My first encounter with DayOneRI was in January 2015 when they hosted a screening for the film “A Path Appears.”  Not only did I find the film to be unrealistic, I found it offered no solutions addressing the reasons so many of our youth are entering into “survival sex.” The organizers from DayOneRI were telling the audience stigmatizing myths, including how the average age of entry into the sex trade was 13 and how there were 300 thousand US children being exploited in the sex trade.

I took the time to explain to DayOneRI where these myths originated. I also pointed out that the majority of youths interviewed reported that they didn’t have pimps and that they taught each other how to find clients while avoiding police and social workers. These youths reported that they could not get the state of New York to provide them shelter or other vital services. I also pointed out that over 50 percent of these youths were boys.

DayOneRI admitted that they do not house any of the youth that they rescue through traumatic police raids and arrests. DayOneRI explained that the teens are placed back into foster homes and the majority of them just runaway again. They admitted that they didn’t have 1 bed to put a adult victim in, yet they seem obsessed with trying to find more victims and they seem to think providing free yoga classes will somehow change the plight of these teenagers.

The DayOneRI organizer then when on to suggest training postal workers to spot residential brothels. I explained that the majority of sex workers are consenting adults, who work together to ensure their safety and that this could result in getting the women charged with trafficking and it could also cause immigrant women to be deported.

It became obvious to me that DayOneRI’s goal was to try to abolish prostitution, regardless of how many teenagers and women they put at risk. Training the public to profile women by race has had really bad effects. These types of trainings are now mandatory to TSA workers and they have resulted in Korean and Asian women being detained at airports.

My next encounter with DayOneRI was in April 2015, when the organization hosted a conference for clinicians, educators, advocates and law enforcement to discuss the progress of a statewide trafficking task force. My friend and I paid $40 dollars each to get into the event and we found that DayOneRI was still peddling these same myths.  They even had a sign that said that there were 300,000 US kids being exploited in the US. I raised my hand and told the audience that DayOneRI had already been informed about these false stats.

During the Q&A, a women asked the DayOneRI panel, “How would we stop the cycle of a 19 year old boy who has been released from jail for trafficking?” The DayOneRI presenters responded that, “these boys don’t bond with their mothers during the first 2 year of life and become sexual predators.”

I almost fell out of my seat.

Under current trafficking laws, anyone who helps a minor engage in prostitution is classified as a trafficker, even if they are a minor themselves. In 2015 RI sentenced an eighteen year old boy to fifteen years in prison, and he will be required to register as a sex offender.  The boy was only seventeen when he was arrested and yet he was sentenced as a adult.

I wonder who was there to advocate for this boy.

Upon further research I have found that Safe Harbor Laws have failed to protect our youth straight across the board.

The trafficking panel featured Captain from the Providence Police Department. I explained to the Captain that COYOTE is a group of sex workers and trafficking victims and how I had just interviewed a sex worker who told me that she was attacked and choked out by a man posing as a client and that she didn’t report it and now she has survivors guilt because she thinks this man may have murdered Ashley Masi in March 2015 in Providence.

The Captain responded by saying that they would give the witness protection if she came forward. I am pretty sure he doesn’t even have the authority to authorize witness protection; those decisions usually are made by the attorney general.  I then told the Captain that police officers have been know to have sex with women and then arrest them for prostitution. The Captain responded, “not true” but then we went on to say that this did happen in Hawaii, NY, PA and many other states, but not in Rhode Island.

I emailed DayOne at least a dozen times, providing them with research and policies that could be put in place to keep our youth out of the sex industry, reduce sex trafficking and reduce violence toward sex workers.

They did not respond to my emails.

I have done a lot of research on the Polaris Project, launched in RI through a student at Brown University. I found they were also providing the media with false stat’s and they publicly admitted that they did not provide any direct services to victims. I have documented the effects of Polaris Project in Rhode Island here.  Since then Polaris Project has retracted that the average age of entry into prostitution is thirteen and is more likely to be seventeen.

The Polaris Project receives $3 and 7 million in annual funding. Their co-founder, Katherine Chong, went on to work for the  U. Department of Trafficking, while her husband, Bradley Myles, now makes $150 thousand a year as the CEO of the Polaris Project. The Project is intended to help create protocols for Homeland Security to identify trafficking. So far, these have turned into “how to spot a hooker” trainings.

They have taught the TSA to profile Korean, Asian and Chinese women, and they are training hotel staff to report people that have too many condoms. They also train library staff to spot trafficking victims who come to the library. This caused Ohio to pass a law requiring hair salon workers to take mandatory trafficking training. All these programs are promoted by trafficking NGOs as it allows them to provide ineffective and stigmatizing services, trainings, while they pander to the media about all the wonderful services they offer trafficking victims.

Most people enter the sex industry to escape poverty, yet none of these NGOs offer permanent affordable housing, jobs that pay a living wage or access to a higher education without debt. The US government is funding trafficking NGOs at over $686 million a year.

I think it’s time to stop the anti trafficking scam, and divert those funds to our youth and women living in extreme poverty.

[Part Two tomorrow]

In August 2015 Amnesty International voted to adopt a policy to protect the human rights of sex workers. The resolution recommends that Amnesty International develop a policy that supports the full decriminalization of all aspects of consensual sex work. The policy will also call on states to ensure that sex workers enjoy full and equal legal protection from exploitation, trafficking, and violence.

“We recognize that this critical human rights issue is hugely complex and that is why we have addressed this issue from the perspective of international human rights standards. We also consulted with our global movement to take on board different views from around the world,” said Amnesty’s Salil Shetty.

Amnesty’s research and consultation was carried out in the development of this policy in the past two years concluded that this was the best way to defend sex workers’ human rights and lessen the risk of abuse and violations they face.

The violations that sex workers can be exposed to include physical and sexual violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, extortion and harassment, human trafficking, forced HIV testing and medical interventions. They can also be excluded from health care and housing services and other social and legal protection.

Amnesty’s policy has drawn from an extensive evidence base from sources including UN agencies, such as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. We have also conducted research in four countries.

The consultation included sex worker groups, groups representing survivors of prostitution, abolitionist organizations, feminist and other women’s rights representatives, LGBTI activists, anti- trafficking agencies and HIV/AIDS organizations.

Amnesty International considers human trafficking abhorrent in all of its forms, including sexual exploitation, and should be criminalized as a matter of international law. This is explicit in this new policy and all of Amnesty International’s work.

In 2003 New Zealand passed the “Prostitution Reform Act,” which decriminalized all aspects of adult prostitution. Upon a 5 year review, New Zealand has just about rid the sex industry of exploitation. Sex Workers reported that they had better relationships with the police.

It is crucial that sex workers can work together and share work space to ensure their safety. Many sex workers, utilize 3rd party support staff to help keep them safe. Under current US laws 3rd party support staff are legally classified as traffickers. Sex Workers need “equal protection under the law”. Sex Workers need to be able to report violence and exploitation to the police, without fearing that they are in danger of being arrested and further persecution.

Criminalization of prostitution is a failed policy. It hasn’t stopped anyone from “buying or selling” sex, but it has caused a lot of collateral damage. From our failed “Safe Harbor Laws” to the insane Homeland Security training of hotel staff, who have been told to report people who have too many condoms. We need to ask, where are the big pimps and traffickers?

Could it be that the majority of US Sex Worker are under their own control? Even the minors interviewed in Surviving the streets of NY: Experiences of LGBTQ Youth, YMSM & YWSW Engaged in Survival Sex study by the Urban Institute, say that “they did not have pimps and they taught each other how to find clients, while avoiding police and social workers..

To add insult to injury, researchers have found that “the biggest threat to underaged Sex Workers is the police.” Jenny Heineman, a sociologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas worked with the federally funded Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children program, in collaboration with research teams across the U.S. Says “More than half of the young people I interviewed stated that they regularly perform sex acts for police officers in exchange for their not being arrested”.

In the Special Report: Money and Lies in Anti-Human Trafficking NGOs we find that the US is funding US trafficking NGOs, over 600 million a year to “create awareness on human trafficking” yet these NGOs do not provide any direct services to trafficking victims or sex workers.

We can do better than this which is why I support New Hampshire’s House-Bill 1614.