MP Joy Smith Responds to Sex Industry’s Threats of Recruitment

Joy Smith, Member of Parliament for Kildonan St. Paul, wrote the following article in response to the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada’s (AEAC) threat to target high school students for recruitment to their strip clubs.
The war against human traffickers that prey on our youth is now out in the open.

Those profiting from the recruitment of Canadian women and girls into the sex trade have gone public through newspapers with their strategy of targeting Canadian high school students since they can no longer import young women from abroad to sexually exploit. 

It is no surprise that the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada (AEAC) is upset with the recent initiatives to close a loop hole of human trafficking in Canada. A source of income for strip club owners is being cut off and they are angry.

Yet teachers and parents are also furious that the AEAC would target their youth for sexual exploitation.

Tim Lambrinos, executive director of the AEAC, claims he represents 38,000 strippers, 28% of whom are students. He portrays his role as helping youth pay for university. In reality, he is the spokesperson for an industry that makes millions through luring students into the adult sexual entertainment industry.

Many of these victims are terrified to talk about the reality of their experiences, and are effectively muzzled by coaching, manipulation and abuse. They are trained to take violence against them and not to bring police attention to the clubs. Ask Natasha Falle, Timea Nagy, or the hundreds of other victims who have fallen prey to the modern day slave trade. They will tell the real story.

Take Sharon, a young Canadian teenager, who described how her predator, her boyfriend, promised to take care of her and love her forever. After isolating her from her family and friends, he dramatically changed. He sold her on the sex market. Her life was a living hell until she was eventually too sick to profit her owner. Then she was discarded and left to die.

While Sharon’s pimp worked in secret, this week the key players in Canadian strip clubs and escort services publicly boasted of their strategy to target teenagers in high schools. With explicit literature written to minors about peeling off their clothes and promises of earning huge sums of money these individuals brazenly recruit our youth. I commend the Vancouver School Board for its swift refusal to entertain recruitment by strip clubs in its schools.

All around the globe, including right here in Canada, primarily women and girls are forced into sexual exploitation in the sex industry through coercion, threats, deception, or fraud. Police regularly find underage girls working in Canadian strip clubs. The average age of entry into prostitution in Canada is between 12 and 14 years of age. It’s impossible to believe that these young girls and boys are making a rational choice to sell their bodies to 20-40 men a night. Each victim can earn their “owner” as much as $280,800 annually, as reported by the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada.

Those who fall victim to human trafficking are not just the most vulnerable children, but are from every demographic. Natasha Falle came from a respectable Calgary family, and became a prostitute shortly before her 15th birthday. She was forced to recruit other victims through glamorizing prostitution and concealing the violent experiences—focusing on the promise of huge paydays and quick money. Natasha eventually escaped from that brutal world and founded an organization (SexTrade101) to rescue the very girls she used to recruit.

Prostitution, strip clubs, and massage parlours all share a common thread—the owners are making big bucks through the sexual “services” of young victims. Timea Nagy, the founder of “Walk With Me,” an organization dedicated to rehabilitating victims of human trafficking, first came to Canada from Eastern Europe on a sex trade temporary foreign worker visa.

When she arrived in Canada, she was manipulated and coerced into stripping. During those three months as a stripper, she was repeatedly raped by her agents, forced to have sex with the club’s clients and threatened with death.

Timea's story is not unique. There are thousands of victims, like Sharon, Natasha, and Timea, who have been lured and abducted into modern day slavery in Canada.

Canadians must send a strong message to the pimps and the owners of strip clubs and escort services that our children will not be bought or sold.

Prostitution profiteers silencing rescuers?

Here's a story that has newspaper and magazine publishers salivating.

A Salvation Army campaign against human trafficking that depicts prostitutes as slaves and victims of brutal violence isn't sitting well with some people here in Lotusland.

The Sally Ann recently launched a campaign called “Truth Isn’t Sexy” with graphic images of women being throttled or having their heads bashed against a sidewalk. The images can be seen around Metro Vancouver on billboards, in public washrooms and on transit shelters.

The Vancouver Sun recently published this article quoting a shill spokeswoman for a group called the Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group, who claims the campaign is “misleading, debasing to women and nothing short of sensational.”

Hello? What is misleading or sensational about the notion that prostitution is debasing to women? However, vested interests would like us to think it's a viable career choice ... vested interests who profit from debased and demoralized women trapped in the lifestyle.

Of course, those interests would have us believe that most "sex trade workers" do it by choice. According to this article in Macleans magazine, a spokeswoman for another Vancouver-based "prostitution advocacy group" called FIRST said that that "sex trade workers have been hurt by the campaign" and wants the Salvation Army to "draw a greater distinction between victims of trafficking and those who choose to work in the sex trade."

Right. The Salvation Army does a terrible disservice to women by trying to prevent them from making a "career choice" in which they are very likely to end up in a "work" situation like this ... one highly doubtful that anyone would choose willingly.

You'd think that newspapers and magazines might actually run those Salvation Army ads for free as a public service. But on second thought, that's pretty naive. Business is bad for publishers these days. Very bad. Sex sells, and so does controversy ... so it would be out of the question to pass up the opportunity to publish articles containing both components. What could fit the bill better than pitting good people trying to rescue victimized women from the street against self-appointed "representatives" of prostitutes saying they object to the imagery ... and the notion that prostitution is not a desirable career choice for women?

Who has more to lose when women leave the streets, or stay away from them, than pimps and human traffickers... the ultimate capitalist exploiters?

So what are the chances they'd consider bankrolling a few "prostitution advocacy groups" and offering a nice incentive to a few well-spoken "sex trade workers" to be their spokeswomen?

I'd say fair to middling. Because, if you were a sex-trade worker, wouldn't you rather make money by talking to reporter than servicing a creepy john? And if you were a pimp or human trafficker, wouldn't you be willing to make that small investment to protect the revenues that provide your nice cushy lifestyle?

As for the newspapers and magazines, they probably can't afford to pay reporters enough danger pay to do serious investigative journalism into who runs these "prostitution advocacy groups."

So all we can do in the meantime is draw our own conclusions.

Justice at last - but just a drop in the ocean of pedophilia

Finally some justice for East European kids victimized by creepy "sex tourists" from North America.

A US customs agent, a single mother, managed to put away two predophiles who preyed on innocent children in Eastern Europe.

One of them liked "violent sex with virgins."

Well lah de dah. Great for the pr--k enjoying it. Not so great for the virgin whose whole life was destroyed in a matter of minutes by some scumbag getting his rocks off.

But the immediate self-gratification of guys with money seems to be a higher priority for a large segment of humanity than the dignity of women and children and the sanctity of their bodies. How else can you explain the dirtbag's wife pleading for leniency 'on behalf of their children"?

Good grief. If I found out I was married to a pedophile, he'd never see those kids again.

The reason pedophilia and human trafficking seem like such insurmountable issues is because so many prefer to look the other way than demand accountability from the perpetrators.

Thank God for those who do demand it.

That American customs agent is one tough cookie with amazing levels of determination, resolve and integrity. And that's just for starters.

She also showed a lot of class when she apologized to one of the victims on behalf of her country for the abuse she suffered. There are a helluva lot more apologies due from this part of the world... from both the perpetrators, and their enablers.

Let's hope this story is a harbinger of an avalanche of similar convictions.

Full story here.

Canadians trying to help combat AIDS in Ukraine

This article raises the question of how much money, not to mention human suffering, could be saved if "sex tourists" from other parts of the world stayed home, or at least kept their pants zipped up whenever they are near a woman in Ukraine.

Not that it's likely to happen, of course. Just saying.

Meanwhile, until that unlikely day, people who are more responsible and caring can only do what they can to help alleviate the suffering caused by the more primitive and less progressive humans among us.

Dr. James Blanchard, director of the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Global Public Health, and Wendy Schettler, head of public health programs with Winnipeg’s International Centre for Infectious Diseases, are in Ukraine this week to help develop a model HIV/AIDS prevention program there in partnership with UNICEF. ...

A 2008 report by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and UNAIDS estimated the number of people in Ukraine living with AIDS had more than doubled since 2001 to 440,000. ...

Ukraine’s HIV epidemic was originally linked to intravenous drug use, but increasingly the infections have been transmitted through heterosexual intercourse and from pregnant mothers to their children. For female sex workers, the prevalence of HIV is 10 times the general population.

Full article here.

Study on sexual exploitation of children in Canada

It is very encouraging to see government officials taking the issue of human trafficking and sexual exploitation seriously.

Here is a letter from a Manitoba MP who has an outstanding track record in working on progressive legislation:

Dear friends,

I would like to bring to your attention a study being undertaken by the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights on the sexual exploitation of children in Canada. This study is currently scheduled to be completed by March 3, 2010.

If you or your organization would like to appear as a witness or make a submission, I would encourage you to contact the clerk of the committee, Adam Thompson. His contact information is as follows:

Phone: (613)990-6160
Fax: (613) 947-2104
Email: rights-droits@sen.parl.gc.ca

Mailing Address:
Senate Committee on Human Rights
The Senate of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada, K1A 0A4

Please note that witnesses will be chosen by the members of the committee’s steering committee. You can find a full list of committee members here.

I strongly believe that Canada must take significant steps to protect our children from exploitation and predators. This study is an excellent opportunity to make key policy recommendations that will result in better protection for our children.

Sincerely,
Joy Smith, M.P.
Kildonan – St. Paul
Chair of the Standing Committee of Health

If you can take part in this study please consider making a contribution.

Crashing western economy good news for "Natashas"?

I know some disagree with me about the connection I see between economic excess and sexual exploitation.

My reasoning has been that the drive behind the odious flesh trade can be attributed as much to the cavalier attitude of affluent pervs driving the demand as to the greedy thugs supplying that demand and reaping obscene (literal and figurative) profits.

Well, I guess time will tell if there is anything to my theory. But, coincidentally, it seems that suddenly the banking industry has a little economic incentive to ditch its cavalier attitude, according to this article in MacLeans magazine on the "new frugality."

... Deutsche Bank recently informed managers it would no longer pay for visits to strip clubs.

“Deutsche Bank does not approve of any adult entertainments, and such expenditures will not be reimbursed,” said a memo obtained by the German magazine Der Spiegel. “The mood of the super rich is going to change during the next year from ‘How To Spend It’ to ‘How Not To Flaunt It,’ ” wrote Christopher Wood, an analyst with CLSA, in his newsletter Greed & Fear.

“Certain people, particularly the Russians, have not got the point yet. But the backlash is undoubtedly coming.”

Full article here. here.

18,000 women and children trafficked into UK sex trade

Articles like this are, sadly, hardly a surprise anymore. But they still make my blood boil.

Up to 18,000 females, including girls as young as 14, are working in brothels across Britain after being smuggled into the country to meet the booming demand for prostitutes.

Not that Canadians have the right to point fingers. It's going on right in my own fair city. In Vancouver, money-grubbing sexual exploiters have been trying to drum up public support for legalized brothels. A whack of Olympics sex maniacs will be needing to get their rocks off, and would have us believe we are obliged to provide prostitutes for their pleasure (and the exploiters' profit). But, I digress.

Mr Brain also revealed that a large number of residential properties were being used to sell sex (of the 822 premises raided, nearly 600 were private homes). "In some of the cases, neighbours have not suspected any kind of unusual activity," he said.

How's that?? My next-door neighbour knows when I sneeze. So if I were ever inclined to have an affair (I'm not, btw) I wouldn't dare. At least if I wanted it kept a secret. So what kind of neighbours living near a residential property being used to sell sex wouldn't "suspect any kind of unusual activity"? (Customers, maybe?)

Prostitution and people-trafficking is now the third most lucrative black-market trade in the world after gun-running and drugs-smuggling. It is being driven by growing demand for prostitutes in the UK, with websites promoting sex flourishing and local newspapers carrying advertisements for prostitutes. ...

And those newspapers accepting those ads use what excuse? Or does anyone bother to ask for one? If not, um, why on earth not?

Full article here.

My only question is, where are the feminist lobbyists? You'd think they might band together to fight the rampant sexual exploitation of these women and children. But, nary a peep out of them.

That's another thing that makes my blood boil. To paraphrase a saying: True evil is when good women do nothing.