Category — Sex Trafficking

The Village Voice recently published an article on what it described as the exaggerated numbers used by the anti-trafficking movement to garner attention and federal funds. The article focused on Ashton Kutcher and his “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” campaign as one example.

Within hours, a tennis-like sparring match had erupted between Kutcher and The Village Voice on Twitter. @AplusK faced off against the Village Voice on research methods, reputation, and defining modern day slavery.  Soon after, other voices emerged.  Amanda Kloer wrote this piece on Change.org and Maggie Neilson penned an article for The Huffington Post.

If you’re interested in reading additional sides of the debate you can view them here, here, here, or here.

Photo Credit: David Shankbone

We’re unleashing a new series on the North Star Blog: Tip Tuesday. Each Tuesday for the next few months, we will write about different types of human trafficking in the United States. We hope that you’ll tune in to learn the signs of these types of trafficking. [Read more →]

The brochure is available in English, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese

The issue of illegal brothels posing as legitimate massage parlors is tied to Polaris Project’s first moments as an organization.  Our founders, Katherine Chon and Derek Ellerman, became passionate about the issue of human trafficking after learning about one of these brothels in Rhode Island, which operated a couple blocks from their college apartments.  Over the past nine years, our organization has focused on combating all forms of human trafficking, but we’ve always maintained an expertise and understanding of this particular network. [Read more →]

Part I of this blog discussed two of the factors that played a significant role in the passing of anti-human trafficking legislation in the Commonwealth of Virginia: the Change makers and a bi-partisan coalition. In this entry, I will go on to discuss two equally important reasons for these monumental changes.

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In May of 2010, a pimp picked up a runaway sixteen year-old girl.  After giving her some marijuana and ecstasy he told her that he wanted her to engage in commercial sex.  She said no.  That night, when she returned to the apartment where she was staying, the pimp beat her up, bombarded her with threats, and then put her in his 1999 Mercedes Benz and drove her to a Holiday Inn.  There he led the visibly bruised, terrified child to the hotel room of Lawrence Taylor, a hall of fame ex-professional football player.  And what did Mr. Taylor do when she arrived at his door?  He paid $300 to rape her. [Read more →]

After her mother called 911, a 19-year-old girl was rescued from a hotel room where she had been held captive by four men, and forced to sell her body for sex to men who’d seen an advertisement on backpage.com. This happened in Maryland, just last month. In this case, the trafficking ring was uncovered, and the perpetrators arrested. But in many cases, the story unfolds in a different way. The girl may be too afraid to ask for help and in many cases law enforcement may not recognize it as a trafficking situation. The girl may be charged with prostitution, and simply put right back into the traffickers hands. This is the reason that Maryland law needs to change. [Read more →]

A few hours before the Polaris Japan Board Meeting on March 11, I received the following email from Shihoko, the Director of our Japan programs:

The biggest earthquake in Japanese history hit today.  No one was in the office and I was able to manage to hold TVs and bookshelves.  Things fell on floor.  Transportation is not function(al) at all in Tokyo, so there are so many people walking on street.  They should stay at office!  It is freezing tonight!… I will stay at office today and some of my friends (will) also use our office as shelter today. [Read more →]

Sex trafficking thrives when landlords comply, turn a blind eye, or fail to monitor how their properties are being used.  This was the central message behind the DC Stop Modern Day Slavery group’s online petition on Change.org that launched on Friday March 4, 2011.  More than 300 community members have signed the petition, calling for Jerry Schaeffer, the property owner of the four-story building at 1215 Connecticut Ave., NW, to take action by closing down a brothel disguised as a legitimate massage parlor on the fourth floor. [Read more →]

Human trafficking is a horrific crime that takes a full person and degrades them into a thing to be sold.  True assistance, the type I have seen Polaris Provide provide to our clients over the years, is the type that works to reverse the effects of this horrible experience by treating individuals with the utmost respect and dignity.

We take our value of empowerment very seriously in every stage of our response while helping a person out of a human trafficking situation throughout our involvement in their recovery.  Though we assist hundreds of victims of human trafficking every year, you will notice that we don’t have a lot of photos of victims on our website.   Why is that? [Read more →]

As a man working in the anti-trafficking movement, I see fellow men playing three roles in the world of sex trafficking: men who are pimps, men who are johns (I am a speaker at our local “John School”), and men who are anti-trafficking activists.  It is no wonder, that at a recent conference a woman named Wiveca Holst–an incredible Swedish woman’s rights activist who I admire a great deal–said to me with kind honesty, “no offense, but I don’t trust you.”  Without a shred of malice, she went on to explain how her years of experience working with male activists in the women’s rights movements have been checkered with a mix of well-meaning men making honest mistakes, men with outright poor intentions, and the occasional man who actually respected her as an equal. [Read more →]