CBA Record

YLS Special Issue l PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN

Sheriff Vice Unit conducted between 2010 and June 2012, girls and women selling sex were found in 41 different area hotels and motels. Schiller Park, Schaumburg, and Lansing were the most frequent venues, and major hotel chains were often the sites used. (J. Raphael & L. LaPointe, The Cook County sheriff’s human traf- ficking response team: A law enforcement model (2013), available at http://bit. ly/2mmp1b9). Recently enacted legislation in Prince George’s County, Maryland holds land- lords and property managers accountable for prostitution and human trafficking at their rental sites. The bill makes it a misdemeanor to “knowingly” allow use of an apartment or home for prostitution or trafficking, punishable with a $1,000 fine or 6 months in jail. (A. R. Hernandez, New law could make landlords liable for sex trafficking at their rentals, Washington Post (Nov. 18, 2016), available at http:// wapo.st/2mFT5zi). When mothers com- plained that units in their apartment buildings were being used as brothels and the property managers had been put on notice about it, without any action taken, the new law was the result. Critics wondered how prosecutors would be able to prove landlords or property managers knew about the prostitution or trafficking. The County Council responded it hoped that property owners, faced now with the possibility of criminal charges, would be motivated to act early when so informed. Taxi Drivers Cab drivers also transport underage girls, accompanied by traffickers, to assigna- tions on a regular basis. They also provide information to customers after being asked about where to find young girls available for sale. For these reasons, taxi drivers are another first line of defense against traffick- ing of children. In New York City, every licensed driver must watch a training video on trafficking before he or she can proceed with a new (or renewal) of a license (George & Smith, 2013).

WHAT ATTORNEYS CAN DO • Ask your clients with domestic violence issues about forced prostitution;

• If you represent any hotels, educate yourself about International Codes of Conduct, like the Resolution against the Sexual Exploitation of Children of the International Hotel and Restaurants Association, and available training programs from Business Ending Slavery & Trafficking (BEST);

• Lobby for mandatory training programs for taxi drivers before license issuance or renewal;

• In your place of business advocate against company-sponsored visits to strip clubs where trafficked individuals can be found; • Educate the boys and men in your life about trafficking for sexual exploitation and the presence of trafficked individuals in strip clubs and bachelor parties; • Resist calls for legalizing prostitution, which normalizes and accepts the buying of bodies, providing the cover traffickers need to operate;

• Memorize the national hotline (1-888-373-8888); and

• Volunteer to provide legal services to trafficking survivors. Contact Brian Gilbert, GilbertB@metrofamily. org or Christine Evans, cme@caase.org

Customers: Normalization of Sexual Exploitation of Youth

is a major anti-trafficking strategy. For this reason, we must revise our thinking about legalization of prostitution and its harm- lessness. All customers are in some way responsible for trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation. Jody Raphael is a Senior Research Fellow at Schiller DuCanto & Fleck and is on the staff of the DePaul University College of Law’s Family Law Center

Customers are, of course, the main reason for trafficking; without paying custom- ers there would be no reason to coerce individuals into sexual services. Drying up demand for paid sex is imperative. Customers who buy sex, especially those paying for sex from minors, need to be criminally charged. Most men do not buy sex in the United States. Reputable survey research (M. A. Monto & C. Milrod, Ordinary or Peculiar Men? Comparing the Customers of Prostitutes with a Nation- ally Representative Sample of Men, 58 Int’l J. of Offender Therapy & Comp. Criminology, 802-820 (2014) finds that only 13.9% of men aged 18-75 report having paid for sex during their lifetime and only 1% during the previous year. As one expert concludes,”There is no credible evidence to support that hiring prostitutes is a common or conventional aspect of masculine sexual behavior among men in the United States.” Thus law enforcement efforts to prioritize arrests of customers, only a small percentage of men in the U.S.,

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