You've all heard the stories and bathed in the media hype, telling us we live in a world filled with unwilling participants in the sex trade.
Awesomely, it turns out that only a very few people are trafficked in contrast with those who chose sex work.
And all those tens of thousands of trafficked workers you've heard about? No evidence was found of their existence. It was unfounded scaremongering.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8324/
"Stop this illicit trade in bullshit stories
Apparently 40,000 hookers will be trafficked to South Africa for the World Cup.
A study carried out by the Council of the European Union (CEU) and published in 2007 found: There was no sign whatsoever of the alleged 40,000 prostitutes/forced prostitues a figure repeatedly reported who were to be brought to Germany for the 2006 World Cup. Far from 40,000 enslaved women trussed up in sex sheds, the CEU report said the German authorities, having spent millions of Euros and thousands of hours of police time on the lookout for trafficked women, found only five cases of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation in relation to the 2006 World Cup."
More:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/2850/
Following an ENORMOUS 6-month nationwide brothel-raiding exercise (operation Pentameter) in the UK, only 15 people were convicted of trafficking offences.
i.e. trafficking is a vanishingly small problem in terms of numbers of people involved, in the UK.
"The analysis reveals that 10 of the 55 police forces never found anyone to arrest. And 122 of the 528 arrests announced by police never happened: they were wrongly recorded either through honest bureaucratic error or apparent deceit by forces trying to chalk up arrests which they had not made. Among the 406 real arrests, more than half of those arrested (230) were women, and most were never implicated in trafficking at all.
Of the 406 real arrests, 153 had been released weeks before the police announced the success of the operation: 106 of them without any charge at all and 47 after being cautioned for minor offences. Most of the remaining 253 were not accused of trafficking: 73 were charged with immigration breaches; 76 were eventually convicted of non-trafficking offences involving drugs, driving or management of a brothel; others died, absconded or disappeared off police records.
Although police described the operation as "the culmination of months of planning and intelligence-gathering from all those stakeholders involved", the reality was that, during six months of national effort, they found only 96 people to arrest for trafficking, of whom 67 were charged.
Forty-seven of those never made it to court.
Only 22 people were finally prosecuted for trafficking, including two women who had originally been "rescued" as supposed victims. Seven of them were acquitted. The end result was that, after raiding 822 brothels, flats and massage parlours all over the UK, Pentameter finally convicted of trafficking a grand total of only 15 men and women.
Police claimed that Pentameter used the international definition of sex trafficking contained in the UN's Palermo protocol, which involves the use of coercion or deceit to transport an unwilling man or woman into prostitution. But, in reality, Pentameter used a very different definition, from the UK's 2003 Sexual Offences Act, which makes it an offence to transport a man or woman into prostitution even if this involves assisting a willing sex worker.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
"
Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry Laura María Agustín Zed Books
Most migrant women, including those in the sex industry, have made a clear decision, says a new study, to leave home and take their chances abroad. They are not "passive victims" in need of "saving" or sending back by western campaigners. Rather, frequently, they are headstrong and ambitious women who migrate in order to escape "small-town prejudices, dead-end jobs, dangerous streets and suffocating families". Shocking as it might seem to the feminist social workers, caring police people and campaigning journalists who make up what Agustín refers to as the "rescue industry", she has discovered that some poor migrant women "like the idea of being found beautiful or exotic abroad, exciting desire in others".
Yet, having researched trafficking and sex workers' experiences for the past five years, both academically and through fieldwork in Latin America and Asia, she concludes that the figures are based on "sweeping generalisations" and frequently on "wild speculation"." Most of the writing and activism [on trafficking] does not seem to be based on empirical research, even when produced by academics," she notes. Many of the authors rely on "media reports" and "statistics published with little explanation of methodology or clarity about definitions".
Agustín points out that some anti-trafficking activists depend on numbers produced by the CIA "
http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/03/sex-women-trafficking-agustin
Of course there ARE millions of economic migrants - who are often "trafficked" - working long, difficult, boring, often dangerous hours in fields and factories, to provide the masses of the 1st world with the cheap food and consumer goods they are accustomed to, but it's much harder for Puritan Anti-Sex Leagues to get all over-excited about that.
(*Just like the unfounded, fantastical bullshit "Satanic child abuse*" witch-hunts of the 80s and 90s that generated enormous amounts of moral-outrage, fear, loathing and persecutionhttp://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CAF17.htm)
Awesomely, it turns out that only a very few people are trafficked in contrast with those who chose sex work.
And all those tens of thousands of trafficked workers you've heard about? No evidence was found of their existence. It was unfounded scaremongering.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8324/
"Stop this illicit trade in bullshit stories
Apparently 40,000 hookers will be trafficked to South Africa for the World Cup.
A study carried out by the Council of the European Union (CEU) and published in 2007 found: There was no sign whatsoever of the alleged 40,000 prostitutes/forced prostitues a figure repeatedly reported who were to be brought to Germany for the 2006 World Cup. Far from 40,000 enslaved women trussed up in sex sheds, the CEU report said the German authorities, having spent millions of Euros and thousands of hours of police time on the lookout for trafficked women, found only five cases of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation in relation to the 2006 World Cup."
More:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/2850/
Following an ENORMOUS 6-month nationwide brothel-raiding exercise (operation Pentameter) in the UK, only 15 people were convicted of trafficking offences.
i.e. trafficking is a vanishingly small problem in terms of numbers of people involved, in the UK.
"The analysis reveals that 10 of the 55 police forces never found anyone to arrest. And 122 of the 528 arrests announced by police never happened: they were wrongly recorded either through honest bureaucratic error or apparent deceit by forces trying to chalk up arrests which they had not made. Among the 406 real arrests, more than half of those arrested (230) were women, and most were never implicated in trafficking at all.
Of the 406 real arrests, 153 had been released weeks before the police announced the success of the operation: 106 of them without any charge at all and 47 after being cautioned for minor offences. Most of the remaining 253 were not accused of trafficking: 73 were charged with immigration breaches; 76 were eventually convicted of non-trafficking offences involving drugs, driving or management of a brothel; others died, absconded or disappeared off police records.
Although police described the operation as "the culmination of months of planning and intelligence-gathering from all those stakeholders involved", the reality was that, during six months of national effort, they found only 96 people to arrest for trafficking, of whom 67 were charged.
Forty-seven of those never made it to court.
Only 22 people were finally prosecuted for trafficking, including two women who had originally been "rescued" as supposed victims. Seven of them were acquitted. The end result was that, after raiding 822 brothels, flats and massage parlours all over the UK, Pentameter finally convicted of trafficking a grand total of only 15 men and women.
Police claimed that Pentameter used the international definition of sex trafficking contained in the UN's Palermo protocol, which involves the use of coercion or deceit to transport an unwilling man or woman into prostitution. But, in reality, Pentameter used a very different definition, from the UK's 2003 Sexual Offences Act, which makes it an offence to transport a man or woman into prostitution even if this involves assisting a willing sex worker.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
"
Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry Laura María Agustín Zed Books
Most migrant women, including those in the sex industry, have made a clear decision, says a new study, to leave home and take their chances abroad. They are not "passive victims" in need of "saving" or sending back by western campaigners. Rather, frequently, they are headstrong and ambitious women who migrate in order to escape "small-town prejudices, dead-end jobs, dangerous streets and suffocating families". Shocking as it might seem to the feminist social workers, caring police people and campaigning journalists who make up what Agustín refers to as the "rescue industry", she has discovered that some poor migrant women "like the idea of being found beautiful or exotic abroad, exciting desire in others".
Yet, having researched trafficking and sex workers' experiences for the past five years, both academically and through fieldwork in Latin America and Asia, she concludes that the figures are based on "sweeping generalisations" and frequently on "wild speculation"." Most of the writing and activism [on trafficking] does not seem to be based on empirical research, even when produced by academics," she notes. Many of the authors rely on "media reports" and "statistics published with little explanation of methodology or clarity about definitions".
Agustín points out that some anti-trafficking activists depend on numbers produced by the CIA "
http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/03/sex-women-trafficking-agustin
Of course there ARE millions of economic migrants - who are often "trafficked" - working long, difficult, boring, often dangerous hours in fields and factories, to provide the masses of the 1st world with the cheap food and consumer goods they are accustomed to, but it's much harder for Puritan Anti-Sex Leagues to get all over-excited about that.
(*Just like the unfounded, fantastical bullshit "Satanic child abuse*" witch-hunts of the 80s and 90s that generated enormous amounts of moral-outrage, fear, loathing and persecutionhttp://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CAF17.htm)
