Dealing with Prostitution: The Swedes vs. Dutch

Last month, I got together with people from my church, Church of the Resurrection, who want to stop prostitution and sex trafficking here at home and around the world.

We listened to a fascinating presentation by Jennifer, the former Executive Director of Nea Zoi (Lost Coin) Ministries in Greece, who compared the way the Swedes and the Dutch have dealt with these issues in their countries.

In the Netherlands, prostitution was legalized in 2000. Since legalization, the country has seen a 25% rise in prostitution overall. Although the purpose of legalization was to regulate and tax the industry, in fact only 8% of prostitutes in the Netherlands are registered while 92% are unregistered. Illegal trafficking remains an issue, and poverty remains a factor in driving women into the sex trade.

Contrast this with Sweden!

In Sweden, prostitution is no longer illegal, but purchasing sex is a crime. Prostitutes are not arrested; instead, they are given counseling. Their clients, however, are arrested and prosecuted. Furthermore, if a Swedish man is caught overseas purchasing sex, he will be prosecuted in Sweden when he returns home. The Swedes have seen a drop in prostitution and prostitution-related crimes.

If only the wisdom of the Swedish model could be brought to other countries!

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

www.thepriceofsex.org

Recently, my friend and fellow poet, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, wrote a poem from the point of view of an Eastern European woman who was trafficked to the Middle East. When I read it, I vividly remembered the women I met when I was in Moldova and their stories. 70% of orphan girls are trafficked out of Moldova and sold for sex.

Mimi Chakarova is an investigative journalist who is finding the women who have survived this sex trafficking nightmare and creating documentaries that tell their stories. They’re at www.priceofsex.org.

What will it take for us to work together and put an end to the world-wide sex-trade?

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

Dawn Herzog Jewell: Stopping the Global Sex Trade

Last weekend, I met Dawn Herzog Jewell, the author of Escaping the Devil’s Bedroom: Sex Trafficking, Global Prostitution, and the Gospel’s Transforming Power. Dawn’s book is an outstanding resource for anyone wanting to learn more about this injustice and how to fight it. I recommend it.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

The End of Slavery

International Justice Mission has created a new documentary film called, “The End of Slavery: The Battle for Justice in Our Time.” The film is intended to educate the American public about the problem of international human trafficking and the enslavement of men, women, and children all over the world, especially in situations of forced prostitution. To order a copy of the film, click:

THE END OF SLAVERY

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

Stopping Prostitution: Strategies That Work

Can we stop prostitution in Chicago? Yes, we can. Here’s how:

Eliminate advertising.

In March 2009, our Cook County Sheriff sued Craig’s list to shut down its exotic services listing. Why is such a listing even legal? The sheriff shouldn’t have to sue to get it off the Internet. And what about the billboards for gentlemen’s clubs all over the city? Take them down.

Educate clients.

The prevalence of multimedia pornography has created a fantasy sex life in the minds of thousands of American men. When these men seek out prostitutes, they are looking to fulfill those fantasies in the flesh.

They are not thinking the woman on the street has been kidnapped, forcibly raped and beaten, coerced into sex from as early as age twelve, infected with AIDS or STDs, addicted to alcohol and drugs, made a witness to the murder of her friends, and forced to give whatever money she earns to her pimp, keeping little or nothing for herself, in exchange for trying to get her basic needs for food, clothes, and shelter met. Yet this is the reality on the streets, not the pornographic fantasy.

When former prostitutes teach court-ordered classes that educate the men who have been arrested for paying for sex on the streets, the recidivism rate drops.

Arrest and prosecute clients, pimps, and club owners to the full extent of the law.

Currently, prostitution is illegal in most states. However, most arrests are of prostitutes, not clients, pimps, or club owners. The supply of impoverished, abused girls who can be coerced into prostitution is practically endless in America as well as overseas. The law needs to concentrate on the demand — the clients — as well as the delivery mechanism: pimps and clubs.

Penalties must become more severe: raise solicitation from a misdemeanor to a felony, increase fines from $500 to $1500 for a first solicitation offense ($3000 for a second offense), and include mandatory education and service projects to which jail time is the only alternative.

When the cost of the crime goes up, the rate of the crime goes down.

Offer faith-based rehabilitation programs in prisons.

Often criminals go into prison bad and come out worse. Prison ends up being the social network for prostitutes, pimps, and others involved in the sex trade and other criminal activities. So prison has to do more than punish. It has to offer restorative justice that includes education and rehabilitation.

Studies show that faith-based rehabilitation programs like Prison Fellowship make the greatest impact on the recidivism rate because they encourage prisoners to willingly commit to change and give them hope in the love and the power of God to help them live a different life.

Create affordable, accessible, widely available rehabilitation programs for prostitutes.

Women coerced into the sex trade as teenagers, who have experienced the trauma of sexual assault and drug addiction, need food, clothes, housing, medical attention, counseling, education, job training, and child care. They need provision until they can become strong and independent enough to provide for themselves in healthy ways. Without the support structure, women will reenter the sex trade just to survive.

Intervention requires partnerships between government and nonprofit agencies, including dedicated faith communities, who will coordinate resources to change our culture.

Educate the public.

I’ve heard many people say we ought to legalize prostitution, regulate it, and tax it. Few people seem to understand how ineffective this approach truly is. With the legalization of prostitution comes a whole culture of crime that costs taxpayers paying for the resulting police, prison, court, and medical costs.

Worse still, legalization makes the government the biggest pimp on the block. This paves our streets and funds our schools with the bodies of human beings. It legalizes slavery. We once fought a war to eliminate slavery in America, but now it is back in the form of prostitution and sex trafficking. Is this the kind of culture we want to live in?

I’ve never met a little boy who said, “When I grow up, I want to be a pimp.” I’ve never met a little girl who said, “When I grow up, I want to be a prostitute.” What loving parents would want their children devastated by this kind of horror? Children and teenagers wind up in the sex trade because we, as citizens, have not taken a stand against this evil.

It’s time to stop prostitution. Let’s use the strategies that work to do it.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

Emmaus Ministries Resources Handlist

Emmaus Ministries reaches out to men involved in prostitution in Chicago. On their website, they have compiled a useful handlist of Christian ministries serving those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction, sexual addition, internet pornography, sexual abuse histories, and other aspects of sexual brokenness. To download the list as a .pdf file, click below:

Emmaus Ministries Resources Handlist

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

Stopping Prostitution in Chicago

Every time I drive to the airport in Chicago, I see huge billboards and signs advertising so called “gentlemen’s clubs.” I pray for the women I see in those pictures — that they will be delivered and discover new life in Christ. I pray that the club “owners” will go bankrupt and that the club buildings will become churches. I pray that “customers” will lose the desire and the money to seek out these advertised “services” and that they will instead seek salvation, repentance, and redemption.

My most recent trip to Midway Airport made me want to find out who is actually intervening in the sex trade in Chicago to try to put an end to prostitution.

It turns out that a few years ago federal government identified 16 major metropolitan areas around the United States where the sex trade is a major problem. Chicago, like San Francisco and Las Vegas, is one of those cities. In response to federal pressure, Mayor Richard M. Daley took steps to respond in a new program. As part of the program, the Chicago police started to put the pictures of the “customers” of prostitutes on the police department program webpage at the time of their arrest so that social shame might curb some of the demand for sex in the city. Then, in March 2009 this year, Cook County Sherriff Tom Dart sued Chicago’s Craigslist to get the company to shut down its “exotic services” listing. But a DePaul University law school report with interviews of five former city pimps showed just how complicit other Chicago police officers have been with pimps in the sex trade, taking money and only occasionally arresting pimps or prostitutes for show (see page 6).

In 2008, another valuable report based on interviews of 100 prostitutes in Chicago was published, which clearly reveals the need for intervention and redemption efforts in the city.

Among other things, the report estimates that there are between 16,000 and 25,000 prostitutes in Chicago. Approximately 1/3 of the women interviewed were coerced into the trade by a pimp when they were between the ages of 12 and 15. They were vulnerable to such coercion because they had run away from homes where they were being abused, often sexually, and neglected. On the streets, at their young ages and with few skills, they sold sex in exchange for survival: for food, clothing, and shelter. As the DePaul University Law School report interviewing pimps shows, the prostitutes typically turned over all the money they made to their pimps. Furthermore, some of their pimps introduced them to drugs, as a way to control them (though this backfired when crack cocaine hit the streets). So the majority of Chicago prostitutes struggle with drug and alcohol addiction as well as severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress from the violence they have experienced in the sex trade.

I have learned of at least one new program designed to help prostitutes in Chicago. Christian Community Health Center sponsors the program, called Footprints, and it involves helping women get their basic needs for food, clothes, and shelter met while simultaneously helping them to break their addictions, gain education, learn job skills, and recover physically and emotionally so that they can live independently. The program can be reached at 773-533-5600.

Of course, Emmaus Ministries continues to intervene in the lives of male prostitutes in Chicago, and I continue to keep them in my prayers.

I ask you to pray with me. As I have read these reports and begun learning about the situation in Chicago, I see that we need to pray for:

* an end to prostitution in Chicago
*more ministries to arise to intervene in the sex trade to bring club owners, pimps, and prostitutes to Christ Jesus
*an end to poverty and childhood sexual abuse that makes boys vulnerable to the “glamour” of pimping and girls vulnerable to the “security” of prostitution
*police officers who have integrity and justice to guard the streets of Chicago
*police officers to refuse bribes and any form of money meant to make them look away from crimes in the sex trade
*complete emotional, physical, spiritual, and psychological healing for men and women leaving the sex trade
*the application of systemic strategies for reducing and eliminating the demand for sex by “customers,” especially white men with money identified by Chicago pimps as their primary clientele.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

August/September 2009 Update

In August, I met a very courageous woman, a rape survivor, who has since become a friend. She had been attacked by two military men in the hotel where she was staying in New York. Another man from the hotel was key in identifying the two perpetrators who are now being held on charges that will be deliberated upon in military courts, where the penalties for crimes are much more severe than in the civil courts. This woman’s story reminded me of the tension between violence and honor in the military.

Rape is far more prevalent in the military than is publicly acknowledged. In fact, in March of this year, I met the poet Brian Turner, who served seven years in the military and authored Here, Bullet, and he spoke of the military hospitals in California with wards specifically for treatment of female soldiers suffering from posttraumatic stress as a result of being raped by their fellow American soldiers or officers while serving overseas. A smaller and even quieter ward is reserved for male soldiers who were raped by men as well.

I have been praying for my friend, her court case, and for the men and women of the US military who have acted out sexual violence against others or been victimized by it.

I’ve also been praying for an end to prostitution and sex trafficking in Chicago, especially for the closure of the so-called “gentlemen’s clubs.” I have been doing some research into ministries that seek to help the estimated 16,000-25,000 prostitutes in Chicago. I have been thankful to discover the program called Footprints sponsored by the Christian Community Health Center, which I will write more about in my next post.

At the same time, I’ve been doing research on the prevalence of incest in cases of childhood sexual abuse as preparation for writing an article on the subject for Moody Bible College Professor Andrew Schmutzer and his book, Ministering to the Sexually Abused. I have been learning many useful things that I hope to synthesize in my essay. The essay and the book as a whole are intended to help ministers, counselors, and others working in church and para-church serving people who have experienced abuse. I continue my work on my own Testimony as well.

Just to follow up on the case of Johnie Dale Damron from previous updates: In Adams County, Ohio, Damron had a pre-trial hearing on August 20, and on September 10, he was convicted of failing to register as a sex offender after he moved to West Virginia. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison, but since he had already served time in jail while delaying his court dates, he will be released on December 12, nine weeks from today. He is currently being held at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, Ohio and will not be transferred to prison due to the shortness of his remaining sentence. He will be required to pay for all court costs, to have his DNA tested to see if it matches any evidence stored in a government database of unsolved sex crimes, and upon release, to register as a sex offender wherever he chooses to live. He is currently registered in the Ohio Sex Offender registry where his status shows as “incarcerated.” His information can be accessed by entering his name, Damron, and county of commitment, Adams.

On a related note, I filed a report with the Oakland Police Department detailing the sexual abuse I experienced as a child at my father’s hands in 1978. As I already knew, the statute of limitations does not allow the police to investigate this matter or make an arrest nor does it allow the courts to prosecute. However, the officer I communicated with has forwarded my report to Child Protective Services (CPS) in Solano County, California. My counselor, who is a mandated state reporter in cases of sexual abuse, has similarly filed a report with CPS. I do not expect anything to come of these reports due to the amount of time that has passed since the original abuse, but I have followed JSASSN protocol in filing the reports, and they may prove to be useful references in the future.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

HUSH by Nicole Braddock Bromley

I first heard Nicole Braddock Bromley speak in January 2006 in Edman Chapel at Wheaton College. With courage and grace, she shared her testimony of surviving childhood sexual abuse and incest at the hands of her stepfather. Part of her story is about her mother’s powerful role in rescuing and removing her from danger.

When Nicole told her mother what her stepfather was doing, her mother believed her and immediately left the home with her daughter. Nicole’s stepfather was an apparently outstanding member of the local church community in leadership, and no one, including his own wife, realized what he was doing to his daughter in secret. He successfully deceived everyone around him. But when the truth came out, he lost his cool. He came after his wife and daughter when they left and tried to harm them. By God’s grace, they remained safe and protected. Later, tragically, the man did not repent and change his ways but instead took his own life, ashamed of the truth that had been made public.

Nicole’s story makes it clear that mothers can be deceived just like everyone else when it comes to the abuse their husbands are perpetrating against their children. Once they learn the truth, mothers have a choice about how to respond to it. They can believe their young and innocent children and courageously take action. Or they can retreat into fear and denial, blaming the child who was victimized instead of holding their husbands, the perpetrators, responsible for their sinful actions and criminal behavior.

The courage it takes to believe should not be underestimated. A married woman derives much of her sense of identity from her husband, her financial security is tied to his, and her emotional health and well-being is supposed to be reinforced by her husband but is being drastically undercut when he is sexually involved with their children. However, many mothers do have this courage. As I recently read in the book Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Politics, when men are brought up on criminal charges for childhood sexual assault, it is usually because their wives had the courage to report their husbands’ devastating actions to the police and follow through in the courts.

The author of Rocking the Cradle, a feminist without religious affiliation, is very clear in her opinions and assessment of the way that mothers have been maligned by psychologists and the justice system. In her view, which is based on her research into court cases dealing with childhood sexual abuse and their outcomes, mothers are called passive by psychologists and often blamed by the courts for failure to protect their children from their abusive husbands. The children are sometimes removed to child protective custody rather than given to either of their parents in such cases. Sometimes the mother who reported is labeled “crazy” by her husband’s attorneys, and as a divorce proceedings go through, the children are given to the fathers who abuse instead of the mothers who dare to report. The situation in the courts can be very bleak indeed, especially when abusive fathers fight for themselves so adroitly there.

Not all mothers are protective. Sadly, some are profoundly emotionally unhealthy and cannot deal with the truth when it is revealed. They may have been abused themselves as children. For it is a strange but consistently observed psychological pattern: many sexually abused girls grow up to marry abusive husbands. How can women who never resolved their own childhood abuse experiences truly help their own children when they suffer the same fate?

Other mothers who try to protect cannot because of circumstances beyond on their control. Children who have been abused by their fathers inevitably experience feelings of rage not only at the abusers, their fathers, but their mothers, too, partly because they’re reacting emotionally from a child’s innocent belief that their mothers could or should be all powerful — as they are in the child’s life but aren’t in the real world.

Abuse has a terrifying and destructive impact on entire families, but Nicole’s story is one of hope for children trapped in incestuously abusive homes. Since statistics suggest that approximately 80% of childhood sexual abuse cases involve a father or stepfather perpetrator and a daughter victim, it is clear that the mother’s response to the situation can make the pivotal difference in her child’s immediate rescue and long-term recovery.

To read Nicole’s story, visit her website or pick up a copy of her book.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

Identity Ministry and Irene Beany’s Story

I recently read Irene Beany’s story of recovery from horrifying ritualized sexual abuse. It’s a miracle she’s alive today. Her ministry, “Identity Ministry,” has some close parallels with JSASSN International. To learn more, visit:

http://www.identityministry.org/Story.html

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International