollars..... huh ?

i have been looking for these cases of children trafficked to the us, can you please post some links, i want to read about them because i find it unbelievable. .. like specific cases.

all the task forces in the country combined found a total of 39 cases in a 2 year period.
horrible ? yes.
national emergency ?  i dont know.... 20 a year ??

a mental illness"

she's in love with her pimp and will do anything to please him.

so if a woman gets a job because she loves her children and wants to please them, is she being "forced" into a life of employment ?

if an "abducted" woman suffers from stockholm syndrome and goes into prostitution, who are we to determine that she shouldn't ?

what if it makes her happy to please her pimp ?  is she not allowed to be happy ?

maybe the life she was abducted from was worse to her ?  maybe she was running away from a life she hated, a life of abuse,  and they often are and in the case you speak of, she was......  so  who are we to determine that someone else's will is not valid  ?

she was "groomed" and stayed with the pimp but another who was being groomed the same way, ran away.

we have to be allowed to make our own decisions regardless of someone else's perception of the strength of our will.... .... we have that right and we have to accept that responsibility.

this is a dangerous road to travel.
what if ms stockholm syndrome killed someone ? could she blame that on her pimp ?  

due to their need to justify persecution of prostitutes,  they are taking criminal accountability away from the criminal and placing it on someone else, because prostitutes *can't* possibly be mentally capable of choosing to be prositutes on their own free will.

maybe we need to re-evaluate all the prisoners on death row and see if they REALLY meant to commit their crimes or if maybe the devil made them do it and they are just victims of the devil...
how could anyone really *choose* to kill people of their own free will ?

The child was 14 and her friend 15. I remember seeing her ads and she looked like she was 10. It was a traffic stop, and not a sting that led to the rescue of these girls. During operation cross country they rescued 60 plus underage girls.

I've never provided my id to any of the screening sites.  Yes, I've used a credit card for billing, but who knows if that credit card is mine??  

Illegal state id's can be obtained also...quite easily.  Ask college kids.

Some immigrants want/need to stay under the radar, so a cash/invisible job like sex work is one option for how to do that.

Some girls, knowing English or not, choose agencies to handle their business because they lack the skills and dedication required to work independently.  

I will agree on your last point though ...criminalizing sex work perpetuates exploitation and abuse of sex workers.

xoM

There is a fine line in men seeking underage girls and "barely legal" girls.  Because of this, underage girls are marketed as adults.  Dressed up, made  up, and sold to men who want to believe they are old enough to not be breaking (age of consent) laws.  Men do not consider themselves pedophiles when they seek out girls in this border area, but I don't think they are very discerning about making sure girls are truly of age either...  Often reality is suspended to feed a fantasy, no matter what fantasy that might be.    

If a girl is a victim of sex abuse or sexualized at an early age, she may be savvy enough to know how to present herself as a willing adult.  While I understand some of what you say about allowing people to be responsible for their own actions and choices, there is a very real point that anti-trafficking groups make when talking about grooming and brain-washing...especially when you are talking about kids looking for love and approval wherever they can get it, and find it in adults willing to take their innocence instead of truly give them unconditional love and support.  Someone that cares for another would not say, "Hey...I need money.  How about if you go suck countless strangers cocks so I can pay *my* bills?"  Most girls do NOT come up with that idea on their own.  

I'll write more thoughts later...I'm glad to see this discussion making it's way here.

About a year ago, I was invited to participate in a local anti-trafficking coalition.  The heads know I am a sex worker and a sex worker rights activist.  They wanted my input about sex work that *isn't* about exploitation or coercion, but I also expressed my own interest in getting involved in helping to end trafficking.  My interest is motivated by many factors, including trying to help stop child sex slavery, showing that not all sex workers are complicit or ignore the problem of trafficking, and addressing the ills within my industry to try and remove some of the stigma that gets in the way of furthering the sex worker rights debate.  

Sex work is an extremely complex industry.  Conversations surrounding sex work are often polarized, and rarely include all aspects of what the true realities are.  I could go on and on about the different niche markets, but will focus the discussion re: diversity to trafficking.  I've heard end demand advocates dismiss human sexuality and basic needs, and negate a woman's autonomy in the world to make her own choices or mistakes.  I've also seen sex workers rights activists argue that there are no 13 year olds out there being pimped because they haven't seen it themselves.  There is a serious lack of credible statistics to get a handle on ANY of it, and I doubt that is going to change any time soon.  At the end of the day, people believe what they want to believe, based on their own experiences and what is right in front of *their* face.  To open up that conversation, everyone needs to take the blinders off.

Trafficking has become a media buzz story.  It's got everything needed to keep it in the forefront of the news, and get all the funding it needs to combat this problem (even though we don't know how big it really is for sure...).  Anyone that doesn't get on board with anti-trafficking is going to be seen as pro-child sex slavery.  After all, what is more compelling then rescuing child victims?  For moral crusaders, it is the perfect image to hold up while pushing for reforms that go ~beyond~ just protecting trafficking victims.  Unless our community starts standing up for our rights and distinguishing ourselves from the predators and co-conspirators, we are going to see increased penalties for those of us that only engage in consenting acts with other adults, and a degeneration of civil rights as a whole.  

I think it's naive to think that there are no minors being trafficked in TER.  They may be more covert then some of the CL and BP ads, but there are enough agencies promoting through here to make a reasonable assumption that trafficking is happening...of minors, adults and immigrants.  I don't think it's discussed more for a number of reasons.  1.) it's a buzz kill.  Most of us are here to embrace the idea of unabashed sexual freedoms.  Trafficking throws a wet dishrag on that...  2.) clients that see the age bracket that can involve possible minor sex trafficking are not as discerning...  There would need to be a big neon sign on the girl saying, "I'm really only 15 and being controlled by a pimp." for some to want to believe the young nubile in front of them is anything other then the tight bodied nymph of their dreams.  And yes, I do think some (not all...) of those men that seek out those girls are really pedophiles in denial...justifying their fantasies as being legit because a girl is purported to be of legal age, but ignores signs to the contrary and never asks questions to find out for sure...  3.) no one knows what to do we even do when we come across it...  When trafficking is obvious, no one knows what to do about it for fear of having to answer questions about what they were doing to happen along such circumstances, and in possibly getting in trouble themselves.  At best, we try and help the person being victimized, but that does not stop the pimps and predators.  I think this feeling of having our hands tied can hinder our involvement, as after all, who is going to protect any of US if the pimp finds out and seeks retribution?  These are all things that factor in to how much people want to get involved, and as a result, how much people want to *see* IMO.

There are a number of issues to be addressed in regards to how the sex work community can address these issues within our ranks, and I am currently working with others on how to create a training specifically for us on how to identify trafficking as well as report it safely (no repercussions about unrelated activities that might have brought situation to the attention of the person reporting) .  I am hoping to get input from a number of different sources from within the sex work community, including strip clubs and dancers, massage parlors, agencies owners and workers, models, actors/actresses, escorts and clients/consumers of the sex industry.  Anyone that wants to give input can contact me through [email protected] or [email protected].  I look to have something finished by the spring/summer of 2011.

I hope to see this become better addressed in our community, as it only benefits all of us to help rescue true victims, distinguish the perspectives between choice, circumstance and coercion, and show that sex work community as a whole does not condone exploitation or abuse.  We need to step up and participate in that conversation unless we want to continue to let the more visible trafficking stories dictate what ideas outsiders have about our industry.

Like many other news issues, we have to dig through the hyperbole to find the truth, which is usually somewhere between two extremes.

Any time an activity occurs in the shadows, there will be those that exploit that to their advantage. We must all assume that this will be something we encounter at some time in the course of our "hobby". Part of the problem, IMO, is the use of that term. It has the psychological effect of isolating the client from his acts by the use of a benign term for the activity.

Let us not forget our own recent example of a well reviewed provider who had a pimp and had kidnapped a lady to keep for forced commercial sex acts. Quibbling about whether she had Stockholm Syndrome or did it because she loved her pimp doesn't change our personal responsibilities, if we choose to accept them.

I personally look forward to hearing more from Megan on this topic, as I admit that I am woefully unprepared on this topic.

Thank you, Megan, for the thoughtful response and good work you are doing.

The New York Times seems to do a lot of work on this topic. My first exposure to it was when i read a very small part of a long series that ran over a month in the NYT magazine - Google did not help me find it, maybe someone else can find the series. It was quite a while back, but I am not sure exactly when.

It started talking about a handoff of young girls at Disneyland - apparently a great place to exchange girls because they do not look out of place - and then went into some detail about how there are very discrete markets for girls as the age and how the girls are treated and passed around as they age. There was some about boys, too.

At that point, and I was only about one page into a much longer article which was only a part of this series, I just could not take it any more, felt sick. But I have never forgotten it.

In this case, and I hate to say it, the end demand people do have it right - the only true solution is for all of us to stop looking for that Barely Legal hottie, or if we must, go through some form of detailed age verification. Neither of those things will ever happen, so we will continue to see the penalties ratcheted up for indulging that fantasy. At the end of the day, if you pay to have sex with a minor, you are guilty, even if you did not think that was what you are doing. The person who pimped him or her is guilty, too, of course, but I do not see any escape for the hobbyist, and you are going to get crushed. So before you chase that cute, young girl, just consider the risk.

Sex slavery and trafficking as it applies to adults is a lot trickier, and I tend to agree with Andrea on that one - if one is an adult and is willingly engaging in an act, I am hard pressed to see how the sexual partner is guilty of anything more than if they were committing the same act with some other willing adult. Megan or LB - if the person is 18 or older and has been "enslaved" under the law (whatever that means) does the hobbyist have an added legal liability? Moral liability, that I get - if you suspect the person is somehow being coerced and you turn a blind eye to it for fear of getting involved, you are now part of the crime. But it is hard to know what to do, which is why work such as Megan has mentioned is so important.

And as for the last note, the one about people using these issues to further other agendas, be they political, financial, religious or whatever, of course that is true since that is how it works. If you want to get something done, you search for a message that resonates and gets people to do what you want done, and this is one message that will mobilize pretty much everyone. So, yeah, we need to do what we can to make sure the right things are done, otherwise people that would like all P4P to go away, all demand to be stamped out (no matter how crazy that idea is) will continue to gain traction and squeeze all of us.

Thing is, I have no idea what to do, other than make the decision that I will do everything I can to be sure any provider I see is an adult (not a big change for me) and that I will ask if a provider is okay and here willingly if I suspect something is amiss, and am willing to make a sacrifice if I need to act in such a situation. Honestly, though, the provider is unlikely to confess anything to me, and the other signs, whatever they may be, are likely to be sufficiently ambiguous, that I doubt I will ever be obliged to make good on that pledge.

Zig

that is jail.

they will be prosecuted for prostitution.

Operation Cross Country was an Innocence Lost sweep.
Odd that 880 adults just happened to be arrested in a "rescue mission" to save children.

Odd that since 2003, the FBI has "removed" over 1200 children from prostitution yet not 1 of these children, surely some of them have grown up by now, but none of them has ever come forward to thank their mighty heroes.

You'd think that a 7 year rescue mission netting over 1200 saved children could come up with a grateful victim or 2 at some point but whenever I see an interview, with the Innocence Lost detectives, it's always accompanied by a "voice" of a grownup child who was trafficked and forced into prostitution and saved by someone else, almost as if none of their own rescue missions ever had a part in "saving" anyone.