Release and Response to DA Kamala and Her Release: Sex Panic, Trafficking...

Release and Response to DA Kamala and Release: Sex Panic, Trafficking and The Innocent Victims

For Immediate Release:
Published Article: Trafficking, Sex Panic and The Innocent Victims
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/07/22/EDGHGDRSV41.DTL
Appearing in: San Francisco Chronicle Op Ed
Date: Friday, July 22, 2005
Author: Director, Carol Leigh http://www.bayswan.org, bayswan.org
Contact: Telephone: 415-751-1659, carolleigh [at] bayswan.org; (alt phone)
415-314-8174


Activist and writer, Carol Leigh, is featured author in the San
Francisco Chronicle Open Forum asking readers to see through the "sex
slave melodrama" and consider the real lives, needs and challenges of
local massage establishment workers. After recent highly publicized
arrests in San Francisco massage parlors, Leigh reveals the
hypocrisies behind these rescue efforts.

"I am very pleased to have this opportunity to present an alternative
view of sex work and migration in the context of discourses on forced
labor and slavery, aka trafficking. In academic and human rights
circles there is a great deal of criticism of the anti-trafficking
strategies and perspectives of the US government, but this criticism
has received little notice in the media. The public is ready for
these complexities. They are ready to look squarely at the growing
criminalization of immigration, the scapegoating of prostitution and
sex workers and at the destructive and ineffective aspects of the US
anti-trafficking policies."


San Franciso District attorney Kamala is also featured in an Op-Ed
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/07/22/EDGTRDR4SH1.DTL)

from a different perspective.

"San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris is a feminist and a
progressive. She has demonstrated some support for justice for women
in the sex industry, although her portrayal of trafficking is
inaccurate, even contradicted by recent US government reports. For
example, she repeats the estimate of 50,000 people trafficked to the
United States this year. In fact recent US government statistics
contradict these estimates, as noted in a Hastings Women's Law
Journal article by Kathleen Kim ( HUMAN TRAFFICKING PRIVATE RIGHT OF
ACTION: CIVIL RIGHTS FOR TRAFFICKED PERSONS IN THE UNITED STATE,
Winter 2004) "The 2003 State Department Trafficking in Persons Report
approximated that 18,000 to 20,000 trafficked persons enter the
United States annually, while the 2004 Report reduced that estimate
to 14,500 to 17,500. Previous estimates placed the number of persons
trafficked to the United States on an annual basis closer to 50,000. "

Although District Attorney Harris champions current anti-trafficking
efforts, many legal experts have questioned the effectiveness of
anti-trafficking legislation. In an article from Stanford Law and
Policy Review, authors note that the protections offered in the US
Trafficking Victims Protection Act protect few:

"Many Victims, Few Protected...What is almost as disturbing is the
shockingly low numbers of victims that have been granted protection
in the more than three years since this broad anti-trafficking law
went into effect. Despite multi-million dollar programs, victim
identification has been extremely slow, and federal agencies have
recognized that they are not finding victims at an 'acceptable rate.'
There is a 'significant difference between the estimated number of
people trafficked into the United States annually and the number of
victims that the U.S. government has reached'. The T-visa cap has not
come close to being reached in any of the three years reported so
far. In fact, of the estimated tens of thousands of victims in the
United States annually, only a few hundred have been identified and
protected since the TVPA became law. By March 2005, fewer than 500
victim-witnesses had been granted temporary trafficking victim T
visas since the law went into effect in 2000.": (Stanford Law and
Policy Review 2005 Symposium Globalization, Security & Human Rights:
Immigration in the Twenty-First Century HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN THE
UNITED STATES: EXPANDING VICTIM PROTECTION BEYOND PROSECUTION
WITNESSES, Hussein Sadruddin, Natalia Walter, Jose Hidalgo.)

In her article, D.A. Harris claims that "100 victims were
discovered". The SF Chronicle report holds that "In a series of
searches begun Thursday, investigators said they found more than 100
women working as prostitutes at 10 San Francisco massage parlors."
D.A. Harris seems to be asserting that all the above were 'victims.'
In fact, in the California Bill AB 22 (which we also contributed to),
prostitutes are not trafficking victims unless they were victims of
forced labor. The Chronicle story of July 13 claims that "Fifty-nine
of the women came here willingly and will face deportation
proceedings." These women certainly are victims, of the INS, that is.
Other aspects of their victimization are unclear and current
anti-trafficking efforts 're-victimize' them.

More about California's AB22
Although AB22 specifically targets forced labor in general and forced
labor in the context of the sex industry, and NOT VOLUNTARY sex work,
early versions of this bill were confusing and actually
(inadvertently, I assume) made it a crime to (even unknowingly) be a
customer of any businesses that may include trafficked workers. I
call this the "Kathie Lee Law." The satire is that anyone who bought
a dress from Kathie Lee might be in danger of prosecution. Although
this satire stretches the reality, AB 22 was ultimately rewritten to
clearly target those who traffic in forced labor. My fellow advocates
are concerned however, that in it's current form AB22 does not
sufficiently address sensitivities in issues of confidentiality for
victims. Perhaps the District Attorney could revisit our concerns and
support our recommended changes. Our objections are documented at
http://www.bayswan.org/sftraffick/

These inaccuracies and weaknesses belie a general tendency to allow
moral panics and sensationalism to obscure the details and therefore
reduce effectiveness when dealing with the serious issues of forced
labor, slavery and other abuses in all workplaces, for immigrant
workers and in the sex industry.

Author Bio:
Carol Leigh formerly worked in massage parlors and she has
collaborated with members of the Network of Sex Work projects to
contribute to early drafts of the UN Protocol and the US Trafficking
Victims Protection Act. Leigh has also advised on local legislation
addressing massage industry regulation. She represented the
Commission on the Status of Women on the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors' Task Force on Prostitution.

Carol Leigh is editor of Trafficking Policy Research Project:
Examining the Effects of U.S. Trafficking Laws and Policies
http://www.bayswan.org/traffick/

--
Carol Leigh
Bay Area Sex Workers Advocacy Network
http://www.bayswan.org