As the human trafficking problem worsens, Raymond Bechard writes, so does the issue of false and misleading media.
“Statistics are like women; mirrors of purest virtue and truth, or like whores to use as one pleases.”
—Dr. Theodor Billroth, 1885
The insensitivity of Dr. Billroth notwithstanding, the issue of commercial sexual exploitation in America is immensely difficult to define numerically. The only agreed upon statistics are those which have been repeated so often by so many that they become unquestioned statements of fact. However, simply stating a thing many times by many people does not make a thing true.
While individuals and organizations working against all forms of human trafficking and those reporting on it claim with certainty to know the absolute truth about the subject, they seem to have an extraordinary aversion to the facts.
In 2006 a congressional press release declared that the online child pornography business generated $20 billion a year in illegal income. The information was widely circulated with help from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, both of which printed the figure and cited the congressional study.
Unable to verify the information, Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal decided to find the original source of the number. Through a congressional staffer, Bialik discovered the information was provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Bialik then contacted the President of NCMEC who told him the fact came from a consulting group, McKinsey & Co. McKinsey’s representative said they got it from ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes). ECPAT said they retrieved the number from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
When Bialik contacted FBI spokesman, Paul Bresson, he was told, “The FBI has not stated the $20-billion figure. I have asked many people who would know for sure if we have attached the $20-billion number to this problem. I have scoured our website, too. Nothing!”
The origin of the $20-billion figure has never been determined.
No matter. Four years later, on May 11, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice posted an article on their “Justice Blog” which states, “It is estimated that more than 200 new images are circulated daily and the profit derived from these criminal acts could be as high as $20 billion annually.”
In his book, Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, author Joseph Campbell refers to this phenomenon as “media driven myths,” which he defines as, “dubious, fanciful, and apocryphal stories about or by the news media that are often retold and widely believed . . . tales of doubtful authenticity, false, or improbable claims masquerading as factual. In a way, they are the junk food of journalism – alluring and delicious, perhaps, but not especially wholesome or nourishing.”
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When the topic of trafficking children or young women and men for sexual purposes is finally broached, critical thinking is often pushed aside. The strong emotional factor overwhelms the intellect, and with good reason. It is a horrible crime that damages the soul of all who are touched by it. Yet, this is no excuse for otherwise rational people to diminish the importance of the issue with false or misleading information.
Nonetheless, we crave numbers. We clamor for statistics. We believe that if something cannot be counted, measured, or charted, it cannot be effectively communicated – or worse, exist at all. Government officials, human rights advocates, and the media have little faith in the public to consume the complexities of our societal ills. To change minds and hearts, to pass laws and regulations, to raise awareness and money, they attempt to simplify the worst of our sufferings with figures, statistics, and percentages. “In pursuing anti-trafficking projects,” explains Kay Warren, professor of international studies and anthropology at Brown University, “government bureaucracies and NGOs have become avid producers and appropriators of popular culture – circulating stories and scenarios that represent victimizers and the traumatic experiences of those who are victimized – in order to publicize their anti-trafficking efforts and reach wider publics.”
The desire for telling numbers as they pertain to CSE is acute, often leading to disagreement between otherwise closely related organizations and officials. On June 16, 2010, a panel discussion, “Hidden in Plain Sight: The news media’s role in exposing human trafficking,” was held at the United Nations in order to discuss “how the news media have helped expose and explain modern slavery – and how to do better.” During the discussion, the panel of “leading media-makers and policymakers” justifiably “urged reporters and editors to avoid salacious details and splashy, ‘sexy’ headlines that can prevent a more nuanced examination of trafficked persons’ lives and experiences.” The participating journalists also, “lamented the lack of solid data, noting that the available statistics are contradictory, unreliable, insufficient, and often skewed by ideology.”
Providing an unplanned example of statistical contradictions and the shared frustration of responsible reporters, Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, head of the U.S. Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, stated in his remarks: “Almost 50,000 victims liberated last year worldwide: that’s great,” [sic] citing “the ILO number.” However, just minutes later, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said, “we do not know how big the problem is, the amount of victims rescued, probably about 20,000 or so, would be about two percent in the sea of victims.”
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The new standard for clarification does not require information to be true, factual, or accurate. The new standard disregards the need for empirical evidence. Rather, it welcomes any bit of information that simply seems plausible and cannot be proven false. Anyone is now free to quote CdeBaca or Costa with their respective numbers. By the standards of current media, advocates, and government reporting, both men are correct – because no one can prove either man wrong.
Local and national media, always searching for a tagline that will bring the most people to their program in order to boost ratings and subsequent advertising dollars, lap up every salacious quote nonprofit organizations can bring them.
Of course, in an effort to continually raise more donations, these charitable organizations often create attention-grabbing, blanket statements out of thin air. Or worse, they will quote other sources with no reality in their numbers, thereby propagating information which cannot be proven or disproven. With the NGO jumping into the role of “expert” and the news outlet looking for headlines, everyone with a stake in the game plays along with the arrangement to bring the ‘important information you should know about’ to the public. It’s a powerful partnership producing virtually no real knowledge or understanding.
In a “Review of Existing Estimates of Victims of Human Trafficking in the United States and Recommendations for Improving Research and Measurement of Human Trafficking,” a report commissioned by several large anti-trafficking organizations who largely ignored its findings, it was concluded that, “The types of data reported by the U.S. Government and other non-governmental agencies is not sufficient to fully understand the nature of the trafficking problem in the United States.”
Information is rarely based on truth, reliable studies, or hard data. Instead, it is fluff; mere fiction intended to draw in more dollars and more viewers. With the current state of media, forever on deadline and under constant pressure to produce the most sensational news packages, there is no pressure to prove the facts or statistics provided by these “go to” anti-human-trafficking organizations. Anecdotal evidence rules the airwaves and the issue.
“Numbers take on a life of their own,” observes David A. Feingold, director of the Ophidian Research Institute, “gaining acceptance through repetition, often with little inquiry into their derivations. Journalists – bowing to the pressures of editors – demand numbers, any numbers. Organizations feel compelled to supply them, lending false precision and spurious authority to many reports.”
“The trafficking of girls and women is one of several highly emotive issues which seem to overwhelm critical faculties,” according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Trafficking Statistics Project, which was initiated as “a first step toward clarifying what we know, what we think we know, and what we don’t know about trafficking.”
Commenting on the way her colleagues report stories of human trafficking and CSE, Lynn Sherr, a former ABC News Correspondent and writer for The Daily Beast observed that “they are headline stories, they are sexy headline stories and then nobody follows through on them.”
All too often, the stories of the victims get lost in the high-pitched tenor of the attention-grabbing headlines. Meaningful information is pushed aside in this habitually circuitous reporting. While Feingold observes that, “Trafficking is clearly the flavor of the month, forcing its way up the public agenda,” its coverage in the traditional and new media is repetitive to the point of numbing their audience.
The problems discrediting the anti-human-trafficking movement are exacerbated by the profusion of sensationalists eager to get their version of the issue in the news. Their quest for money and the spotlight has them spreading statements and statistics without the slightest consideration given to the original sources or veracity of the information they are quoting.
While the topic of CSE is complex of its own merits, the eager acceptance of false and misleading information surrounding the issue has led to even greater confusion in the media and the public. Yet, the chaos and drama caused by activists so often compelled by masked agendas is not limited to the carnage done by the misinformation they propagate. The real damage is that victims are being used, once again, by those who claim to be helping them.
Without victims, there would be no reason for these organizations to exist; there would be no story to report. Solving the problem of human trafficking would bring an end to their stated missions along with the jobs of those who are employed by them, and the income and attention they enjoy. In order to “boost awareness” they use victims and numbers with reckless abandon.
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The point here is that there is simply no précis to demonstrate the truth one way or another. The only truth we know with absolute certainty is that victims suffer – however many there are and wherever they may be. As anti-trafficking groups become more entrenched and focused on their own existence and, as the media works in tandem with them to entice the public, victims of trafficking – and the truth – become casualties of twisted priorities. The real work to save victims and prevent more from being exploited is sacrificed on the altar of self-promotion and financial gain.
Once again, the pain and suffering of victims are used for the money they can provide to others.
The increasingly incestuous discussion going on between all those involved in the “anti-trafficking community” has been successful mostly at closing the discourse to all those not within their limited circle. They use the same sources of information, quote the same data, seek funds from the same donors, attend the same meetings and conferences, read and write the same information online, clamor to be near the same celebrities, and take advantage of the same superficial media outlets and publicity. The repetition of their gospel gives what Stephen Colbert calls a “truthiness” to what they are saying. It may be true. It may not be. But, if we all “feel” like it’s true and agree that it’s true then it must be.
The result is an aging merry-go-round filled with riders who call themselves “experts in human trafficking” whose main purpose is to keep the ride going.
What can be stated as fact in the realm of commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and prostitution is limited to the human suffering of its individual victims. Each of them began their lives with promise. And each of them had that promise broken and torn away. Though our urge to quantify the problem often compromises our rational and critical judgment, we must not also let it diminish the humanity of the individual who is fighting to escape and survive. While many claim to be experts on the subject of human trafficking, only its victims and survivors have legitimacy in that claim. Most others are mere observers.
While we continue the struggle to accurately measure, communicate, and effectively address the issue, thereby providing it with much needed – and deserved – clarity, the priority must be those who are trapped in the grip of trafficking without regard to how many there are, but rather to who they are. Their salvation rests in the public’s realization that whatever their number, these are human beings, equal to us, and each worthy of a life filled with hope, freedom, and joy.
—Photo WeNews/Flickr
The main human trafficking advocate that is really a anti prostitution group in disguise in the USA is Dr .Melissa Farley, she is getting 30% of her funding from the justice dept, to keep up the hysteria over a few ungovernable teens that run away and end up being exploited, she also helped create laws that says we will just return them home to run off again and treat them like victims, rather than the ungovernable teens that they are. Farley was also arrested 13 times in CA 20 years ago for going into book stores and tearing up playboys… Read more »
Hey there, this to me looks like a case of child sexual exploitation: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/opinion/how-pimps-use-the-web-to-sell-girls.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
Why there aren’t 300,000 news stories saying mostly the same thing I don’t know. Seems like to me that most people who don’t want to prostitutes can figure this much out. Unless we’re actually raising huge (and I do mean HUGE!!!) numbers of absolute morons. If so, isn’t that the parent’s fault somehow? Just sayin…
And I see that the article I linked has almost nothing to do with this discussion, but all the same, if there’s these huge numbers of trafficked people why aren’t there more stories like this? Do the advocates really believe that the “trafficked” are so dumb as to not do what this 13 year old girl did? Really?
I find that hard to believe, but I’ll readily admit the world is a very strange place, much of which I don’t know or understand at all…
Hang on, there is a place on the internet where violent criminals write posts saying ‘Hey! I am a child-rapist-enabling slave-owner – and here are my contact details, phone this number and i’ll send the victim to you” – and police want to shut it down?
How about using it to save the victims and get in contact with the criminals? Unless backpages is actually in fact full of consensual adults and this is as much of a red herring as the 12 year old cited at the start of the original article on this site.
I think no more than 10% of women are trafficked. I think most in the industry are in it by their own will.
I’m all for women milking money from men. *thumbs up*
agreed!
OK, if this commenter is a knowledgable resource, I a very disturbed by the overall attitude – if ONLY 10% are trafficked, would that not equate to thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people being trafficked? So, we are being told to disregard those numbers because the ‘majority’ are selling their body as product by choice? Having known personally and grown up with some women who made that choice, I think what is being neglected also is that most of these woman, back towards 90%, were introduced to sex NOT by choice. They were sexually molested or raped at a… Read more »
Not all sex workers were molested as children. I think that’s just a popular myth. Of course, many sex workers were molested; many people in general were molested as children. Please provide some research studies that show a correlation between childhood molestation and adult sex work. Also, let’s not forget that correlation does not equal causation. Even if your point is somewhat valid, who are you to tell women what to do with their bodies when they are adults? Perhaps a woman was molested as a child, and decides to reclaim her sexuality/body as an adult, using it for sex… Read more »
Seriously though, check out some actual REAL resources that are by/for sex workers. Real workers who choose to do this line of work. SWOP-USA.org is a national grassroots organization, and also my blog, http://legalizetoprotect.blogspot.com which is sex worker advocacy in CT. Maybe that will be a good start for you to see both sides…
REAL resources? That is quite the condescending, judgemental statement. I am a real resource, as real as any site by women who have bought into the culture that men can buy women’s bodies, that being woman makes one available as commodity. 1. I found numerous research sites in a 2 minute Google search, however you have already indicated those studies are false; 2. You assume that I am telling someone else what to do with her body, when nowhere did I advocate this; 3. making the statement that I think there is something inherently wrong with sex work and thus… Read more »
We will just agree to disagree. Differences make the world go round!
Power is a fairly empty word these days. I don’t think any studies point to power as a motive for men patronizing prostitutes. Fairly often, the prostitute is the one who has the sense of power. I agree that it tends to be a demoralizing profession.
I also don’t agree on the implication that one is behaving almost illegally if one doesn’t inform partners about all sexual connections– as implied above. One does have an obligation to protect from infection.
“I’m all for women milking money from men. *thumbs up*”
Joke, right? Even if it is, language like this establishing men as the enemy really isn’t helpful, especially when you consider that men are often objectified in terms of their wallets. Would you like it if male commentators were joking that they were “All for men using women for their bodies, *thumbs up*”? I’m thinking not.
It’s an exchange of services. The client gets sex, and the worker gets paid. As long as everyone feels okay with it and it’s consensual, who cares? So what’s next on this crusade, making pornography illegal? Are we going to start talking about porn stars as if they’re helpless victims that are trapped in slavery? Many porn stars are happy, healthy men and women who are content with their choice of career. They have families, and they have lives outside of work. What’s the difference between prostitution and porn? Both workers are getting paid to have sex with someone. Difference… Read more »
What do I know about hookers? Quite a lot actually. I know enough to know that prostitution/sex work IS NOT THE SAME THING as human trafficking. I don’t understand why the author continues to confuse the two. I think his campaign against the trafficking of individuals who are underage and/or forced into sex slavery is a very important one. However, why can’t we just keep the facts straight? The author constantly uses the words “hooker” and “prostitution,” referring to the work of consenting adult sex workers. If the author cannot distinguish between these two very different things, then what makes… Read more »
While I appreciate an article that encourages one to question stats and numbers I think the title is a bit misleading. I actually came here expecting to read something like stories/experiences from actual prostitutes that run counter to the common presumption that no prostitute never chooses that life.
(And of course there is the part where “trafficking” once again equals “trafficking of women and girls”.)
I posted a comment above danny, it has some links you’d probably like to read. Google the Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association is the national peak sex worker organisation in Australia.
Just saw those Archy. I will be looking into them.
“What Do You Really Know About Hookers?” One hell of a lot actually! P^/ Maybe that is not the expected answer? It’s odd how being on the front lines of HIV Prevention, from before it had the name AIDS, brings you into contact with such people, and how you need to get to know them and all about them before you can even discuss the issues. I see that the “Emotional Trafficking” Rhetoric is toned down and even addressed. So there are groups with Agendas – and there are Groups and people with Priorities that as you put it: “The… Read more »
So Raymond do you have any figure or stats?
Do I take your silence as meaning that you don’t have any figures or stats for us to look over then Raymond?
I would add to the article that none of this is new. 100 years ago feminists in the US were raising hue and cry aver “trafficking” of white women just the same and just the same there were plenty of men in power wanting to White Knight it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act The Mann Act ended up making sex a criminal offense for a man (never the woman) even if the sex was entirely consensual and had nothing to do with prostitution. If you are a man and you crossed a state line with a woman you thought you might have sex… Read more »
A large credible study in the UK on foreign prostitutes found that 6% of them were trafficked.
Which was in stark contrast to what the right wing/rad feminist anti prostitution coalition and other sex trafficking, moral panicists, scam artists and liars that have no credible data are telling us.
Sex trafficking hysteria is largely a fraud intended to shut down the sex trade in general, what we should be doing is regulating it and making it safer for everyone involved.
We see the same in Scandinavia (except here it’s the left wing who are up in arms and want to make prostitution illegal, citing trafficking as a reason). We’ve seen numbers for “so and so many trafficked women in the country”, large and scary numbers – and numbers that despite being contradicted by one study after the other have a life of their own, as mentioned in the above post. These made-up statistics just won’t die. It’s a nasty issue, because trafficking *is* a problem and terrible for the victims, and we need to deal with it. Unfortunately, the trafficking… Read more »
Yeah I see they shut down, stripping in Iceland on the strength of “trafficking” – but what they call trafficking , is often just a woman choosing to travel across and border to work in a sex related job.
Not directly related to this article as such, but it would be interesting to have some articles about the sex industry, including prostitution, in countries where it is not illegal (such as in Australia where brothels are legal). It could produce some interesting viewpoints and discussions that are not possible for USA centric articles where prostitution is by definition illegal and trafficking.
(Note: I am in know way mitigating human trafficking, including forced prostitution, which I find abhorrent.)
These misleading titles are getting to be an annoyance. Why title an article about “hookers” only to present a column on human trafficking of minors and child exploitation? They’re not the same thing!
I agree. I am looking for some real information, but this is entirely about discrediting stats. I am beginning to question the validity of the ‘articles’ here when sensationalism is the primary ‘hook’. I do not see this as an opening to honest discourse, merely opening a door for more reactionary, hate agendas.
I think that the idea is to conflate sex trafficking and pedophilia with the sex trade between consenting adults.
Well, ‘consenting’ is a semantic sticking point. If someone has to bribe someone to have sex with them, is that truly consent? And if one of those ‘consenting’ adults happens to be married and doesn’t bother to tell the partner whom is expecting fidelity, doesn’t that mean that all sex with the partner thereafter becomes ‘nonconsenting?’ They previously made clear the conditions under which they consented to have sex, and those conditions have been violated. I think the concept of ‘between consenting adults’ is being thrown around as euphism and is not a truism.
According to that logic we should also include figures for infidelity. Someone who thinks they are in a monogamous relationship whose partner is having an affair who has sex with their partner is no longer consenting? Or have I misunderstood you?
I am not advocating statical analysis since it can so obviously be abused. Like anything in life can be abused. I am, however, validating the feelings of betrayal by those who have been ‘cheated’ on, because if consensual sex does necessitate an agreement of conditions in which sex takes place, in this case if someone is expecting and has been promised fidelity, then that is one of the primary conditions for sexual relations. When that promise has been violated, then the partner who expected fidelity has 1. already stated that they say ‘NO’ to sex when the other person is… Read more »
Well, I can see your argument, though I find it hard not to distinguish between someone clearly being forced to do something against their consent (eg, being raped; being made to have sex with people so someone else can make money) and someone who chooses to do something sexual either agreeing to be paid for it or not in full possession of all the facts. They just seem such different things, and while they do have the similarities you draw between them, I think most people would consider them vastly different. And to conflate them without making clear the conflation… Read more »
I do however consider this form of nonconsentual sex being more damaging than its, arguably, closest equivalent, that of statutory rape wherein a minor is considered to not have enough knowledge or experience to make the decision for themself. In the case of infidelity, critical information regading health risks and a complete disregard for conditions for consent being given for sex is being witheld from the partner. The trauma of discovering infidelity, and the potential for emotional, psychological, and physical health, are too often minimized or disregarded. An adult making a decision for the conditions of sexual conduct for a… Read more »
Can we clarify terms here? The term I use for non-consensual sex is ‘rape’. Is that the term you would use for someone having sex with their partner after having been unfaithful?
I have to surmise that if statutory rape includes nonconsual sex based on some version of coersion, then yes. Of course, my personal view of rape without any qualifier usually includes an act of physical violence beyond an act of manipulative control, but rape with a particular qualifer could fit a legal definition. I also accept that this becomes an inflamatory definition which can muddy the waters of the actual issue which I am discussing, which is sex without consent of both partners. I vacilate between using devisive terms which others will abuse in an inflammatory sense versus the obvious… Read more »
Wow, I cannot spell at all today.
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS!!! Exactly! Prostitution does not equal human sex trafficking.
This blogger writes on that, ht tp://becauseimawhore.com/an-open-letter-to-feminists/ The linked article seems pretty on topic regarding ethics of research and isn’t meant to be a hitpiece on feminism. She is a sex worker from Australia. I am utterly confused when I see articles like that and hear of the hysteria of sex trafficking, who am I meant to believe? I don’t like automatic assumptions that sex work is always negative when clearly it isn’t but at the same time the negatives of sex work need to be handled appropriately. More calm is needed to make ethical, but intelligent decisions. There can… Read more »