Within a capitalist economic system, Commodification is the transformation of goods, services, ideas and people into commodities or objects of trade. A commodity at its most basic, according to Arjun Appadurai, is "anything intended for exchange," or any object of economic value.[1]
Commodification is often criticised on the grounds that some things ought not to be treated as commodities—for example water, education, data, information, knowledge, human life, and animal life.[2][3]
According to Gøsta Esping-Andersen people are commodified or 'turned into objects' when selling their labour on the market to an employer.[4]
Slavery is a form of the commodification of people.
Under neoliberalism a generally illegal act of buying and selling sex is redefined and became an act of free
speech that is protected by the First Amendment and an article of intellectual property that is protected by copyright laws.
Under neoliberalism sex and sexual relations are a market. In reality sexual relations are not a market with the noted exception of sex workers, where monetary exchange does takes place.
For normal people sexual intimacy is not some commodity to be distributed or bartered over. Attempting to place a market value on
sex and relationships is obscene beyond reason. It is a perversion of one of the most basic human of interactions. It robs one of
the core part of our very humanity. I would state after Marx that nothing is sacred under capitalism, but neoliberalism went far
father in the direction of commodization of sex than all previous forms of capitalism.
When market principles are applied to dating this all becomes even more disturbing. It is no longer enough to date someone who
you have mutual sexual chemistry with that shares a similar lifestyle and relationship goals. No, people are to be graded on some
foggy marketability standard that applies worth to potential partners as though we are picking out livestock. Ones own marketability
can determine the amount of capital that may be spent on that prize sow. Trite notions such as attraction, compatibility and even
love are discarded in favor of desirability. Partners are to be picked out based on your ability to date what is seen as most
desirable in the sexual marketplace instead of your own wants and needs. Like any capitalist, you should get the most out of the
investment of your own sexual capital. If a better investment opportunity comes along any good capitalist will of course immediately
place their capital in that better opportunity. Inferior partners are to be discarded like outdated gadgets in favor of the better
model, emotional bonds and shared history be damned. If it is your partner that discards you in favor of a better investment it is
only to be expected. After all, you are not really a person here, just inferior cattle no longer worthy of their investment on the
sexual marketplace.
In marriage, we are no longer meant to look for a life partner. Your spouse is to be nothing more than a bougie trophy that is
hopefully better than your neighbor’s. The marriage vows are reduced to a mere business contract designed to protect the investment
of sexual capital.
A spouse is just some gross commodity that cohabitates with you; a breathing and moving collectible to show off
to your friends. Like any business partnership, marriage is something you should legally extract yourself from when your partner is
no longer pulling their financial weight in the sexual marketplace. Market liabilities such as children should sagely be dumped on
your partner in order to minimize the damage to your own personal sexual capital.
Natia Sampson volunteered to become the legal guardian of her niece after the girl's parents
were incarcerated. And the social worker on the case took a liking to Natia.
At first she politely rejected his advances, fearing that reporting these instances would be
met with retaliation. But soon it turned into sexual harassment, and she was forced to contact
his superiors. But nothing changed. Until one day, the social worker exploded at Natia, saying,
"I don't know where you get off sending all these complaint emails and making all these calls,
but you are going to find out that we at [Child Services] stick together, and cover for each
other."
Soon after, he lodged claims of child neglect against Natia. She eventually fought off the
completely unsubstantiated charges.
Natia then sued the social worker and the Department of Children and Family Services for so
obviously violating her rights. But the case was dismissed last month. The Judge's
decision reads :
"the right of private individuals to be free from sexual harassment at the hands of social
workers was not clearly established at the time of defendants' conduct in this case."
What this means:
Clearly if the parents are in prison, this family has some problems. It is easy to dismiss
these cases as the stuff of broken homes. But we have also highlighted a case in the past where
children were kidnapped by a
SWAT team after the parents disagreed with a doctor over the seriousness of a fever.
Then there was the child taken
away because a father wouldn't cooperate with a civil asset forfeiture proceeding-- when
the cops steal your money without a conviction, or even a criminal charge.
One judge removed a child from the home in an attempt to force a confession from her
parents. The courts found no evidence of abuse, but didn't return the child to her parents for
two years.
This same
judge removed a child from a home because the court hearing was running too late into the
evening. In another
case , she arbitrarily denied placing a child with his grandparents, instead placing him in
a stranger's foster home where he was sexually abused.
While hopefully these cases are rare, you can't deny that foster care horror stories exist.
It's terrible enough to be separated from your child. But to imagine what could be happening to
your child in a stranger's care is even more terrifying.
Earlier this year, the US Marshal Service launched a national effort to rescue trafficked
children. They recently
confirmed that the majority of sexually trafficked children they rescued came from foster
care.
In the Ohio operation, "25 of the 31 children recovered were in DCFS [foster] care in either
a group homes or foster case in Georgia: 28 of the 39 recovered were in the care of DFACS
[Department of Family and Children's Services]."
What you can do about it:
There has recently been a massive increase in homeschooling because of COVID. In the past,
you could reasonably worry that homeschooling would make you a target of the state, just for
being outside the mainstream. But these days, homeschooling is more likely to shield you from
any incidents in the first place.
Just this past Friday we talked
about a case where a social worker was brought in because a teacher saw a BB gun in a
child's bedroom during virtual learning.
Teachers peering into your home through the child's computer screen is already ensnaring
innocent kids and parents in the social services system. So it's reasonable to assume that
states with the highest
homeschool freedom are some of the safest from social services overreach as well.
The following states do not require any notice that you are homeschooling: Alaska,
Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and
Texas. (Usually in these states you do have to formally withdraw your child from public school
if they were previously enrolled.)
Also, joining the Home School Legal Defense Association (or a similar group) gives you legal
protection, resources, and a network with strength in numbers if Child Protective Services does
ever unjustly target you.
But when it comes to something as important as having agency over your own children, you may
want to look outside the US entirely.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
In a Sovereign Man
Confidential Alert from August, we profiled a man who we referred to as David. As a child,
he witnessed the government kidnap his five-year-old nephew. David's parents had been raising
the little boy-- their grandson-- because the boy's parents were unable to do so. But the boy's
father (David's sister's ex) didn't like the arrangement. He convinced his girlfriend, a Child
Protective Services official, to remove the child from the home. The little boy was never
returned.
"I saw first-hand that child welfare in the US is a Soviet-style system," he says. "They
got away with it. I vowed at that moment never to have a child in the US."
David and his wife opted to have their first baby in Brazil, where they have been living for
most of this year. And for their next child, they are considering Argentina or Chile. In the
meantime, the family plans to live in Spain.
Of course, this is only anecdotal information. But as someone who witnessed the abuses of
the US child services system first- hand, David feels better about his parental rights in these
countries. And even when a country's official child services laws look similar to laws in the
US, in practice, it may be much more rare for a child to be removed without actual serious
cause.
In that sense, you may want to look at a country's culture regarding parental rights, rather
than just its laws.
Lex Wexler name surfaces in way too many places connected to Epstein VIP brothel, Why he is
not arrested like Maxwell?
Notable quotes:
"... Hazell, now known as Lady Iveagh, worked for Epstein 'Madam' Ghislaine Maxwell according to accuser Maria Farmer , who says she also interacted with Iveagh at the Ohio estate of Victoria's Secret boss Leslie Wexner. Farmer said that Hazell "liked having nice drinks, piles of cash and nice outfits." She was listed in Jeffrey Epstein's famous Black Book as "Clare Hazell-Iveagh." ..."
"... Much like Epstein pal Prince Andrew, Hazell has not been charged with any of the crimes she's been accused of, however we somehow doubt she'll be speaking with US prosecutors anytime soon. ..."
Clare Hazell - an interior designer who became the Countess of Iveagh after her 2001
marriage to the 4th Earl of Guinnes (of the brewing dynasty) - took 32 flights on Epstein's
infamous airplane between 1998 and 2000, which included "trips to his homes in New York,
Florida, the Caribbean and New Mexico," according to the
Daily Mail . Epstein accompanied Hazell on all but one of the trips aboard the plane, per
flight logs.
Ms Hazell was studying at Ohio State University in the 1990s and reportedly had a
modelling agency and an apartment in Columbus, Ohio.
The friend described her as being at Epstein's 'beck and call', saying how mutual plans
would be cancelled immediately if she was needed by Epstein and Maxwell. -
Daily Mail
Hazell, now known as Lady Iveagh, worked for Epstein 'Madam' Ghislaine Maxwell according to
accuser Maria
Farmer , who says she also interacted with Iveagh at the Ohio estate of Victoria's Secret
boss Leslie Wexner. Farmer said that Hazell "liked having nice drinks, piles of cash and nice
outfits." She was listed in Jeffrey Epstein's famous Black Book as "Clare Hazell-Iveagh."
Another Epstein accuser, Virginia Giuffre, accused Hazel of sexually abusing her:
Virginia Giuffre @VRSVirginia • 9h v
You want names? There's 2 on this Gwendolyn Beck & Claire Hazel. They both had sexually
abused me as a minor and even though there not JE's age type. These 2 are just some of the
"older" women in JE's orbit that served a purpose wonder what that could be? #notmovingon
#Help W
The dirty co-conspirators are ubiquitous and not one has been held accountable!
... ... ...
Hazell, formerly the President of the NSPCC's West Suffolk branch hosted events for the
charity at Elveden Hall - a lavish estate in Suffolk, England owned by the Guinness family
since 1894 in which several scenes from Eyes Wide Shut were filmed. The estate now operates as
a farm, growing root vegetables and cereals on the 22,000 acre property.
Much like Epstein pal Prince Andrew, Hazell has not been charged with any of the crimes
she's been accused of, however we somehow doubt she'll be speaking with US prosecutors anytime
soon.
@Wood Stove " . . . but pakistani muslims sexually emslaving their little girls en masse
is not only fine, but their own police and social services actively facilitate it, and you're
racist if you got a problem with that."
Sexual abuse of children was widespread in the UK prior to the 'Pakistani
enslavement'?
"Jeremy, when you were first elected Leader, I'd have been delighted if you had then
become PM. But now the thought is a bit like my feelings at the idea of Dafydd standing
trial: it would certainly be entertaining but it wouldn't improve matters. Because it is very
clear to me Jeremy that you knew about the paedophile ring that was at work in the kids homes
in Islington, which was linked to Dafydd's gang. You were told about it by a whistle blower
but you didn't act. You knew about it before you were elected as the constituency MP anyway,
because you worked for NUPE, the union which represented a lot of the social workers and
managers. The business partner of your election agent went to prison for sexually assaulting
children. You're like Dafydd Wigley Jezza – you don't come across as offensive and
pompous like so many of your colleagues, but you knew that kids were being gang-raped,
trafficked and that witnesses were murdered.
When Theresa was a Councillor for Merton, she ignored the ring on her patch which was
facilitated by St George's Hospital just as Jeremy ignored the ring on his patch at Islington
" http://www.drsallybaker.com/uncategorized/r-i-p-julia-grant-and-many-more/#comment-106296
"Sally Baker
March 2, 2019 at 8:12 am
I'm reading Tom Bower's biography of Jezza at present. I've finished the chapter which
describes the hell that was prevailing in Islington when the children's homes hosted the ring
connected to Dafydd's gang. It was as bad as north Wales: children found dead, children
trafficked abroad, gangs of paedophiles in every home, two social workers screaming as loudly
as they could 'look at what is happening' only to be ignored by everyone.
Jezza, the local MP, famously refused to respond to the two whistleblowers and of course it
was Little Nell Hodge who was Council Leader throughout it all. When the scandal could be
denied no longer, Little Nell took up a new career with Price Waterhouse as an accountant.
Jezza and Little Nell have received many an internet kicking for their collusion, but no-one
has flagged up the fact that this nightmare was ignored by every mainstream newspaper. The
Islington Gazette reported it all and UK journos did know what was happening " http://www.drsallybaker.com/uncategorized/a-st-davids-day-celebration/#comment-111479
"I don't want to hear anymore nonsense about organised abuse and sex trafficking, all we ever
hear about are Asian men driving taxis or working in curry houses. I've got 10,000 documents
showing that DOCTORS were the key people involved and that HIGH COURT JUDGES when faced with
the evidence simply ignored it."
http://www.drsallybaker.com/uncategorized/behind-the-scenes-with-lord-wigley-and-those-perfect-slaves/#comment-163712
"Bill Gates claiming that he didn't meet with Epstein until 2013 is complete crap. A 2001
newspaper article on Epstein said that Epstein made millions from his business links with Gates
in the 1990s."
"... As Kenny, a regular sugar daddy, told me via email, "I have money, and the girls have beauty, grace and, more importantly, youth! Why would I want to pay a sex worker, have a maid, and sign up to one of those sites that provide me a date for the evening when I can have it all rolled into one?" ..."
This billboard advertisement for a
Toronto-based sugaring company appeared in 2013 in Pittsburgh, Pa., and was deemed legal because it did
not directly state it promoted the exchange of sex for money.
(Keith Srakocic / AP)
Editor's note: Some names have been changed to protect interviewees' identities.
I saw the
billboards during a research trip to Los Angeles.
"Happy 18th Birthday! Meet your new Daddy," read one website advertisement. "Do you have strong oral
skills? We've got a job for you!" cooed another.
A message on another billboard directed at the "daddies" was more blunt: "The alternative to escorts.
Desperate women will do anything."
"Sugaring" is an enormously profitable and growing trade. Women are being encouraged to sell sex
through so-called sugar baby/sugar daddy arrangements. Online sugar dating sites, such as
SeekingArrangement
(SA), bypass prostitution and pimping laws by
presenting the transaction as "dating with benefits."
A sugar arrangement is, according to the pimps and entrepreneurs, an exchange of cash, gifts or other
financial and material benefits for good company. In fact, it is what is euphemistically known as the
"girlfriend experience," but often on a much longer-term basis.
"I had promoted myself from working in a brothel to going on vacations with rich men, where I was
expected to listen to their every word and have sex on demand for two whole weeks," Charlotte told me,
when I spoke to her in Chicago. "Sugaring is way worse. You are expected to be available as and when he
wants you to be and get paraded around his fancy friends and business colleagues like a pet poodle."
As Kenny, a regular sugar daddy, told me via email, "I have money, and the girls have beauty, grace
and, more importantly, youth! Why would I want to pay a sex worker, have a maid, and sign up to one of
those sites that provide me a date for the evening when I can have it all rolled into one?"
Audrey, a care worker in her late teens, was first sold for sex on the streets of Minneapolis at the
age of 15, and eventually found her way into a brothel to escape her pimp. "The first piece of advice I
was given by the other girls was to register on SeekingArrangement," she says. "They told me that it's
way better to date these rich guys who sometimes don't even ask for sex from one week to the next,
especially if they're married and do lots of business travel, but they pay your rent and bring you
gifts."
For six months, Audrey lived in an apartment rented by Ray, her sugar daddy. He visited her every day
for sex, expecting his sexual desires to be met regardless of her mood or feelings. Audrey once refused
him because she had food poisoning, but Ray told her she would be homeless that night unless she gave him
what he wanted.
"He had my entire life in his hands," she says. "It was way worse than prostitution, because I could
never escape. I was told it was going to be nice dinners and shopping trips, but I was literally his
concubine."
While some women ask their sugar daddy for a monthly allowance, many men are reluctant, preferring a
"pay as you go" arrangement. One john and regular user of sugar babies on the SeekingArrangement forum
wrote, "I know that there are unscrupulous guys out there that make an entire 'hobby' out of 'trying out'
sugar babies, leading them on with the hook of an allowance, but with no intent of ever providing one.
Thus, I find the 'pay as you go' approach much more open and honest but also, it can make some
potential sugar babies feel like it is too close to escorting. So, there is that dance to deal with."
"[Sugaring] is nothing like regular dating," Judy told me when we met in a coffee bar in central
London. "We are just a set of orifices for men to use, and the occasional bit of arm candy."
Judy learned about SeekingArrangement from her friend at work. "I was earning £5 [$7] an hour in a
coffee bar and could not even pay my rent, let alone go out and have fun. I signed up and was immediately
inundated with requests to meet, from nice looking men."
Initially, Judy says she met some "quite nice" men, and was taken for meals and, after sex, was paid
between $260 to $650. "It felt like very high-class prostitution, but prostitution nevertheless," Judy
says. For that amount of money there was, of course, a catch. "I was juggling three daddies at once, and
I had to be available to see them when they called. It was like that initial payment 'bought' me, and
they kind of owned me after that."
SeekingArrangement was founded by Las Vegas tech tycoon Brandon Wade. Wade is apparently worth
somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million. His motto is, "Love is a concept invented by poor people."
"This is real, I'm living the life," Wade told a journalist. "I can't help that I'm attracted to young
and beautiful women, like most men are."
Wade, 48, whose 22-year-old sugar baby Zoe lives with him in Las Vegas, claims sugar daddies help
empower young women and advance their lives. "If you are poor and you are constantly hanging out with the
poor people, you're never going to find opportunities in life,"
he said
.
The SeekingArrangement website shows stock photos of white women, sometimes carrying shopping bags
from expensive clothing and cosmetic stores. Many are dressed in formal gowns and diamond jewelry,
fawning over white men with business-trip suitcases and carefully groomed five o'clock stubble. It
includes a section on "hypergamy," or what used to be known as "marrying up."
Nowhere are class and other social dividers starker than in an opulent setting -- such as a five-star
hotel room -- in which one person can easily afford the bill, and the other does not even have a bank
account. The average SA member spends $3,000 per month on sugar babies. Sex trade survivor Anya, who
signed up as a sugar baby when she was in her teens, tells me that "[johns] make you feel like dirt when
they have a posh hotel room that they can buy you in. You're the dirty whore and they have a load of
money and power. At least on the street, you are both [the john and the prostituted woman] looked at as
scum, to one degree or another, by the residents and police."
According to data from July 2016, SeekingArrangement boasts more than 5 million active members. More
than 4 million of these were sugar baby accounts -- women register for free; men have to pay. The website
now advertises that it has "four sugar babies per sugar daddy."
SeekingArrangement covers 139 countries. Married men account for about 40 percent of the sugar daddies
on the site.
SA also markets itself as an antidote to student debt. In the U.S. and elsewhere, college students are
enduring financial instability and hardship. Because of rising college fees and rent, and the lack of
time available for work during studies, many women are extremely vulnerable to exploitation.
"SeekingArrangement.com has helped facilitate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of arrangements
that have helped students graduate debt-free," Wade boasts on the website. Promotional videos show young,
beautiful women enrolled in "Sugar Baby University" -- in classrooms, holding wads of cash, driving luxury
cars, and discussing the pleasure and ease of being a sugar baby.
When signing up for an account, potential sugar babies are told, "Tip: Using a
.edu email
address
earns you a free upgrade!"
A company spokeswoman says that college students using their university emails to log into the site
also get their profiles included under a "college student" heading so that sugar daddies intent on
"helping" college students can find them more easily.
If a student types keywords such as "tuition help" or "financial aid" into a search engine, strategic
pop-ups suggesting she become a sugar baby will often appear on her internet browser.
All men who pay for sex are exercising male power, privilege and financial control over the woman he
is paying for. One news release from SeekingArrangement claimed that "sugar baby students receive an
average of $3,000 in monthly allowances, earning $20,920 more than a student working full time at the
federal minimum wage." But many of the young women who sign up to meet a charming, rich and handsome
older boyfriend find themselves trapped in domestic and sexual servitude.
Cheryl, 19, had just begun university in Toronto when she used the website
SugarDaddyMeet
. "I was broke, feeling low because my
boyfriend had broken up with me, and needed some excitement in my life," she told me over the phone from
her home in Vancouver.
Within days, Cheryl was matched with Paul, an independently wealthy sports fanatic in his 60s. "He was
not attractive to me at all," she says. "And because he didn't work, he was at me all the time, day and
night, for sex, and watching him play tennis -- anything he did, he wanted me there to boost his fucking
ego."
The first time Paul had sex with Cheryl ("I hated it," she says), he gave her $100 and told her, "I
can pay your bills if you like, but you are not getting any more cash because we both know you will spend
it on yourself." She agreed to "let him pay my rent because I was desperate, and that was all he was
offering." She gave him her landlord's contact information.
When Cheryl attempted to break up with Paul, her nightmare began.
"When I told him to stop calling me and dropping round unannounced, he threatened to tell the landlord
I was a hooker, and would send him 'proof.' "
Paul had taken photographs of Cheryl during sex, which made her feel "super uncomfortable." Knowing he
had those photos, as well as proof of how they met, Cheryl believed Paul would carry out his threat.
"I lost my apartment, because I could not bear staying there with the threats hanging over me, as well
as the fact that he knew where I was," she says. Cheryl moved back in with her parents and dropped out of
university. "I am much worse off now than I was before I signed up to that stupid site."
Peter Fleming, a professor at the University of Technology of Sydney, is the author of a 2018 book
titled "
Sugar
Daddy Capitalism: The Dark Side of the New Economy
." Fleming says the sugar daddy business model
exploits women's financial desperation.
"For all intents and purposes, this is sex work in disguise, or undercover sex work," Fleming writes,
adding that sugar daddy websites are simply selling a "fantasy" to young women, but the dark side is
"economic dependence."
A typical SA sugar daddy is age 45 or above, and worth more than $2 million. About 18 out of 50 sugar
daddies say they are looking for a "no strings attached" and "drama free" relationship. Many tempt young
women with the offer of accompanying them on luxury vacations.
About 15 out of 50 sugar daddies mention "kink" and specific sexual fetishes in the "what I am looking
for" portion of their profile. Other stand-out descriptions of the type of "girl" the men are searching
for include: "Very sexual -- extremely sexual, open and enjoys being with a dominant hung male"; "Must
like sex, a lot! Physical attraction is paramount, if you can fake that convincingly, you're my girl! I
like hearing the words 'yes baby, anything you want' "; "I am seeking an extremely inclined sub for an
ongoing discreet relationship"; and "Looking for a young lady that I could pass off as a niece, or a
daughter of a friend."
The young women advertising as sugar babies are typically age 18 to 30, and almost half mention that
they are seeking financial support from their new sugar daddy. Many of their photographs are sexualized --
showing cleavage, for example, or lingerie.
Scores of women from around the world register as sugar babies to sell their virginity. Their ages
range from just 18 to those in their early 20s.
I spoke to Anna, a 20-year-old student who registered as a sugar baby last year. "I saw on the site
that auctioning your virginity can bring in a fortune," she says. She advertised in her profile: "Auction
for my virginity. Highest bid before midnight on New Year's Eve wins." Anna sold her virginity to a
45-year-old father of three for $5,000.
An 18-year-old woman from Britain stated in her profile, "I'm offering a triangle with 2 virgins (me
and a good friend of mine). Candidate who offers the biggest amount of money will get to be our first
romance."
A third student, age 18, advertised: "I need money as I am a student. I am willing to do anything
except sexual intercourse. If I was to do that it would come at a very high cost because I am a virgin."
In 2018, police in Memphis, Tennessee, charged Mark Giannini, 52, a wealthy businessman, with the
statutory rape of a 17-year-old he met on SeekingArrangement.
That same year, a pan-European sugar daddy site,
RichMeetBeautiful
, placed large posters advertising itself as a "sugar daddy and sugar baby dating
site" on trucks outside Belgian universities. The site claimed to offer a "Fifty Shades of Grey"
experience to its members, and invited young female students to "improve your style of life [by getting]
a sugar daddy." Université libre de Bruxelles officials complained to the police, who seized the
billboards.
Norwegian Sigurd Vedal, chief executive of RichMeetBeautiful, found himself
charged in a Brussels court
in 2019 with
debauchery, public "incitement to debauchery and prostitution," and violating anti-sexism laws.
Vedal maintained that he and his company were only trying to facilitate unusual dating.
He also stated
that "[w]e are like a normal dating site, but financial is part of the checklist."
Vedal
received a personal fine
of $43,000, and a $260,000 fine for his company. Brussels prosecutors are
seeking a six-month suspended prison sentence.
They also want the company's promotional materials
to be seized
, claiming that they "reduce students to sexual objects."
Eric Cusas, Vedal's defense attorney, said his client was an entrepreneur of 15 years and a
libertarian. Cusas claimed that any sexual element was "only in the eye of the observer," and that Vedal
had been made a scapegoat.
Laurent Kennes, a spokesman for the Université libre de Bruxelles, said he had no doubt as to the
purpose of the website. "We presumed the existence of a sexual counterpart to the registration on this
site. The message is: 'You're young, you're beautiful, go out with a sugar daddy!' Everyone understands
what it's about."
The huge billboards, which appeared to be poorly translated, showed a couple cuddling alongside the
caption, "Romance, passion, fun & 0, -- in study loan? Date a sugar daddy or sugar mama."
Vedal also is accused of "aggravated pimping" in France over a
mobile billboard placed on the Sorbonne University campus
. It pictured a man lying on top of a woman,
with a similar caption: "Hey students! Romantic, passion and no student loan. Go out with a Sugar Daddy
or Sugar Mama!"
Photos of the billboard
went viral online
,
leading Deputy Mayor of Paris Helene Bidard to declare, "This site is an offence against women. Behind
these glamorized images there are young people who could end up in prostitution."
A French student association
launched a criminal complaint
over the ad, while others have launched a petition calling for such ads
to be banned.
The Belgian newspaper De Standaard reported that during his trial in Brussels, Vedal told the court he
would not mind if his own daughter registered on the site -- "If she wants it and she wants it because she
wants to start a real relationship."
The state prosecutor told the court, "Even if weasel words were used, everyone knew what it was about.
There are half-dressed women on the site, there are no photos of couples in a restaurant. Students are
reduced to sex objects that must undress for money."
But Brandon Wade, the businessman behind SeekingArrangement, insists it is not an escort service, and
even hosts a disclaimer: "An arrangement is not an escort service. SeekingArrangement in no way, shape or
form supports escorts or prostitutes using our website for personal gain. Profiles suspected of this
usage will be addressed by the SeekingArrangement Misconduct Team and banned from our website."
Despite this, when images from SA profiles were put through a search engine, matching photographs were
found on escort review websites, such as companionsreviews.com, CAescort.club and exoticpostreviews.com.
Ads on backpage.com also host some of these images.
Many human rights activists and feminist campaigners are fully aware that sugar dating is part of the
exploitative global sex trade.
I spoke to Rob Spectre, a New York technologist and CEO of Childsafe.ai, who has researched the
phenomenon of sugar dating sites. "These sites attempt to emulate dating sites, but in fact they are no
different from escort prostitution businesses," he says. "The number of underage young women advertised
is significant. The exploitation is off the scale, and clearly crimes are being committed."
In 2018, a young female member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
(CATW)
, which campaigns to end the global sex trade,
attended a sugar industry event undercover. Hosted by Let's Talk Sugar, a blog in partnership with
SeekingArrangement, the event aimed to recruit sugar babies onto the site.
A young woman from Brooklyn, New York, spoke of her first experiences on the site: At the end of her
first SA date, the man handed her an envelope containing $600. On her second date with a different man,
he placed an envelope filled with $2,000 on the countertop after their lunch date. At that point, she
said, she felt obligated to have sex with the man because that is "what's expected after a $2,000
exchange."
"I observed confirmation of things we already suspected, such as solicitation of minors and financial
coercion, but also learned exactly how the website itself 'coaches' users to create the most successful
profile -- from what kind of photos to use down to the lingo. If you've heard survivors of [child sexual
abuse] describe how their pimps made them curate ads on Backpage it sounded like that," the CATW
observer says.
In the tips and Q&A portion of the event, Brook Ulrich, the SA representative, announced, "These guys
are rich and they don't have enough time to craft an eloquent message they want to get to the point
they want to press a button to say, 'I am interested, are you interested?' " She referred to sharing
private photos as a "game," and recommended a little "reveal" in private photos.
Ulrich told the young women they "shouldn't be embarrassed or ashamed" to have an older man paying for
her expenses.
In response to a woman who asked about potential dangers and safety, Ulrich said that women signing up
for SA should assume that all the men on the site have "baggage," and the women should be cautious about
who they meet.
It's advice that Cheryl, who feels she "lost everything" when she was forced to run away from her
abusive sugar daddy, finally understands. "I would tell any woman planning on doing it: 'Don't even think
about it!' It is prostitution, but it is even worse in some ways, because the john doesn't walk away
after having sex. He sticks around to take your life from you and make it his."
Julie Bindel
Contributor
Julie Bindel is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and researcher. She has been active in the global
campaign to end violence towards women and children since 1979...
On the margins of the sex industry, an ugly market in virginity has emerged in Cambodia in which rich and powerful men coerce desperate
mothers into selling their daughters' innocence
Vannith Uy is the owner of what translates from Khmer as a "mobile nail salon", although the word salon is a stretch. It's a bicycle
with a plastic crate on the back filled with hand lotions and nail polishes. Uy, 42, rides it around her Phnom Penh neighbourhood
– a tangle of alleys near the river where the residents' domestic lives spill out of their open front doors – until a customer flags
her down. She performs a manicure or pedicure on the spot, sitting on a plastic stool by the side of the street.
Three years ago,
when she arrived from the countryside, Uy had a different plan. She wanted to open a hair and beauty salon on proper premises in
the Cambodian capital. "But my family could find only dirty jobs," she says. "I wanted a place where my daughter and I could work
together." So Uy did something she describes as her "only choice": she sold her 18-year-old daughter Chamnan's virginity to a wealthy
local man for £900.
The man was a police general who frequented the beer garden where Uy worked as a kitchen help, she says. He bought Chamnan for
six days and nights. He installed her in a hotel room on Phnom Penh's outskirts and visited her many times to have sex. She was allowed
to call her mother once a day. By the third day, Uy recalls, Chamnan was so weak and distressed that the man summoned a doctor on
his payroll to give her painkillers and a vitamin shot "so she had the strength to keep going until the end of the week".
Uy received cash payment in full, but her planned salon never materialised. The money that had represented a life-changing sum
– equivalent to around five years' salary in her home village in Kandal province – soon trickled away. After she'd paid her sick
husband's medical bills, given cash to her ageing parents and bought Chamnan a gold necklace to "raise her spirits", there wasn't
much left. Uy had greatly underestimated the task of clawing her way out of hardship; her stricken expression as she talks suggests
she also miscalculated the personal costs of selling her daughter's body to try.
Where to begin unravelling the shadowy, painful layers of Uy and Chamnan's story? It is not straightforward. Often overlooked
by more dramatic tales of enslavement in brothels, the trade in virgins is one of the most endemic forms of
sexual exploitation
in Cambodia. It is a market sustained by severe poverty and ingrained gender
inequality. Its clients are influential Cambodian men and other members of Asia's elite who enjoy total impunity from a corrupt justice
system. Most misunderstood of all, many of those involved in the transactions are not hardcore criminals. They are mothers, fathers,
friends and neighbours.
Cambodia is far FROM the only place where women and girls are treated
as commodities. But in this country of 15 million people, the demand for virgins is big business that thrives due to cultural myth
and other local factors. "Many Asian men, especially those over 50, believe sex with virgins gives them magical powers to stay young
and ward off illness," says Chhiv Kek Pung, president of Cambodia's leading
human
rights organisation, Licadho. "There's a steady supply of destitute families for the trade to prey on here, and the rule of law
is very weak."
The belief that sex with virgins increases male vigour has long held sway among powerful men in Asia, including Chairman Mao and
North Korea's Kim dynasty. "Unlike sex- tourist paedophiles who seek out children under 10 years old, local men don't care so much
about a virgin's age – only her beauty and the fact she's pure," says Pung. Parents who sell their daughters' virginity have little
concept of child rights. "They regard their offspring as their property."
Based on Licadho's work inside communities, Pung estimates that "many thousands" of virgins aged between 13 and 18 are sold every
year. As well as rich Cambodians, men from countries such as China, Singapore and Thailand are regular buyers, too. "They travel
here on business and have everything prearranged by brokers: a five-star hotel, a few rounds of golf and a night or two with a virgin,"
says Eric Meldrum, a former police detective from the UK who now works as an anti-exploitation consultant in Phnom Penh.
The lack of hard figures is partly due to the trade's secrecy, Meldrum adds. Brokers operate underground, changing tactics and
locations often. Plus the fact that close relatives are often involved means it rarely fits into strict definitions of sex
trafficking
– when people are tricked or abducted and sold into open-ended slavery – so it doesn't show up in those statistics either.
But there's another reason the trade is virtually invisible. Says Licadho's Pung: "In terms of activism, few organisations highlight
virgin buying even though it's a devastating abuse of young women." It's seen as difficult to generate sympathy for the issue among
foreign aid donors, she explains, so many NGOs sidestep the issue. (Licadho is one of the exceptions.) "The fear is that, while people
might feel sorry for the girls, they'd be too outraged about parents selling their daughters to open their wallets."
That moral complexities are sometimes ignored by those purporting to help was sensationally underscored in late May.
Somaly Mam, a self-styled former sex
slave and Cambodia's most famous
anti-trafficking campaigner, was forced to resign in disgrace from the US-based foundation that bears her name. The glamorous
Mam boasted Hollywood actor Susan Sarandon and Facebook dynamo Sheryl
Sandberg among her top supporters. She was feted widely in the media. On the back of heartbreaking stories about herself and
Cambodian women under her wing, she raised millions of dollars at glitzy New York galas. Her downfall came after an investigation
by a Cambodia Daily reporter revealed that significant parts of the stories
she told were untrue.
One young woman whom Mam claimed to have rescued from a brothel after a vicious pimp gouged out her right eye had actually lost
the eye, it emerged, as the result of a facial tumour. Mam's own story of woe – that she was orphaned and sold to a brothel at the
age of 12 – was also dismantled.
The awful irony of Mam's rapid fall is that she didn't need to lie. Sex trafficking and exploitation exist in Cambodia, just often
in less made-for-TV ways than her tragic tales suggested. (Brothels in red-light areas housing enslaved child prostitutes, for example,
have been almost
wiped out over the past decade.) Dishonesty aside, the greatest pitfall of her fraudulence was not so much that it misrepresented
the scale of the problem. It was that it misrepresented the solutions. In promoting herself – and allowing others to do it for her
– as a survivor single-handedly rescuing girls from evil predators, she made finding answers seem all too easy.
"People respond to emotional stories and they hand over their money without understanding underlying causes or long-term solutions,"
says Sébastien Marot, the director of Friends International, an NGO based in Phnom
Penh that works with vulnerable children. But in the case of the virgin trade, he says, progress is hard. Pung agrees. "When
you talk to people about this, there's a view that there are plenty of poor people in the world who don't sell their daughters, so
it can't be blamed on poverty or desperation. But there are many interwoven social factors. You have to look at the whole picture."
At Vannith Uy's HOME, a dark, wide room that she rents for £10 a week at the back of a grander house, she tells me about her struggle
to find work when she first arrived in Phnom Penh. Her husband had a back injury and she had two children, Chamnan and a younger
son, to support. The capital overflows with rural migrants, all competing for the same menial jobs. "The only work I could find was
as a kitchen help in a beer garden. I found Chamnan a job serving ice at the same place."
Hostesses at a Phnom Penh beer garden. The beer gardens are popular with men looking for virgins. There is no suggestion that these
women have been sold Photograph: Will Baxter
Beer gardens are fairy-lit outdoor pubs where local men go to relax after work. In the evenings all over Phnom Penh, the sound
of plaintive Khmer love songs leaks into the darkness, feedback and all, from their giant speakers. The gardens employ miniskirted
young women to sell competing brands of Cambodian beer or to work as hostesses and sing karaoke. The décor at one popular place is
a disconcerting mix of beer posters and Pooh Bear murals.
Uy hated the atmosphere, which she says became more drunken and predatory as the night wore on. "Chamnan is pretty and all the
men loved her. They made comments about her body." While prostitution isn't openly advertised, many of the hostesses and beer girls
supplement their income by selling sex to customers after hours. Brokers also frequent the gardens, touting for men who want to buy
virgins or have other "special requests", which they arrange to take place at discreet locations.
Uy says the thought of selling Chamnan's virginity hadn't occurred to her until the opportunity arose. "A tall customer in his
50s noticed Chamnan. He came alone and asked her to sit beside him. One evening he asked me if she was a virgin, and said he wanted
to buy her." She found out before the sale took place that he was an off-duty police general. Uy eventually agreed because, in her
mind, she saw it as a chance to save Chamnan from becoming drawn into regular sex work. "It was only a matter of time if we stayed
at the beer garden. All the girls who worked there seemed to do it eventually."
Economic opportunities are lacking for everyone in Cambodia, where three-quarters of the population lives below or just above
the poverty line. But they are especially dire for women, who earn an average of only 27 cents for
every dollar earned by a man, according to the
Asian Development Bank. Apart from working in the fields, the vast garment industry is the biggest source of female employment.
But wages are so pitiful at around £60 per month that
workers are currently risking their lives in protests to fight for more. Working in a beer garden or karaoke bar and doing sex
work on the side can bring in double that, and some women see it as their best option.
But sex work is not only criminalised under the law, leaving those who do it by choice (or lack of it) vulnerable to official
abuse, it also brings deep social shame. Expectations of female chastity in Cambodia are enshrined in a code of duty and obedience
known as chbab srey, or "women's law". "There's a
national saying that men are like gold and women are like cloth," says Tong Soprach, an academic researcher into the sexual practices
of Cambodia's youth. "If you drop gold in the dirt, it washes clean and still shines. If you drop cloth, the stain never comes out."
This absurd double standard is another reason virginity is so valued, of course. Men typically pay between £600 and £3,000 to
buy a virgin for up to a week, depending on their budget and the girl's beauty. Uy didn't know the going rates, but she believed
the offer of £900 for Chamnan would be enough to change their fate. "I explained my idea to Chamnan. She wasn't happy about going
with the man, but she told me she understood."
In fact, chbab srey also dictates that women must obey and help their parents, a rule that is almost universally followed. It
would have been difficult for Chamnan to refuse. "When she came home afterwards, I knew she was sad, but we didn't speak about it.
We both felt it was better to forget it ever happened." Uy took a better-not-to-know approach with her husband, too. To preserve
Chamnan's virtue in his eyes, she told him she had saved up the money from beer garden tips.
I asked Uy if I could meet Chamnan, who is now 22, but it wasn't possible. With the little money left over from her ordeal, she
had returned to Kandal province and found a job in a government garment factory making underwear. Does she resent that Uy's grand
plan didn't materialise? "I don't think so. She has a steady boyfriend now and hopes to marry him. She has a better life." But then,
as a mother, Uy probably would think that.
Cambodian parents love their children as much as anyone, says Nget Thy, director of the Cambodian
Center for the Protection of Children's Rights. But it's difficult to overstate how many problems exist in some communities.
"Any misfortune, from losing a family member to losing a game of cards, can push people below the level they need to eat," he says.
"Attitudes that children exist for their parents' benefit, and that women exist for men's benefit, are very, very wrong and need
addressing urgently. But it's the men who buy virgins who are the criminals."
At a Phnom Penh riverside slum I meet Dara Keo. Dara's mother Rotana sold her virginity when she just 12 years old, after her
father died leaving gambling debts. The slum's stilted shacks are home to around 1,000 people, many of whom recycle rubbish as their
only source of income. Addiction to drugs, alcohol and gambling is part of daily life. Dara, who is now 18, says almost every teenage
girl there is sold for her virginity, usually in deals made with their parents by female neighbours who work as brokers. "Everyone
knows it happens but nobody talks about it openly."
Dara's account, and those of other young women I speak to in the slum, reveal the trade's dehumanising efficiency. "After my mother
sold me for $500 (£300), the broker took me to a doctor to have my virginity checked and a blood test for HIV," says Dara. "There
were other girls there. We were made to take off our clothes and stand in a line until it was our turn to be examined." (Buyers insist
on proof of virginity to make sure they are not being tricked.)
Then she was taken to meet her buyer in an exclusive hotel room. The man, who was wearing "a dark suit and a gold watch", didn't
speak or look at her at all, Dara says. "He pinned me down on the bed, unzipped his trousers and forced himself into me. The pain
was very great." Over the next seven days, he came to the hotel to have sex with her two or three times a day. He didn't use a condom.
"A few times he asked if he was hurting me. When I told him yes, he used even more force."
I ask about the man's identity. Dara gives me the name of a Cambodian politician who is still in office. It is impossible for
her to reveal his name publicly.
By the time she was allowed to return home her vagina was torn and bruised. Her mother took her to a local doctor, who gave her
painkillers and told her that her injuries would "heal on their own".
A senior police officer who agrees to speak anonymously says prominent men like politicians do not fear being caught because they
know the police won't act. "If you try to enforce the law with these men, you will have a big problem," the officer says, dressed
in civilian clothes in a Phnom Penh coffee shop. "I have been threatened, and some of my colleagues working on this issue have had
their jobs threatened."
He relates how he has been warned by "people high up" not to pursue cases of virgin buying (and also rape) because "having sex
is human nature" and such issues were "not serious".
He mentions a case last year of a senior military officer who was diagnosed with cancer and given one year to live. His wife agreed
to let the man use more than £1m of their family money to "enjoy himself" before he died. "We knew he was buying a new virgin every
week, but there was nothing we could do," says the policeman. (The man died recently.)
Men in power or big business "who have a good relationship with each other" are the only people who can afford to buy virgins,
he adds, so arresting perpetrators is blocked by corruption at the very top. Although all forms of buying and selling sex are illegal
in Cambodia, not one Khmer man has ever been convicted of purchasing virgins.
During her year working at the beer garden, Uy saw firsthand how the country's male elite bought virgins with entitled ease. She
saw more than 50 young women being purchased, "like they were delicious food". As well as the police general who bought Chamnan,
she came to know some of the other buyers well. One was an ageing politician from the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP). "Everybody
loved him because he gave big tips."
She mentions the politician's name. He is someone whose name crops up repeatedly in relation to the virgin trade among journalists
and activists in Cambodia. (It is not the same politician who bought Dara.) Uy said the man went further than purchasing virgins
for his immediate pleasure – he "reserved" younger girls for the future. "He asked mothers to bring their underage daughters to the
beer garden after-hours," she explains. "Then he chose the ones he liked, and gave their mothers some money every week to buy rice
until the girls grew up." A mutual arrangement was made, she adds, that he would buy their virginity when they reached adolescence.
A slum area in Phnom Penh. Severe poverty and ingrained gender inequality fuel Cambodia's virgin trade Photograph: Heng Sinith/AP
I spoke to Mu Sochua, a former Minister of Women's Affairs in the CPP and now a leading light in the main opposition Cambodia
National Rescue Party (CNRP). She has campaigned for years on the need to address corruption and poverty, and advance women's status.
In recent months she has been braving the front line of garment workers' protests to support their demand for a livable wage. While
"the rule of law is not on the agenda of the current government", she says bluntly, addressing sexual exploitation such as the virgin
trade needs to be part of efforts to tackle gender inequality on all fronts. "We have to increase education about women's rights
to change attitudes," she says. "We need to win public support for an effective rule of law that punishes those who buy sex, not
those who sell it."
The old men of the CPP have been in power continuously for 30 years. Mu Sochua, along with many others, believes the most recent
general election last year was rigged. "The Cambodian people have already voted for change, so that is hopeful," she says. When the
regime finally dies, she hopes that iniquities such as the virgin trade will die with it.
But will it? Take the politician who gave big tips that Uy mentioned. It's such an open secret in Phnom Penh that he is a prolific
buyer of virgins that a Cambodian journalist who knows him well offered to introduce me to him. He was sure the politician would
talk if I agreed to quote him anonymously.
The journalist quickly decided not to get involved. Even so, the moment suggested the lack of shame surrounding the practice and
how much men like the politician must take their impunity for granted.
To protect the safety of the women cited in the article, some names have been changed.
Lord
Dude • 8
hours ago WTF are y9ou TALKING about "inundating people with immigrants and diversity"???
Indigenous/Native people were HERE LONG BEFORE European colonizers arrived. AFRICANS were
KIDNAPPED, ENSLAVED and brought here against their will. IMMIGRANTS (with enslaved Africans
& during Jim Crow segregation) did the HARDEST LABOR to build this country--including THE
WHITE HOUSE. You obviously don't know BASIC FACTS about the U.S.
Ew boy. The liberal religion. The liberal original sin hoax. Lemme guess -- your
family came to America in the 20th Century and you're going to lecture me about our
past and lay this guilt tripping gaslighting original sin nonsense on me? lol
All nations on earth have conquest and slavery in their pasts. In fact, America
was in the middle of the abolition of slavery time-line with scores of nations
abolishing slavery after America.
These are BASIC FACTS the liberal religion doesn't want you knowing. The
historical ignorance required to maintain your ideology is astounding.
Wage labor is far more efficient than slave labor. Even Lincoln argued that -- but
we mustn't forget that all nations on earth practiced slavery and scores of them
ended it after America. So much for your gaslighting, guilt tripping original sin
religious nonsense.
The Arabs stormed the Anatolian Peninsula, conquered it, slaughtered those who
held the land, took the women as sex slaves, and founded the Ottoman Empire which is
Turkey today. So must Turkey base its immigration policy on that? The Tai people
stormed down from China and conquered the Wa people, slaughtered them, stole their
land, took the women as sex slaves, and created the Siam Empire which is Thailand
today. Must Thailand base their immigration policy on that?
The same is true for all nations on earth. The historical ignorance required to
maintain the original sin nonsense is astounding.
Qutar didn't end slavery until 1956, China 1906, Ethiopia 1902, Thailand 1912,
Morocco 1922, Afghanistan 1922, Iran 1929, Japan 1945, Kuwait 1949, Mauritania in
1981, Oman 1970, Trucial States in 1964, Yemen and Saudi Arabia in 1962, Niger in
1960, Bhutan 1956, Northern Nigeria 1936, Nepal 1926, Iraq 1924, Morocco 1922,
Zanzibar 1897, Madagascar 1896, Egypt 1895, Korea 1894, Cuba 1886, Cambodia 1884,
Bulgaria 1879, Gold Coast 1874, Puerto Rico 1873.
Jeffrey Epstein accuser Jennifer Araroz filed an amended complaint Tuesday which names
two accomplices
in the convicted pedophile's alleged sex-trafficking operation
along with more than 20
corporate entities, according to
CNN
.
While Epstein's alleged 'madam' Ghislaine Maxwell has been accused of actively participating
in Epstein's sex crimes, the new complaint asserts that "secretary" Lesley Groff and former executive
assistant Cimberly Espinosa "participated with and assisted Epstein in
maintaining and
protecting his sex trafficking ring,
ensuring that approximately
three girls a day
were made available to him for his sexual pleasure
."
"The co-conspirators provided organizational support to Epstein's sex trafficking ring,
identifying and hiring the recruiters of underage girls
for Epstein's sexual pleasure,
scheduling appointments with these underage girls for Epstein's sexual pleasure
,
intimidating potential witnesses to Epstein's sex trafficking operation, and generally providing
administrative oversight of his sex trafficking operation
and ensuring it remained secret
,"
the complaint continues.
"He raped me, forcefully raped me"
Araoz told
NBC News
in July.
The 32-year-old Epstein accuser says she was 14-years-old when the abuse began. "
I was
terrified, and I was telling him to stop. 'Please stop,'
" Araoz continud.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/CYNnkAJHk_w
Groff's attorney, Michael Bachner, told CNN "As an executive assistant to Epstein, Lesley worked as
part of a professional staff that included in-house attorneys, accountants, an office manager and
other office staff."
"Lesley's job included making appointments for Mr. Epstein as directed by him, taking his messages,
and setting up high-level meetings with CEOs, business executives, scientists, politicians and
celebrities," the statement continues - adding "
At no time during Lesley's employment with
Epstein did she ever engage in any misconduct.
"
Also included in the complaint are the executors of Epstein's estate (one of whom was reportedly
seen
removing a bag of items
the day after Epstein's death).
In August, Araoz
told reporters
that her abuse at the hands of Epstein and his enablers "robbed me of my youth, my
identity, my innocence, my self-worth."
Brunel ready to talk
On Monday, an attorney for Epstein's former confidant, business partner, and model scout
Jean-Luc-Brenel says he's ready to talk to authorities, according to the
Telegraph
.
The Paris prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation in August into any possible
Epstein victims in its territory, and Mr Brunel is of potential interest to investigators.
Last month police searched Karin Models, which Mr Brunel founded.
In court filings, Virginia Guiffre, a long-time accuser of Epstein, claimed teenage girls
were brought to the US by Brunel and were "farmed out" by him to have sex with Epstein
.
Ms Guiffre also claims she was forced to have sex with Brunel several times. Brunel denies both
allegations.
His lawyer Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt said Mr Brunel "firmly contests accusations in the press" and
"will reserve his statements for justice officials."
On Monday Ms Dreyfus-Schmidt, said that her client has notified the Paris prosecutor's office
that
he is at the disposition of judicial officials.
-
Telegraph
According to Epstein accuser Virgina Giuffre Roberts, Brunel "would bring young girls (ranging to
ages as young as twelve) to the United States for sexual purposes and farm them out to his friends,
especially Epstein."
"Brunel would offer the girls "modeling" jobs. Many of the girls came from poor countries or
impoverished backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money."
In the 1980s Brunel was featured in a 60 Minutes expose after having gained a reputation for
sleeping with many of his underage models. His name was prominently featured in a series of phone
messages recovered from trash pulls of Epstein's mansion.
"... Not all mosques agreed to read Karmani's sermon, and some claimed -- quite incorrectly, as it happened -- that the grooming issue was a thing of the past. ..."
"... Many of those deeper aspects are directly related to the persistence of religious fundamentalism and a wide refusal among many to integrate within British society. Despite the efforts of moderate Muslims, mosques and institutions to stop young men and women travelling abroad to take part in jihad or bring back wives from abroad, many have done so. Sermonizing, even with good intentions, may not address the underlying reasons for seemingly anti-social behaviour. ..."
"... Also in 2013, Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation, and a controversial reformist, spoke out following the trial and conviction of six members of a child sex ring from Oxford. He contended that some imams were indirectly inspiring the grooming gangs through their contempt for non-Muslim women ..."
"... True Islam preaches respect for women but in mosques across the country a different doctrine is preached - "one that denigrates all women, but treats whites with particular contempt" ..."
"... Their dress code, from miniskirts to sleeveless tops, is deemed to reflect their impure and immoral outlook. According to this mentality, these white women deserve to be punished for their behaviour by being exploited and degraded. ..."
"... Hargey's link between the grooming gangs and hard-line religious leaders is borne out by an article published in 2018 by the serious liberal newspaper, The Independent . The author is Ella Hill, one of the girls abused in Rotherham and now part of the largest child sexual abuse investigation. ..."
"... Sexual and gender-based violence is used as a tactic of terrorism by a range of today's violent extremist groups. This makes it essential to address violence against women and girls as an integrated part in countering and preventing violent extremism. ..."
Not all Muslims remained silent about the grooming gang problem. We have already seen how
the new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, a Muslim of Pakistani origin, took rapid action to open an
enquiry into the crimes. A number of Muslim organizations and individuals have spoken out
against the gangs, and condemned them for bringing their faith into disrepute. The integrative
Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), for
one,
has spoken out strongly about grooming culture.
In May 2013, Julie Siddiqi, chief executive of the ISB,
coordinated a Muslim-led coalition to campaign against offenders, known as The Community
Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, which, in turn, was launched in Bradford with the backing
of the Bradford Council of Mosques. The following month, a Muslim group called Together
Against Grooming (TAG) declared that a Friday prayer sermon (
khutba ) would be read out in around 500 mosques across the country to draw attention to
the grooming issue.
The sermon was written by
Alyas Karmani , an imam who has a background in psychology and serves at several mosques
around Bradford. Karmani specializes in sexual counselling from a non-fundamentalist
perspective and
has worked on a PhD entitled, "The Crises of Masculinity and Urban Male Violence". His
detailed understanding of the grooming gangs and their various motivations are perhaps the
most sophisticated yet advanced by a Muslim expert and should be taken into account by any
present or future investigation.
Some other Muslim organizations such as the progressive Islamic Society of Britain have sent
out sermons on the same issue. There can be no question that there is an important and growing
range of Muslim reaction to the shame brought on the communities by the grooming gangs and the
reluctance in many places even to talk about sexual matters. This reformist activity in the
migrant community needs to be encouraged and backed by government resources.
There are, however, other, sometimes deeper aspects to the problem that still remain to be
explored.Not all mosques agreed
to read Karmani's sermon, and some claimed -- quite incorrectly, as it happened -- that the
grooming issue was a thing of the past.
Many of those deeper aspects are directly related to
the persistence of religious fundamentalism and a wide refusal
among many to integrate within British society. Despite the efforts of moderate Muslims,
mosques and institutions to stop young men and women travelling abroad to take part in jihad or
bring back wives from abroad, many have done so. Sermonizing, even with good intentions,
may not address the underlying reasons for seemingly anti-social behaviour.
Also in 2013, Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation, and a controversial
reformist,
spoke out following the trial and conviction of six members of a child sex ring from
Oxford. He contended that some imams were indirectly inspiring the grooming gangs through their
contempt for non-Muslim women:
On one level, most imams in the UK are simply using their puritanical sermons to promote
the wearing of the hijab and even the burka among their female adherents. But the dire result
can be the brutish misogyny we see in the Oxford sex ring.
He wrote at length about the ways in which fundamentalist attitudes influenced some men:
True Islam preaches respect for women but in mosques across the country a different
doctrine is preached - "one that denigrates all women, but treats whites with particular
contempt"....
The men are taught that women are "second-class citizens, little more than chattels or
possessions over whom they have absolute authority"...
The view of some Islamic preachers towards white women can be appalling. They encourage
their followers to believe that these women are habitually promiscuous, decadent, and sleazy
-- sins which are made all the worse by the fact that they are kaffurs [sic for kuffar
, pl. of kafir ] or non-believers.
Their dress code, from miniskirts to sleeveless tops, is deemed to reflect their impure
and immoral outlook. According to this mentality, these white women deserve to be punished
for their behaviour by being exploited and degraded.
The largest and most influential of all UK mosques are those of the Deobandis, a highly
conservative majority denomination in Pakistani Islam that also
dominates the seminaries within the UK and in which future imams are trained.
According to the author and Investigations editor at BBCNewsnight, Innes Bowen:
What most Deobandi scholars have in common is a conservative interpretation of Islamic
law: television and music for the purposes of entertainment, for example, are frowned upon if
not banned; attitudes towards women are deeply conservative, with, for example, some scholars
advising Muslim women that their religion does not permit them to travel any distance unless
accompanied by a close male relative. That this description of such an austere brand of Islam
sounds similar to that propagated by the Taliban in Afghanistan should not be surprising
– the Taliban movement grew out of the Deobandi madrasas of Pakistan.
Many Deobandi and other fundamentalist preachers and online fatwa sites promulgate
the doctrine of al-Wala'
wa'l-Bara' , which may be roughly translated as "loyalty [to Islam] and avoidance [of
unbelievers]". This belief reinforces the need to stay away from, and even to have enmity
towards, the inferior non-Muslim world. It is not far-fetched to see how, through this
doctrine, a sense of total difference from, and contempt for, non-Muslims in general -- and
non-Muslim girls and women in particular -- may have given many of the grooming gangs a debased
level of justification, even self-righteousness in the members of the grooming gangs.
Hargey's link between the grooming gangs and hard-line religious leaders is borne out by
an article published in 2018 by the serious liberal newspaper, The Independent . The
author is Ella Hill, one of the girls abused in Rotherham and now part of the largest child
sexual abuse investigation. She begins:
As a teenager, I was taken to various houses and flats above takeaways in the north of
England, to be beaten, tortured and raped over 100 times. I was called a "white slag" and
"white c***" as they beat me.
They made it clear that because I was a non-Muslim, and not a virgin, and because I didn't
dress "modestly", that they believed I deserved to be "punished". They said I had to "obey"
or be beaten.
Sexual and gender-based violence is used as a tactic of terrorism by a range of today's
violent extremist groups. This makes it essential to address violence against women and girls
as an integrated part in countering and preventing violent extremism.
She then argues that:
Religious indoctrination is a big part of the process of getting young men involved in
grooming gang crime. Religious ideas about purity, virginity, modesty and obedience are taken
to the extreme until horrific abuse becomes the norm. It was taught to me as a concept of
"othering".
"Muslim girls are good and pure because they dress modestly, covering down to their
ankles and wrists, and covering their crotch area. They stay virgins until marriage. They
are our girls."
[Author's note: Italicized in the original, but should probably have been in quotation
marks. The passage is evidently meant to be words spoken by gang members who used her.]
She also emphasizes this religious background to her treatment, stating that "My main
perpetrator quoted scriptures from the Quran to me as he beat me." Nevertheless, she goes on to
say that "Most grooming gang survivors I know absolutely condemn anti-Islamic hate, and we're
uncomfortable with English Defence League protests. We certainly don't want random attacks on
'all Muslims'. You can't cure harm with more harm."
The connection between fundamentalist religiosity, terrorism and gender crime is not as
fanciful as it might have seemed at first. There are decent Muslims everywhere who work hard to
counter all the anti-social and criminal activities in which so many of their co-religionists
engage and the theological positions through which they try to justify what they do. But
terrorist attacks, anti-Semitic hate speech, and sexual harassment of young white women are
real crimes committed by a different kind of Muslim and must be addressed as such.
In a report published on December 12, 2017, the important Muslim counter-extremism think
tank, the Quilliam Foundation, addressed at length the problem of the grooming gangs. Written
by Quilliam's CEO, Haras Rafiq with media strategist and researcher Muna Adil,
the report , "Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation: Dissecting Grooming Gangs", consists
of a comprehensive data analysis of grooming gang cases identified in the UK since 2005. Ten
case studies from 2010-2017 are also analysed in depth to help determine any similarities and
identify any patterns that exist across the cases.
At the root of the problem seems to lie the fact that many Muslim men have failed to
integrate into British society. According
to Muna Adil :
There are elements from within the British Pakistani community that still subscribe to
outdated and sexist views of women embedded within their jaded interpretations of Islam.
These backward views are passed down from generation to generation until the lines between
faith and culture dissolve, making it increasingly difficult to criticise one without being
seen as a critic of the other.
Quilliam's findings echo a number of earlier reviews and surveys of the British Muslim
community as a whole. In her 2016 government-commissioned
review into integration and opportunity in isolated and deprived communities, Dame Louise
Casey found evidence that the hardest group to integrate was the Muslim community. In her
Executive Summary , she notes (paragraph 30) that:
People of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnicity tend to live in more residentially
segregated communities than other ethnic minority groups. South Asian communities (people of
Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi ethnicity) live in higher concentrations at ward level than
any other ethnic minority group. These concentrations at ward level are growing in many
areas.
She adds that that, "Compared to other minority faith groups, Muslims tend to live in
higher residential concentrations at ward level". She continues:
[Paragraph] 32. The school age population is even more segregated when compared to
residential patterns of living. A Demos study found that, in 2013, more than 50% of ethnic
minority students were in schools where ethnic minorities were the majority, and that school
segregation was highest among students from Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds
relative to other ethnic groups.
Again:
[Paragraph] 44. Polling in 2015 also showed that more than 55% of the general public
agreed that there was a fundamental clash between Islam and the values of British society,
while 46% of British Muslims felt that being a Muslim in Britain was difficult due to
prejudice against Islam. We found a growing sense of grievance among sections of the Muslim
population, and a stronger sense of identification with the plight of the 'Ummah', or global
Muslim community.
She also highlights problems with the national language:
[Paragraph] 52. English language is a common denominator and a strong enabler of
integration. But Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups have the lowest levels of English
language proficiency of any Black or Minority Ethnic group and women in those communities are
twice as likely as men to have poor English.
Finally, we should note her statement on gender equality, which is clearly linked to the
Muslim communities:
[Paragraph] 57. ... in many areas of Britain the drive towards equality and opportunity
across gender might never have taken place. Women in some communities are facing a double
onslaught of gender inequality, combined with religious, cultural and social barriers
preventing them from accessing even their basic rights as British residents. And violence
against women remains all too prevalent in domestic abuse but also in other criminal
practices such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage and so-called "honour" based
crime.
Casey was not the first to draw attention to most of these issues. In 2007, the British
think tank Policy Exchange, published a
detailed report titled "Living apart together: British Muslims and the paradox of
multiculturalism", written by three young Asian researchers. Their most striking finding, drawn
from a survey, was that the youngest generation (16-24 year olds) were more radical in their
beliefs than their grandparents (55+ year olds). Thus, 37% of the youngest would prefer to live
under shari'a law than British law, compared to only 17% of their elders ; 36% of the youngest
believe that if a Muslim converts to another religion they must be punished by death, compared
to only 19% of the oldest; a high 74% of 16-24 year olds prefer Muslim women to wear the veil,
compared to a mere 28% of 55+ year olds -- an astonishing reversal. Most immigrant communities
-- notably Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles and others in the United States' "melting pot" -- come
to identify with their host country within the second and third generation, and that has been
largely true of the United Kingdom.
One particular feature that distinguishes Muslims from the rest of the increasingly secular
UK population is the extent to which religion plays a major role in people's lives. Figure 2 of
the report shows that 66% agree strongly and another 20% of Muslims tend to agree that "My
religion is the most important thing in my life". In Figure 1, 49% say they pray the full 5
times a day, and 22% 1-3 times a day, with a tiny 5% replying "never". It is important to read
the report in full. for it has many supportive things to say about British Muslims:
However, there is also considerable diversity amongst Muslims, with many adopting a more
secular approach to their religion. The majority of Muslims feel they have as much, if not
more, in common with non-Muslims in Britain as with Muslims abroad. There is clearly a
conflict within British Islam between a moderate majority that accepts the norms of Western
democracy and a growing minority that does not. For these reasons, we should be wary of
treating the entire Muslim population as a monolith with special needs that are different to
the rest of the population.
An
extensive poll of Muslim opinion conducted in 2016 by ICM showed that things were much the
same or worse than in 2007. It was reported on by Trevor Phillips, a son of Caribbean
immigrants and former chairman of Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission. In an article
for the Sunday Times , he expressed his deep frustration with the Muslim failure to
integrate:
...for a long time, I too thought that Europe's Muslims would become like previous waves
of migrants, gradually abandoning their ancestral ways, wearing their religious and cultural
baggage lightly, and gradually blending into Britain's diverse identity landscape. I should
have known better.
Another
2016 survey , carried out by a Czech think tank, European Values, found that some 44% of
Muslims held views corresponding to radical Islamic fundamentalism.
"The survey discovered 57 percent of Muslims reject homosexuals as friends, 45 percent
said they don't trust the Jews and 54 percent think of the West as an enemy of Islam . Among
fundamentalist Muslims, 72 percent of respondents said they would use violence to defend
Islam. Among regular Muslims, that number amounted to 35 percent.
"An incredibly large number of Muslims want Islamic Sharia law to dominate over local
laws. For instance, 72 percent of Muslims in France want to see Sharia as the main or only
source of law in the country. That figure remains astonishingly high in the United Kingdom at
69 percent."
@utu Jean-Luc Brunel is Jewish. He had a nasty reputation for drugging young women and
raping them once they became helpless. His "modeling agency" had offices in Paris, N.Y., and
Tel Aviv. He's in Israel right now, laying low.
"... As part of that progress, the language surrounding these crimes has changed. Anti-trafficking advocates no longer call victims "juvenile prostitutes," but victims of commercial sexual exploitation or sex trafficking victims . Social services organizations treat them like children in need of care, as dictated by safe harbor laws passed across states . Anti-trafficking advocates and law enforcement no longer call the men that sell children "pimps," but "traffickers." ..."
"... In my view, focusing on Epstein is a disservice to the countless victims of sex trafficking. There are many more men in U.S. cities and towns whose victims are still waiting for justice. ..."
Although
Jeffrey Epstein
, who died on Aug. 10, may
be the current face of sex trafficking, buying and selling youth and adults for sex is a more common practice for
everyday people in the U.S., mostly men.
Experts have a term for what Epstein is accused of doing: sex
trafficking.
The
Trafficking Victims Protection Act
,
passed in 2000, defined a sex trafficking victim as any adult involved in a commercial sex act that was induced by
force, fraud or coercion or in which the person induced has not yet reached the age of 18.
I have spent the last 25 years studying sex trafficking. Because the idea of "freedom" is deeply rooted in the
American dream, I believe that this population deserves more of the public's attention.
Who purchases sex?
Human trafficking is a business with supply and demand: The supply is the victims, and the demand is the
customers.
But who are the customers?
When it comes to youth, it's a myth that the creepy pervert living under the bridge is buying our youth for
sex. "John" is employed and living next door to you.
One review of 21 studies
estimated that 15% to 20% of American men had purchased sex at least once. It's difficult to ascertain the number
of victims customers purchased for sex or how many knew they purchased sex trafficking victims.
Comparing
men arrested for buying sex
with
a nationally representative sample of men, one study found that men who purchased sex were more likely to be
educated. They were also slightly more likely not to be married.
More specifically, my team conducted
a study of 115 women in Ohio
that had previously been child sex trafficking victims and 43 who were current
adult sex trafficking victims.
We identified their customers as being male drug dealers, members of law enforcement, lawyers, construction
workers, truckers, businessmen, social workers, pastors, city employees and more.
Purchasing sex online has also become big business.
In
a study across 15 metropolitan cities
, on average, 1 out of every 20 males over the age of 18 found a sex ad
and engaged by texting or calling to arrange an encounter.
Reframing sex traffickers and customers
In movies like the blockbuster "Taken," family man and retired CIA agent Liam Neeson reluctantly allows his
daughter to take a trip out of the country, where she is ultimately trafficked into the sex trade.
The movie perpetuates the idea that the biggest risk for the trafficking of our daughters is in sending them
abroad, like Neeson's character did in the movie.
In reality, because of U.S. purchasing power and demand for sexual services, the risk is right here. Many
U.S. victims of
sex trafficking
are trafficking right here in the U.S.
Since the passing of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, the U.S. has made progress in fighting sex
trafficking. Both the
federal government and states have passed laws
that shift the blame away from vulnerable youth and adults onto
traffickers and customers and
attach stiff
penalties
for sex trafficking crimes.
But I think that the public view on sex trafficking, particularly of youth, has yet to catch up. Many Americans
still call men that purchase sex with youth "johns." In reality, they are "child molesters" or "sexual predators."
At the moment, the public has fixated its hatred of sex trafficking onto one man, Epstein, who purchased and
used minors for sex.
In my view, focusing on Epstein is a disservice to the countless victims of sex trafficking. There are many
more men in U.S. cities and towns whose victims are still waiting for justice.
@Jeff Stryker You
keep posting this question,but the premise is most doubtful. One would quickly be arrested
and quite possibly be shot and/or beaten half to death before the police arrived if you tried
approaching little girls in a trailer park offering money for sex .
Maxwell never had any contact with the schoolgirls, none of them said she met them.
Epstein's co conspirators getting him schoolgirls from Palm Beach High were other schoolgirls
who he paid a commission for bringing him girls, The main one was the 14 year old we hear so
much about and she recruited mainly her friends and relatives. It did not last long because
she got into a fight about it and then blabbed to the school psychologist about the whole
thing. The police found out from her who all the girls were and Epstein was arrested. Really
sophisticated intelligence operation.
Virginia Giuffre (nee Roberts), now in her thirties, was 17 and already studying to become
a masseuse when she met Maxwell at Trump's resort where she and her father both worked, and
was offered a job to start with Einstein in that capacity. Her father knew of Epstein as did
everyone in Palm Beach back then, and drove her to Epstein's house for the interview being
quite happy with the whole thing.
Guess that's why the largest percentage #MeToo offenders are Jews.
Yes, and they can't all be working for Mossad. Are Weinstein's female assistants being
assumed to be his accomplices in the rape of multiple women. Rape is what he is about to
stand trial for. I would say that rape is a much more serious offence than having consensual
sexual contact with a under age girl and paying her. There are several accounts of
Weinstein's assistants (who all knew what he was like) suddenly disappearing and leaving
young actresses alone with him. Was that a Mossad plot too? Or, do Weinstein's factotums get
a pass because they were Gentiles?
Weinstein's crimes are "predatory sexual assault," which carry a potential life sentence.
If Epstein was not prosecuted to the full extent of the laws it might have something to do
with those laws getting a little out of balance with the seriousness of the crime Epstein
committed. when compared with non prostitution offences. A 14 year old who hears she get big
money for giving a super rich old (to her) guy a massage and goes along to his house knowing
sexual contact short of full intercourse is part of the deal and leaves with several hundred
of dollars is in a very different category to a woman who is forcibly assaulted when a young
adult by a big shot movie producer.The Sopranos's Annabella Sciorra is saying Weinstein raped
her in 1993-94. H cannot be prosecuted for it now as too much time has passed. Mossad
plot?
@Jeff Stryker You
can't blame the victims or their parents all the time. The network of sex trafficking is so
powerful because it has no scruples at all.
This article explains how an young 22 year old English native Caucasian woman was sex
trafficked in London. She was walking down a street, when approached by photographer for
casting work. She went along with it. It soon went downhill very quickly. She ended up as a
slave in London. Lucky, she got out. Many girls probably could not get out and live to tell
about it.
It's been a long day, and you would like something to look forward to. It's there, waiting
for you, easy to get when you're tired, feeling down, or merely bored, and though you sometimes
worry that it may be a larger part of your life than it ought to be, you are assured that it is
entirely normal, commonplace even, if not so common as to lose all appeal. Everyone's
doing it, or at least everyone having fun, or the ones who are just like you. Besides, even if
it's not so public, and even a little, shall we say, frowned upon, no one needs to know. And as
long as you don't, you know, really overdo it, it's basically inexpensive. And anyway,
who's to say if it's actually a problem? Some people who do it all the time seem just fine, and
isn't the whole idea of being free and modern that there don't really have to be rules? Make
your own way. You sort of miss rules, but also you don't. You sort of hate yourself, but also
you don't. Or do you? It's not even a big deal. You just gotta get your morning started, or get
to sleep, or through this slump. It's just a few pills, one more drink. You know?
"Accessibility, affordability, advertising, anonymity, and anomie, the five cylinders of the
engine of mass addiction," writes David T. Courtwright in his new, one might say
compulsively readable book about bad habits becoming big business, The Age of
Addiction . We are, all of us, doing things to regulate our moods and get a little hit of
dopamine, to cope, all the time. Sometimes we call those things addictions. Often, of course,
we don't. That second cup of coffee; the music that's always on, whether in your car or your
house or your headphones; the ice cream or third helping; replying on Twitter and posting on
Instagram: these aren't for the vice squad but they do make us feel good, or if not good at
least normal. What happens when you just have to press a button to feel really good ?
Why shouldn't you just press and press until you die of pleasure, waste away in ecstasy? Some
people do -- brain chemistry overwhelmed and dopamine pathways carved out like canyons -- but,
of course, we know we shouldn't. But why shouldn't we?
Fortunately, our language still carries vestiges of answers. Vice has been mentioned
already. We know it when we see it, as the records of the Supreme Court assure us. Cigarettes
are a vice; that's uncontested. Vaping barely seems serious enough to be a vice, but it must
be, by genus. And vice has an opposite: virtue . That seems to be what's missing, the
why here, the reason we take seriously that there are better things to do than just feel
pleasure all the time and worse things than feeling pain. Virtue implies, or perhaps it
recognizes, that our capacity for pain and pleasure means there's a best way to experience
those, a truly excellent way to be. What we have forgotten as a society is that even before
science told us how fragile we actually were, how exploitable our limbic systems are, we knew
wills were weak and formed by habits, that it was golden means (not extremes) that we should
strive for. Now we find ourselves suspended between individual choice and human frailty, the
latter exploited in the name of the former. It is very profitable to press the pleasure button,
consequences be damned. And in our collective illness, we have no metaphysic to minister to us,
no theology of the body to tell us what this flesh is for.
That lack of any agreed upon account of physical existence beyond the bare individual rights
of man to his own person in the state of nature has meant that we have embraced the purchase of
pleasures of all kinds. We have taken advantage of others' addictions. Drugs, in the broadest
meaning possible, are fungible. People just want that dopamine. And we live in a society where
things are designed to give us dopamine all the time. Courtwright calls this limbic
capitalism : "Limbic capitalism refers to a technologically advanced but socially
regressive business system in which global industries, often with the help of complicit
governments and criminal organizations, encourage excessive consumption and addiction." In
crisp and playful prose and with plenty of needed humor, Courtwright has written a fascinating
history of what we like and why we like it, from the first taste of beer in the ancient Middle
East to opioids in West Virginia.
Courtwright's book tells the story of a humanity stuck "in an underlying conflict between
the principle of hormesis (a little is good, a lot is bad) and the logic of free market
capitalism." What people want to sell and what people want to buy, and how much , is
basically up to them. While before the cataclysm of World War II there had been residual
resistance to the abandonment of a public morals, despite the upheavals of the Industrial
Revolution, they had been built on increasingly secular and utilitarian justifications that
offered little beyond regulation, the J.S. Mills of the world beating out the John Ruskins. In
the war's aftermath, with old orders swept away and mass production for a mass society firmly
established, the liberal order became the global hegemon and limbic capitalism went global:
By the late twentieth century global anti-vice activism had been routed on a broad front
by what can fairly be called global pro-vice activism. Multinational distribution and
marketing machines had built a scaffolding of persuasion, camouflaged with strategic bits of
public relations dissuasion, around a range of products that carried a serious risk of
habituation and harm.
Courtwright is not an anti-capitalist. The abundance of the market is the payoff for all the
years of misery mankind experienced in the aftermath of the move to agriculture and stationary
settlement. The earliest vices, our little decadences and bad habits, were basic coping
mechanisms for lives of relative material want. And Courtwright is a believer in the power of
commerce to facilitate progress, the marketplace producing and testing and keeping what works,
what's worth it. The problem is that limbic capitalism is capitalism's "evil twin," a twin
"joined, not at the hip, but at the historically contingent point where science and technology
made it possible to turn a commodity into a vice" -- think food and phones designed to hook
you. Science and technology also made it possible to turn vices into commodities, pornography a
click away and narcotics increasing in potency and sophistication. Scale has exploded,
destroying the possibility of a default moderation based on scarcity. It is a Darwinian
"market" commonplace, sometimes called the Lindy effect, that what is good endures, that what
has survived will survive. The trouble is that nothing's quite as durable as the desire for
dopamine. Addictions are lindy.
Addiction is, as Courtwright is quick to point out, a contested and multivalent term. Still
"the word provides a usefully concise and universally understood way of referring to a pattern
of compulsive, conditioned, relapse-prone, and harmful behavior." It is defined in a matrix of
assessments, combining individual experience with chemical reality and social expectations. A
feature of this age of addiction, with its multiplication of potentially addictive substances
and behaviors -- and of claimed addictions, like social media and tanning and shopping and
Netflix, defining addiction down to things I like to do a lot -- has been a general
defining down of vice, too. Mainline Christianity and civic moralists collapsed on the job in
the midst of the Cold War before an onslaught of "skeptics and opportunists in consumer
societies questioning whether many traditional 'vices' -- their scare quotes said it all --
were objectionable at all." What World War II began, the Sexual Revolution finished. In
Courtwright's telling, religion was a lame opiate compared to what was coming on the market,
and the masses were eager for everything. "In undermining religion," he writes, "limbic
capitalism undermined one of the most important historical barriers to its expansion and
innovation. If God was dead, any product was possible. If any product was possible, the godly
had less chance of recruiting." Christian denominations that had played a prominent role in
public life lost ground to those that pursued a church of the pure and kept themselves apart
from the world. The Sexual Revolution, based on the most reliable source of pleasure we as
humans have, finished what total war started.
It is in the sexual arena that the intersection of technology, vice, and addiction has
played out most dramatically over the course of the 20th century. As Courtwright says,
"Accessibility, affordability, advertising, anonymity, and anomie, the five cylinders of the
engine of mass addiction, ultimately have found their most radical technological expression in
the floating world of the internet," meaning especially pornography and the pornification of
the contemporary monoculture in the form of hookup apps. Courtwright writes:
[I]n the span of a century, there have been three revolutions of technology and sex. The
first, artificial contraception, separated sex from procreation. The second, digital
pornography, separated sex from physical contact between persons. And the third, online
remoteness and impersonality, separated sex from courtship and its customary object,
marriage. When sex is cheap, quick, and always available, why bother with corsages, dinner
dates, and engagement rings?
As mass communication has expanded the capacity for individual expression and personal
consumption separate from community, so too has pornography transformed from something consumed
in the company of peers panting in dark theaters to something available anywhere at any time on
the data-networked devices nearly all of us carry around every day. Anonymity, accessibility,
and affordability have never been as easy, and there's plenty of advertising. Anomie? Depends
on your community.
To not have that final "A" of addiction, the divorce from any community moral standard, is
to heighten the painful self-awareness of habitual vice. Conservative Protestants -- as
sociologist Samuel L. Perry refers to church-attending Evangelical and Reformed Christians in
his study Addicted to Lust -- reversed the liberal Mainline story of increasing
irrelevance, instead "engaging the culture" as that culture more fully embraced vice of all
kinds. But that has come with a cost. By adopting the world as its reference society, this
community has had to confront the reality of its own hypocrisy. Addicted to Lust is an
examination of the personal and social consequences of the fact that a sizable number of
conservative Protestants "both morally reject and regularly view pornography." Perry,
with sensitive insight, says this "is in some ways an inevitable consequence for a subculture
that repudiates the sexual mores of the dominant culture while simultaneously (and quite
intentionally) refusing to disengage from that culture, particularly in terms of technology and
media consumption."
Perry allows conservative Protestant pornography users to speak for themselves in
interviews, as he seeks to understand what their "moral incongruence" means to them and their
social identity. Addiction is socially and personally constructed. What we decide has power
over us. It disrupts our lives, becomes an addiction when recognized as such: this is the
experience of the religious subjects of Perry's study. He writes that "even though committed
Christians are not more likely to watch pornography than other Americans, they are
consistently more likely to label themselves 'addicted' to pornography." Porn use by those
conservative Protestants who do regularly view pornographic content does not generally fit the
health-professional definitions of addiction because that use does not prevent them from being
normal, productive members of society in obvious ways, like the kind of debilitation we see
regularly in alcoholics or "hard" drug users. Rather, conservative Protestants experience
viewing pornography as addiction because it is felt to make their spiritual life
nonfunctioning. Perry believes this is a byproduct of what he calls "sexual exceptionalism," or
assigning unchastity of any kind the highest place in the pyramid of sin, over, say, gluttony,
wrath, or pride. This means, of course, that "Many of the men I spoke with seemed to measure
their religious faith or sanctification almost solely by their success in resisting the
temptation to watch pornography and masturbate."
While sexual exceptionalism is distinctive of most expressions of conservative
Protestantism, and its faithful's desire to legislate against porn has remained at about 50
percent going back to the 1970s, pornography has not always been the yardstick by which
personal holiness was measured. In the early days of widespread abandonment of traditional
sexual morality, Evangelicals stepped onto the public stage to decry the move, but as the
problem of the larger culture and not their own. Seeing that "the culture" did not care about
tradition, campaigns against pornography became primarily about the victimization of those who
appeared in it. Finally, leaders in conservative Protestant communities realized that the enemy
was at their gates, whether confronted by their own personal hypocrisy or the guilty
consciences of the flocks they shepherded. It was time to take seriously "personal-viewer harm"
and the possibility that the ubiquity of pornographic exposure extended even to their own
congregations. "The focus is no longer on shutting down pornographers or ensuring the faithful
protect themselves and society from 'filth' and 'smut,'" Perry writes. "It is instead on
helping believers, their families, and their faith communities recover from their 'enslavement'
to pornography 'addictions.'"
Protestant theology can sometimes be guilty of a gnostic elevation of mental assent over,
and to the exclusion of, actual physical obedience. Liberal Protestantism makes this obvious in
its making what a Christian ought to do and ought to believe equally esoteric. Perry recognizes
this general Kantian tendency as the root of much of the incoherence and consternation in
responses to pornography use among conservative Protestants, calling it "pietistic idealism."
These Christians, Perry writes, believe "God is chiefly concerned not with a person's actions
but with her motivations." And so "conservative Protestants -- more so than Catholics, Mormons,
Orthodox Christians, Jews, or really most other religions -- have a weak 'theology of the
body.' Simply put, for conservative Protestants, the obedience that God demands is not about
bodily actions so much as it is about a person's heart." Intentionally viewing pornography is
the perfect foil to this account of sanctity, a distilled lust of the eyes and lust of the
flesh proclaiming an unregenerate heart.
In fact, Perry says, conservative Protestants -- though they consistently advocate for an
ideal of heterosexual, generally procreative intercourse within marriage -- are far more
consistently definitive in their condemnations of the viewing of pornography than the act of
masturbation. Indeed, because of an absence of explicit references in the Bible, many prominent
writers in that community view masturbation as a matter of divine indifference, if outright
separable from a lustful heart. According to Perry's research, pornography is understood by
conservative Protestant men in general and users in particular (including women, an
under-ministered to and under-acknowledged component of the community) to be a sin experienced
primarily as an involuntary, mechanical, biological -- limbic -- thing, without an
identity function beyond that of sinner. But conservative Protestant women who do not struggle
with porn, and do also subscribe to pietistic idealism and sexual exceptionalism, often attach
emotional and narrative significance to the discovery of a partner's use of pornography and
consider it as equivalent to adultery. This emphasis on the heart, and the lack of a widely
accepted formal process of confession and reconciliation in conservative Protestant theology
beyond one's own relationship with Jesus, means that the self-loathing of moral incongruence
often drives porn addicts away from spiritual practices and community. Instead the seeming
inescapableness of besetting sin is experienced as bringing into question one's own salvation.
Intense psychological agony leaves the sinner in despair or causes him to abandon the standards
that prompted the feeling of condemnation in the first place.
There are many lessons to be derived from Age of Addiction and Addicted to
Lust , but one in particular stands out. The concept of hormesis, as has been mentioned,
says that dosage makes the poison. The problem is that technology as it currently exists makes
the control of dosage nearly impossible. Anything not explicitly produced or regulated as an
opt-in system will become universalized, and thus an opt-out system. Writes
Courtwright:
The internet delivered the knockout blow, launching anti-vice activism out of the ring and
landing it somewhere in the third row of seats. A restrictive strategy predicated on physical
supply chokepoints (open your trunk), human checkpoints (show me your ID), and regulation of
space and time (no ads near schools, no selling after hours) had scant chance against a
technology operating in the virtual fifth dimension of a globally connected, post-spatial
environment. Anti-vice activism did not compute.
Or as Perry puts it, "addiction" to pornography among Protestant men is too tied to "their
addictions to modern technology and media" for them to be able "to abandon the source of their
ills." The internet we have is an explicitly opt-out system, largely built around the exchange
of free access for personal data and eyes on advertising. Until that architectural default is
changed to an opt-in one of deliberate choice, perhaps in the form of paywalls, memberships,
and subscriptions -- which might actually fulfill the liberal ideal of individual
self-determination currently overwhelmed by the vulnerabilities of our dopamine-fiend nervous
system -- regulating one's dosages will continue to require a near-superhuman degree of self
control. That is, it will demand from the beginning the very discipline that it seeks to build
up to and habituate.
We have succeeded in building such an opt-in system around nicotine products. It was not
easy but it happened eventually, and we should derive some small comfort from it. Limbic
exploitation can be arrested, it seems. A common thread in the interviews that make up much of
Addicted to Lust is descriptions of the strategic efforts to remove the temptation to
view pornography -- to eliminate, in effect, the five A-words of Courtwright's account. This
despite the reality that the interviewed's theological convictions emphasize a purity of
intention over action. Until such a time as an opt-in system is adopted for these things,
anyone serious about living a life of virtue will need to embrace radical means to opt-out of
the structures that wage incessant war for our attention, our participation, and our compulsive
return. The disciplines of virtue require time and space to be practiced, to become habit.
Strategic retreat in one battle is not weakness when drawing up strength to win the war. What
did Christ say? "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is
better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell."
Micah Meadowcroft is associate editor of the Washington Free Beacon. He regrets to inform
you he can be found on Twitter@micaheadowcroft.
While the resurgence of human trafficking in
war-torn Libya in recent years has occupied the headlines, trafficking in the UK has also
climbed to an all-time high, according to the National Crime Agency.
Statistics released by the NCA show the number of potential victims of slavery has increased
by 35% to 5,145 since 2016 - the highest since records began in 2009. And it's likely that
number will only continue to climb, per RT.
The NCA said most victims are being used for sex or as drug mules by "county lines" groups ,
which use vulnerable children as couriers to transfer drugs from the city to rural areas.
British nationals comprised the largest group, followed by people from Albania and Vietnam.
UK children accounted for 819 referrals, while 777 were Albanians, and 739 were Vietnamese.
Liam Vernon, a senior manager in the NCA's modern slavery and human trafficking unit, said
the figure is "shocking." "The reality is that there isn't a region in the UK that isn't
affected." "The number is shocking and our assessment is that this is an underreported
crime."
Nearly half of the referrals were linked to labor exploitation, while other cases were
connected to sexual exploitation (1,744) and domestic servitude (488). The NCA said the
increase in referrals was due to a "greater awareness" of the problem, but warned that figures
"almost certainly represent an underestimate of the true scale" of the problem in the UK. Will
Kerr, director of the NCA, said the rising phenomenon was a "particular concern."
"We are now dealing with an evolving threat," he said.
"The criminals involved in these types of exploitation are going into online spaces,
particularly adult services website, to enable their criminality."
Other common countries of origin include China, Nigeria, Romania, Sudan, Eritrea, India,
Poland and Pakistan; but 116 different nationalities are known to have been affected.
Victoria Atkins, Home Office minister for crime, safeguarding and vulnerability, said the
figures showed that more potential victims were being "identified and protected" because of an
"improved understanding of modern slavery."
Mother124 says:
September 21, 2018 at 9:14 am Corey Feldman has been speaking publicly about this for
years. He reported his abuse years ago to the police, and named names, but they did nothing.
Allan Anderson says:
September 21, 2018 at 10:36 am True, but this has been notes for decades The ACE study has
documented it scientifically since 1995. Surely you can do better than this.
Most sexual violence victims are children, but because children have little power, they make
poor pawns for political power struggles. Children, human life itself struggles to be valued
over the long time of human culture. We just seem to be backsliding lately. Why is that?
Slugger says:
September 21, 2018 at 11:35 am There is an inherent difficult balance between our need to
get swift and sure punishment for criminals and our need to ensure proper adherence to
procedural norms and the rights of the accused. This is made harder by the fact that the
police/prosecutors have limited resources, are hardened to even horrific crimes, have their own
ambitions, and are no less dazzled by celebrities than anyone else. We, citizens, should take
pains that this imperfect process does not get turned into a partisan cudgel by our politicians
who are looking for opportunities to bash the other side more than seeking balance and justice.
I suggest we all take a close look at the people on our side and make sure that the people on
the other side are treated the same. Treated the same in court, and treated the same in public
discourse.
M. Orban says:
September 21, 2018 at 11:43 am @Mother124
I think the bulk of the responsibility falls on the parents.
If you relinquish responsibility for your child to a talent agent, a catholic priest or a youth
minister, then you fail them as a parent.
EliteCommInc. says:
September 21, 2018 at 12:10 pm Well, the US liberal and social deconstructionists of have
been eating away at parental responsibility with increasing success. I suspect that in
Hollywood -- where there's a lot of power, ego and money at stake, parents are less inclined to
rock the boat.
Boat in the end, it is the responsibility of parents to safeguard their children in
Hollywood or not. And what I don't hear are parents voices.
jasmin says:
September 21, 2018 at 6:02 pm Crazy parents who look the other way in order to have a child
become a star. This has been going on ever since there was a movie industry. And when it's not
sex its other abuses such as working hours and drugging the children. That's the price of fame.
The parents and the abusers should be jailed.
Louism says:
September 21, 2018 at 8:43 pm How does one police pedophilia or child sex abuse in an
industry where transactional sex is common? There are literally hundreds of thousands,
millions, tens of millions of money on the table and that is for a TV or Movie or Record.
Now imagine what an adult would do for their big break that will give them a potential
lifetime career of millions of dollars a year.
Now imagine what a parent would do for their child to get a big TV or Movie or get that big
career break where their parents would never have to work another day for a year, a decade or
possibly the rest of their life.
Now there are a lot of people that would never do make that choice for themselves or their
children BUT I assure you that there are ALOT of individuals and parents that would accept that
offer and do.
Let me pose this question: If one engages in a sexual transaction, its consensual, then how
does one know if its nonconsensual or consensual? how does one know that it was consensual but
the media project failed and so they didn't get the payoff for the sexual transaction that they
were promised and now they change their mind that it was rape or molestation rather than a
sexual transaction.
It used to be much more black and white. No sex with children. No rape. Children were
innocents and childhood should be protected. A womans virginity, chastity, fidelity to her
marriage, etc were to be respected and honored. Failure to respect the innocence of a childs
sexuality or a womans sexual fidelity was a prosecutable offense.
However, according to liberals sex, regardless of age, is an a parents, womans, childs
choice and whites or men or Christians are always at fault.
At what point does society realize this is bizarre logic and both women and liberals are
hypocritically playing both sides of the fence by separating sex and virtue when its convenient
and then combining it when its convenient.
Teej says:
September 21, 2018 at 10:23 pm Good, although depressing look at Hollywood. Keep writing on
it. I wish I could help bring these devils down.
A Huxley says:
September 22, 2018 at 3:16 am What to make of this world? The New York Times recently
published a swooning full-page article on a 10-year-old drag queen
Not so long ago an article like that might have gotten you a visit from the FBI.
john35 says:
September 22, 2018 at 9:03 am Isn't this about 1/1,000 as significant as church abuse, and
we're discussing it because people like to think about famous people? And isn't #Metoo massive
because celebrity sex gossip updates were the first periodicals in English (gossip about who
aristocrats in the King's Court are banging?) And isn't Sinatrasche Kopf Ronan Farrow too
ignorant to know this stuff, dumb enough to belief Satanic Ritual Abuse claims against his fake
Dad, and weirdly emblematic of the generally-plummeted IQ in newsrooms nationwide? Scary!
Men, after a certain age -- as nature seems to have intended to preserve the human race --
are often sexually attracted to women. Women, similarly, are often sexually attracted to men,
even if many cultures try to keep that proclivity a closely-guarded secret.
Different cultures handle human sexuality in different ways, presumably to avoid the
potential social disruption it could create. This control has traditionally been affected by
religious doctrines, laws, and patriarchal priests, ministers, rabbis, muftis and other clergy.
In the West, women's dress, behaviour, and rights to autonomy have been freed from religious
control only in the 20th and 21stcenturies, with the rise of the suffragettes, feminism and the
availability of safe contraception.
Judaeo-Christian culture has involved restrictions of this kind, with monogamy enforced,
adultery condemned, divorce often hard or sometimes impossible to obtain even for women
suffering physical and psychological abuse, a lifetime of childbirth and nurturing, often while
turning a blind eye to men's sexual independence. Changes that have taken place in Western
culture for the past century are unlikely to undergo much reversal in the years to come. Most
women today in the West dress as they choose, some modestly, others in inviting ways. Women
insist on civil rights, play increasingly important roles in politics, business, the military,
education, and all professions, and there are even female members of the clergy in many
churches, such as the Anglican Church and the synagogues and temples of the Jewish Reform and
Conservative movements.
This is the new, Western world in which immigrants from other cultures now live, some with
relief, others too bewildered to find safe pathways through which to negotiate their way
between our freedoms and their inherited assumptions about women, their place in society, and
their sexuality. Nowhere is this dilemma sharper than between Muslim immigrants in the West and
the democratic values they encounter.
In part, this is because traditional and current Islamic culture with regard to sexuality
differs markedly from that of the West. As in the Judaeo-Christian universe, women are
restricted and men are given superior rights, but Islam, both as a religion and a culture, has
a very different set of rules and legal codes for relations between the sexes, both in the
obvious ways ( burqas, niqabs, and hijabs ) and in less familiar concepts. It is possible that
these differences that go far to explain why child sexual grooming gangs and the collective
sexual harassment of women have taken hold in some places.
Here are a few of those differences.
Shari'a law allows a man up to four wives, but women only one husband. Shari'a law also
allows
a man the right to
have sexual relations with as many slave girls or concubines as he can afford (hence the
sometimes massive harems kept by Muslim rulers, officials, and wealthy men). Shari'a law also
allows a man the freedom to divorce a wife sometimes by as little as
saying three times "I divorce you". The practice was
outlawed in India only this year, and rights for divorce are much harder for a woman
to exercise.
Shari'a law allows a man in Shi'i Islam the liberty of taking a temporary wife in
mut'a ("pleasure") marriage in a contract for as short as an hour; and, in some places in
Sunni Islam, to have a "traveller's wife" or wives in misyar marriage when travelling from home. To
add to all this, men are granted houris (beautiful virgin
companions) when they pass into eternal life, with some 70 reserved for martyrs. In one famous
statement by a religious scholar, "the erection is eternal".
To a certain type of Western man, this might seem to be sexual heaven: almost as many women
as you want on a flexible basis. No alimony in case of divorce, automatic custody of children
once they turn seven, no guilt. The 19th-century ruler of Iran, Fath-'Ali Shah (1769-1834),
was famous for his long beard, his more than 1,000 wives, his 60 sons, his 55 daughters, and
his royal family of over ten thousand by the mid-century.
Although Muslim men are, of course, no different from the rest of us, nevertheless, all the
rules governing sexuality may be easily found in the learned tomes of Shari'a law, enforced by
fatwas from jurisprudents, and enshrined in the judicial systems of more than one Islamic
country in the present day. The result is the perpetuation of attitudes towards women that
often appear to debase them and allow men to treat them with contempt.
The most painful modern examples of this contempt may be found in Muslim countries that
carry out public floggings (see
here,here
and here) for offences such
as "
standing too close " to a man or for running away from husbands who beat them and
stoning women to
death, even for being raped (for example,
here and here
).
As often cruelty to women happens not only behind closed doors, but in the public square,
one can only guess how this display affects both women and men. Sons see how their mothers are
treated; this too doubtless informs their behaviour.
In Iran, the use of sexual torture on women in prisons is the subject of a full-length
study. Shadi Sadr and Shadi Amin's book, Crime and
Impunity : Sexual Torture of Women in Islamic Republic Prisons details topics such as
"Raping of Virgins before Execution", "Prison Marriages", "Rape of Prisoners" -- all backed by
witness testimonies and case studies.
One cannot rule out the likelihood that even knowing of -- let alone witnessing -- such
humiliation may have, in a way, energised Britain's child sexual grooming gangs.
A congruent practice found in some Arab states, notably Egypt, is another public spectacle
that involves men watching women being chased, sexually abused, and raped. This is known as
taharrush (harassment) or taharrush jama'i (mass harassment). Here is one description of what
happens:
A group of Muslim men target a (non-Muslim) woman who is not wearing Hijab in a crowd,
encircle her, sometimes singing, dancing and/or chanting, and push her companions, if any,
out of the circle. The woman is caught off guard and at first thinks the Muslim men just want
to sing and dance with her, until the circle closes around her, at which point more Muslim
men join to form three layers that render the circle virtually impenetrable.
At that point, those in the inner layer rip off the woman's clothes, grope, beat, sexually
assault and rape her while those in the second layer watch the assault take place, and those
in the outer layer, who are too far away or too short to watch the assault, dissuade or fight
off would-be rescuers, even telling them that they are just helping a woman in need.
It should be added that the woman need not be a non-Muslim. Many Muslim women are chased and
handled in this way. The online journal Jadaliyya , published by the Beirut-based Arab Studies
Institute, studied
this activity as far back as 2013. The journal stated that, "In Egypt, sexual harassment is
widespread and touches the lives of the majority of women whether on the streets, in public
transportation, or at the work place, the super market, or political protests." The same
article later declares:
"... one key argument in the victim-blaming that is salient in our everyday narratives is
the common and vulgar perception that sexual harassment occurs when women dress
'provocatively.' In fact, the only thing that Egyptians who face sexual harassment have in
common is that over ninety-nine percent of them are females."
It should not be surprising, then, that the sight of non-Muslim girls and women walking
freely on European streets even in winter clothes has provoked large numbers of male refugees
and migrants to engage
in taharrush jama'i , starting with the assaults in Cologne and other German cities on
New Year's Eve 2016 . Cologne's police chief, Jürgen Mathies,
declared:
"Many of the alleged attackers were from countries where this behaviour, where women are
hemmed in and then abused by a large number of men at once. I must say that this phenomenon
was not known to me in Germany before." [For his full statement in German, see
here .]
By January 7, Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office ( Bundeskriminalamt )
had already identified the assaults as a form of taharrush jama'i , and on June 7 their
full report on the incidents made the same link.
At this point it is necessary, however painfully, to note that the common denominator in all
these forms of harassment and abuse of women is that the men involved are all members of the
same religious and cultural group. There are, of course, variations between countries and even
parts of countries, specific groups, and many individuals. It would be totally inaccurate,
wrong and invidious to say that all Muslim men share these characteristics, but it
remains clear that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, (out of 1.8 billion) do. The
problem has been exacerbated since the late 1970s and the Iranian Revolution by the shift away
from secularism back towards religiosity. Even
Turkey , which, under Atatürk and his successors, had been the most secular Muslim
state, has now
reverted to pious and radical Islamism.
Turkey's educational
system now rears children and young people to become obedient Muslims instead of thinking
adults.
One aspect of Shari'a law exists, however, that may well have a bearing on attitudes towards
non-Muslim girls and women of all ages. This is the ruling that "captive women" (who are
invariably non-Muslims: Jews, Christians, Yazidis, Hindus or others) taken in jihad wars may be
made sex slaves, forcibly married, used as concubines, and bought and sold in the
marketplace.
It is important not to assume that the members of British grooming gangs consider themselves
jihadis entitled to capture non-Muslim girls. They do not even appear at all pious. But
knowledge of such practices (for example
here ,
here , and here ) is likely to have some impact on
Muslims coming from countries where some form of slavery or indentured servitude still exists.
In December 2014, Daniel Pipes
identified Afghanistan, Mali, Mauritania, Oman, rural Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and
Yemen as Muslim-majority states holding on to enslavement, even despite some laws to ban the
practice. World
Atlasadds
Iran and South Sudan to its list of countries with the highest prevalence of slaves in our
era.
Sadly, in the case of Britain's grooming gangs, religious ideology does not play a role in
forbidding child sexual grooming. It is important to examine, as we shall do in Part 3, just
how crucial a factor this seems to have been in community silence about them.
Just a note to the ignorant secularist who wrote this garbage: Christianity never afforded
men "superior" rights as you said. The Bible says that a man is to be husband {the old
definition of husband was "caretaker and protector"} to ONE wife, and the two were to become
one flesh. Adultery was punished severely the same regardless of whether it was the husband
or the wife. A man who did not provide for his family was outcast, and shunned. Since
abandonment of these Christian values, how has modern society fared? We did not have mass
shootings until just recently in our history. We did not have an drug crisis of this
magnitude. We did not have this huge population of foster care children. On and on. Just
watch your local evening news, there is enough right there to tell you where we are headed,
and even then they can't tell you every tragic story because they only have so much time.
There would be no time for the weather, sports and the "feel good story" they always end
with.
But understand this. THE WEAK ARE DOMINATED BY THE STRONG. Thanks to feminism, secularism,
the homosexual agenda and the destruction of the traditional family by design, the west has
surely become a weak and passive society. Islam, for all of it's faults, still demands a
cohesive, homogenized and harmonious people. In the not so distant future, it will become the
dominate power socially, politically and religiously in the west {US included}. It is already
happening in some nations of Europe {Sweden, Holland and Belgium}. London has a Muslim
Mayor.Many women in Sweden cover their faces when they go out in public, and dye their hair
black to look more middle eastern. The name "Mohammad" is the most popular name for new born
boys in much of Europe. The west is lost, and I believe there is no changing the coming
reality. Give it fifteen more years and they will be slaughtering native Europeans in the
public square in broad daylight. Oh wait.......that already is happening!
I can produce a list of counters to every single point above. The modern use of suicide
bombers was a Hindu invention, used against the Buddhists in Sri Lanka. They were by far the
leader in suicide bombers until the Palestinians picked it up later, but every country had
suicide missions in WWII, not just Japan, most weren't as open about it.. Buddhists have
attacked other religions, easy to find accounts of that.
Stop being simple, the world isn't simple and your words and thinking won't make it
so.
The counter for Islam in the West is Christianity. Nothing else will defeat it. Christians
we have been sold a bill of goods by the status quo. To keep us docile and obedient, the
secular state and the hierarchy of the church have portrayed Christ as a pacifist and the
consummate martyr. They paint the Christian soldier as a merely a metaphor arguing that even
self-defense is a sacrilege. This convenient lie has disarmed the populace and made us easier
to control.
In Matthew 21:12 we are told that Jesus alone stormed into the Temple with enough force to
drive out the money changers and merchants who had turned the Temple into a den of thieves.
He pushed over their benches and tables. He exhibited such furry that these greedy men fled
the Temple, leaving their ill-gotten gains on the Temple floor. These are not the actions of
a pacifist.
Then in Luke 22:36 Knowing that his time on earth is drawing to a close, Jesus tells his
followers in a face to face meeting to secure portable wealth, to get a bug out bag, and to
purchase the standard infantry weapon of the day. These are not the instructions you give to
soon to be martyred. These are the instructions you give the remnant to enable them to
survive.
Or as Orwell wrote, Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. If you hamper the war effort of
one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Only Brits are too blind and stupid
to see that it is a war being waged.
the grooming gangs are the tip of the prostitution racket that permeates the length and
breadth of the UK.
each of these trafficked teenage girls will have serviced hundreds of men over the years
of their enslavement.
it there are 5,000 enslaved teenage girls there are at least half a million men that have
abused them, either as pedophiles ot as "johns".
the "johns" and pedos are probably mostly moslem men, sick of their wives or simply
perverts - but there will also be jews, blacks, whites and asians that seek to inflict their
depravity on female teenage slaves.
you can't rule out the trafficking of young boys either in this sick world.
the UK government seeks to gag reporting on the details and the extent of these crimes.
transparency is required and the facilitators and users of these enslaved children outed and
prosecuted.
maybe the gagging and suppression of the story from the MSM indicates that police, the
judiciary, politicians and the MSM are heavy users of the "services" of these grooming
gangs.
Absolutely true. Except for the customers. All the evidence is that very important English
leaders use them also and the entire UK establishment, including the police, work hard to
keep them covered up.
Most of this article is total bullsh*t! The guy who wrote this story is employed by the
Gatestone Institute which was founded by Nina Rosenwald who used to work for AIPAC.
"...She(Nina Rosenwald) is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founding member
of the Board of Regents for the Center for Security Policy and a former member of the
National Board of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) ..."
Islam is pure horror. Invented by an analphabetic pedosexual serial rapist, mass beheader,
who led 60 assaults, with voices in his head. To me a believer in such an ideology is a
criminal, and at least should be expelled out of western societies.
Any ism of any description, will be corrupted by psychopaths, unless major efforts are
made to keep them out. Multiple wives to the highest bidder with forced reproduction, will
tend to produce more psychopaths, breeding will produce what the breeding pair bring, just
ask any farmer, people are just another animal and are bound by that, just like any other
animal.
Selling forced reproduction to the highest bidder will never produce good results, that
very nature you are reinforcing, force to be used, violence to establish dominance, extremely
primitive and socially limiting societies to very primitive states.
Placing Sharia law any religious law over democratic law, should place the person outside
of that democracy, it is just the way it is.
We're not equal, not even close. Whoever told you that, lied. If we were equal you
wouldn't be sailing on a raft through Mediterranean sea and try to sneak under a truck to
UK
I just watched a short film about the invention of the metal lathe, and the bonanza of
manufacturing and engineering that sprang from that one invention. It was the ability to
shave decimal places off the precision of constructing metal parts that allowed such things
as steam engines to be built. All springing from centuries of European thought, steeped
deeply in Christian faith. No. All cultures most certainly are NOT equal.
One does not need more than two brain cells of logic to understand Muslims and Islam in a
nutshell~
Since every Muslim is Sharia compliant, every Muslim cannot ever be a Law abiding LOYAL
citizen in ANY non Muslim nation because these nations do not submit to Allah's Sharia.
Hence every Muslim is the Eternal and Mortal enemy of every non Muslim Infidel/ Kafir on
planet Earth (80% of current humanity)
Every Muslim is a potential Mass Murderer the instant he/ she decides that he/she is NOT
Sharia compliant enough. (Not ALL Muslims are Terrorists but 100% of Terrorists against
Infidels are MUSLIMS)
Every Muslim is therefore a hair trigger Time Bomb primed to go off
Only in the WARPED imagination of leftists and Muslim apologists can one find Moderate
Militant Radical or Extremist Muslims because in reality Muslims are Muslims just as Nazis
are Nazis and no one ever addressed Nazis as Moderate Militant Radical or Extremist
Therefore, because Sharia prohibits them, no Muslim can ever be LOYAL to the laws or the
peoples who are Infidels/ Kuffar
QUOTES FROM THE KORAN
Koran 2:191 "Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them."
Koran 3:28 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends."
Koran 3:85 "Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable."
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam"
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran."
Koran 8:60 "Muslims must muster ALL weapons to terrorize the infidels."
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them."
Koran 9:5 "When opportunity arises, Kill the infidels wherever you catch them."
Koran 9:28 "The infidels are unclean; do not let them into a mosque."
Koran 9:30 "The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them."
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood."
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water;
melt their skin and bellies."
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; Behead them when you catch them.
Unfortunately they technically are, but that just proves that despite being born here,
going through our education system, etc they'll never integrate.
The problem is they have integrated, they've picked up some degenerate habits from
their new drunken, dressed-in-Kappa-tracksuits western surroundings, and they've gone
completely Jimmy Savile, with the help of the US online **** industry to mould their
attitudes somewhat.
Anyone up for creating a massive Amish community in UK and Germany? :D
You can't have a liberal democracy where the average IQ is 90 or less. They only work
where the population can look ahead and delay gratification. Societies which can't do that
need strong cultural and legal regulations like Sharia law to even survive. So, bringing
lower IQ populations into the west will inevitably destroy western civilisation as more
authoritarian regimes are required to contain their natural behaviours.
Every society has some form of marriage. The purpose of which is to ration reproduction.
Females are hypergamous and will happily form harems round the approximately 15% of males
that they consider above average. This of course leads to social instability and so the
failure of the society, which we see on going in the West today.
Since we've already brought millions in, we are going to have to deal with the
consequences. It means more authoritarian government and heavy restrictions on female
sexuality.
The people who built the pyramids were not the Egyptians of today. They were genetically,
Greeks. The Egyptians of today have dramatically more sub Saharan influence and the west can
expect the same result as the decades pass.
Jeffrey Epstein used his tangled web of shell companies as a "brazen and powerful organization"
to operate a sex-trafficking ring, according to three new civil lawsuits filed against his $578
million estate.
The new litigation was filed against the estate, its executors and the shell companies
themselves, asking for unspecified damages for medical and psychological expenses, trauma,
humiliation and other injuries suffered as recently as 2017, according to
Bloomberg
.
Among the companies named in all three suits are
one that owned Epstein's Manhattan
mansion until 2011
;
his money-management firm, Financial Trust Co.; and HBRK
Associates Inc., which allegedly helped arrange travel for Epstein's accusers between New York
and Florida
. A Richard Kahn was listed as the registered agent for HBRK in New York
state corporate filings in 2008.
Two of the complaints name as a defendant
the company that once owned Little St.
James
, the smaller of Epstein's private islands in the Caribbean.
Little St.
James was one of the locations from which Epstein ran a "
complex commercial sex trafficking
and abuse ring
,
" according to the lawsuits.
...
The defendants include the executors,
Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn
,
lawyers who were directors for a nonprofit Epstein had in the U.S. Virgin Islands called
Gratitude America. -
Bloomberg
Two of the women, "Katlyn Doe" and "Lisa Doe" claim to have met Epstein when they were
seventeen. The third, "Priscilla Doe" says she was 20. The three say Epstein used a "
vast
enterprise
" of associates working "in concert and at his direction, for the purpose of
harming teenage girls through sexual exploitation, abuse and trafficking. Notably, the new suits
claim that all of this happened
after his deal with federal prosecutors in Florida in
2007.
Katlyn and Priscilla claim they were flown to Florida so that Epstein could continue to sexually
abuse them
while he was on work release from jail
. Katlyn claims he promised to
pay for medical treatment, while he manipulated Lisa and Priscilla by promising to advance their
dance careers - which he did not do, according to the lawsuits.
Epstein's complicit associates include
"chefs, butlers, receptionists, schedulers,
secretaries, flight attendants, pilots, housekeepers, maids, sex recruiters, drivers and other
staff members,
" according to the suits.
Katlyn also alleges that in 2013
Epstein paid her $10,000 to marry an associate
in order for him to become a legal resident of the United States - stiffing her on another $10,000
she says she was promised upon their divorce. She says she agreed to come to Florida after Epstein
promised her a job at his office, and that
HRBK coordinated her travel
. She added
that Epstein forced her to "engage in sexual encounters" with him and another young female at the
headquarters of his Florida Science Foundation.
According to University of Oregon law professor Susan Gary, Epstein's death shouldn't serve as
an impediment to their civil claims.
"
They're still in a good position
," said Gary, adding that the challenge "is
proving as required by law that he injured them and they should get benefits for their injury."
After Epstein served 13 months in a Palm Beach jail,
he settled over two dozen lawsuits
with accusers who say he lured them when they were teenagers to his mansion, where they were
coerced into sex and paid to recruit others
.
Three of those cases, filed by clients of Brad Edwards,
settled for a total of $5.5
million
. Edwards is the lawyer for the women who filed the complaints Tuesday in
federal court in New York.
The plaintiffs aren't named because of the "sensitive sexual
nature" of the cases
, the suits say.
Late Tuesday, Edwards submitted arguments on behalf of VE, another client who last week sued
Epstein's estate and three of the same companies targeted by the latest suits, asking the court
to allow her to proceed anonymously.
"
Epstein's vast wealth and far reaching connections make it clear that retaliation
could be employed against individuals pursuing claims against the estate
" and could
deter witnesses, according to the filing. VE's anonymity will serve society as well, which "
has
an interest in eradicating the predatory practices of powerful men against vulnerable,
susceptible women.
" -
Bloomberg
According to Katlyn Doe, Epstein would often remind her of his "extraordinary power to reward
and punish."
Meanwhile, plaintiff Lisa Doe says she met Epstein in 2002 when she was 17, when he told her he
was "close personal friends with some of the most influential names in dance," and would help her
with her career if she taught a dance-based exercise class at the home of a wealthy New York man.
Instead,
Epstein forced her to engage in sexual encounters and derailed her career
aspirations
.
Lastly, Priscilla Doe says that an Epstein "recruiter" asked her if she wanted to give the
financier a massage in his Manhattan mansion in 2006 when she was 20-years-old.
An associate of his taught her the "exact way" he liked to receive oral sex
and Epstein "forced himself on her and took her virginity," according to the complaint. While
Epstein was receiving massages, the suit says, he took calls from four people, referred to in
the suit as "Important Business Person" 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The plaintiff says she was forced to "engage in commercial sex" on each of more than
20 trips to the Virgin Islands between 2006 and 2012
. -
Bloomberg
According to the lawsuits, "Each of the employees and associates were paid through companies
believed to have been funded by Jeffrey Epstein and, regardless of such funding, were disciples of
Jeffrey Epstein, constantly informing plaintiff and other victims of Jeffrey Epstein's power and
ability to improve or destroy a victim's life depending on her level of cooperation
The last good FBI agent was Ted Gunderson. That's why Van Decamp
gave the documentary that Bush Administration had buried to him.
We almost lost this documentary forever, but some heroic
individuals and fate kept it alive, hoping people would give a
****. It all ties to somebody controlling our politicians with
honeypots. Remember when NWO was a conspiracy theory people
laughed about? Not funny any more.
This is Gunderson after the
FBI. He KNEW. This is all honeypot. The Satanism is for leverage
and not real. People get detoured into that.
"He also investigated a
child
molestation trial
in Manhattan Beach, California. In a 1995
conference in
Dallas
,
Gunderson warned about the supposed proliferation of secret
occultist groups, and He also investigated a
child
molestation trial
in Manhattan Beach, California. In a 1995
conference in
Dallas
,
Gunderson warned about the supposed proliferation of secret
occultist groups, and the danger posed by the
New
World Order
, an alleged
shadow
government
that would be controlling the United States
government.
[8]
He
also claimed that a "slave auction" in which children were sold by
Saudi agents to men had been held in
Las
Vegas
, that four thousand ritual human sacrifices are
performed in
New
York City
every year, and that the 1995
bombing
of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
in
Oklahoma
City
was carried out by the US government.
[8]
Gunderson
believed that in the United States there is a secret widespread
network of groups who kidnap children and infants, and subject
them to
ritual
abuse
and subsequent human sacrifice.
[9]
[10]
)
,
Conspiracy of Silence
, a documentary listed for viewing
in TV Guide Magazine was to be aired on the Discovery Channel, on
May 3 1994. This documentary exposed a network of religious
leaders and Washington politicians who flew children to Washington
D.C. for sex orgies. Many children suffered the indignity of
wearing nothing but their underwear and a number displayed on a
piece of cardboard hanging from their necks when being auctioned
off to foreigners in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Toronto, Canada.
"At the last minute before airing, unknown congressmen
threatened the TV Cable industry with restrictive legislation if
this documentary was aired. Almost immediately,
the rights to
the documentary were purchased by unknown persons who ordered all
copies destroyed.
A copy of this videotape was furnished anonymously to former
Nebraska state senator and attorney John De Camp who made it
available to retired
FBI Agent Ted L. Gunderson
. While
the video quality is not top grade, this tape is a blockbuster in
what is revealed by its participants involved."
Can you imagine what these heroic men would think of this
exposed Mossad honeypot? Its all exposed now, just needs to be
linked together.
So the Jews have another South America pedophile scandal
to their discredit.
We haven't forgotten the child
prostitution business run by Arie Scher and George
Schteinberg in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the 1990s
.
It was exposed in the early summer of 2000 by an infuriated
teenage girl who found a nude photo of herself online, after
Schteinberg had PROMISED her that he'd never show it to
anyone.
Schteinberg was arrested and given a slap on the wrist (they
went easy on him because he was Jewish) while Arie Scher
escaped to Israel, one step ahead of the authorities.
The Israeli government took away Scher's diplomat license
for five years (because he got caught being naughty,
presumably; properly trained Jews don't get caught, of
course).
When the five years were past, Israel proposed to send Scher
to Australia to replace Amir Laty, who'd made himself
unwelcome by committing espionage and by being very rude to
certain Australian women.
Somehow or other, the Australian public found out that the
spy was being replaced by a pedophile as Israel's official
ambassador to their country, and they got up in arms about
it. This persuaded Scher to decline the post, perhaps
keeping the cushy administrative job the Israeli government
gave him during the previous five years
So, looks like there were running another operation like
this in Brazil during the 90s (never heard of that one before)
Case 1:19-cv-07772 Document 1 Filed 8/20/2019 Page 1 of 52
PRISCILLA DOE, Plaintiff,
vs.
DARREN K. INDYKE AND
RICHARD D. KAHN AS JOINT
PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
ESTATE OF JEFFREY E. EPSTEIN,
NINE EAST 71st STREET, CORPORATION,
FINANCIAL TRUST COMPANY, INC.,
NES, LLC, MAPLE,INC., LSJ,LLC,
HBRK ASSOCIATES, INC., JEGE, INC.,
Defendants.
64. In 2006, Jeffrey Epstein told Plaintiff she was going on a
trip with him to his island in the Unites States Virgin Islands.
65. On that trip was Jeffrey Epstein, Jean Luc Bruenel,
Ghislaine Maxwell, Associate 2, Associate 8, and two other victims
in addition to Plaintiff.
66. It was there that Ghislaine Maxwell taught Plaintiff the
"proper way to give a blow job," describing to her the exact way
that Jeffrey Epstein liked to be sexually serviced orally.
Case 1:19-cv-07772 Document 1 Filed 8/20/2019 Page 15 of 52
1) Authorities will NOT pursue, question or
charge any of Epstein's clients or associates (the very people the
entire trafficking operation catered to).
2) Authorities will NOT "follow the money."
3) Authorities will not arrest and prosecute any government
employee who obstructed justice or participated in this scheme.
The elites will have to get rid of people and evidence. The
Clintons know too much and are oftened named. Nail gun sale at
Home Depot. Those 2 geriatric fcuks must go.
They are a huge liability on countless fronts. That will leave
Chelsea to answer for any Clinton foundation questions, and she
has been involved. She can play stupid and elicit sympathy. The
Clintons are a huge problem.
Wexner is related to Mossad and the very beginnings of the
teaming up of Mossad with Dulles' CIA, after WWII, the OSS, the
Irgun and the Stern gruppe, who did the King David Hotel bombing.
The Boss of Wexner is Henry Kissinger the 'republican free
trader in favor of democracy'.
The Bosses of soldiers raping Kissinger in his Vietnam creation
are the Rockefellers.
Kissinger ordered the Phoenix program mass murdering Vietnamese
nationalist by the tens of thousands, which is a mere one feat in
his massive killing career, like Churchill,
Kissinger who ran the Republican president Richard Nixon like
fc*king a goat.
By the way, there are pictures in circulation of Republican
president Ronald Reagan being deeply ejaculated into the manhole,
enjoying that greatly (vehemently denied by his daughter at his
funeral, pffffffff),
the same anecdotes exist of Prince Philip, husband of fake
Queen Elisabeth, who requested to be manly penetrated by crew,
when he was onboard visiting the British fleet.
And it it was no accident that the Monica Lewinsky/ Clinton sex
scandal erupted into public view precisely at the moment
Clinton had scheduled meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian
leader Yasir Arafat to revive the peace process by pressuring
Netanyahu.
This likely could be tied to Franklin child sex ring scandal and
Mossad will be there too. Watch this free documentary before
Jootube takes it down. Men died for you to know this. The show was
yanked before it could be played mainstream. Extremely disturbing
but VERY important. This was the last time they slipped through
your fingers and this type of thing will be what destroys this
evil.
Yeah and since Sir Pedo's death was termed a suicide, then one
would think his will dealy in US VI was planned, as was his death
and me thinks a good lawyer would negate the will, trust, etc by
simply terming this transfer of assets a fraudulent conveyance and
yank it back where those abused can take a slice.
Following the death of Jeffrey Epstein, his seedy network of friends and potential
co-conspirators alike have come into the spotlight.
One associate, considered to be Epstein's closest pal, is modeling maven Jean-Luc Brunel - who
has recently been accused of pimping underage women around the world through his Mc2 and Karin
modeling agencies, while former models have accused the 72-year-old of
drugging and
date-raping girls
,
according to the
Daily
Beast
.
How close were Brunel and Epstein?
Brunel was one of the financier's
most frequent male associates
. The agent
appears
more than 15 times on flight logs from Epstein's private plane
, jetting
everywhere from Paris to New York, often in the presence of young women.
He visited
Epstein nearly 70 times in jail
, according to visitor logs, and several more times
while the financier was on house arrest in Palm Beach. According to one of Epstein's housemen,
Brunel was comfortable enough to whip up his own meals in the financier's kitchen
,
and was one of Epstein's most frequent callers. -
Daily
Beast
Brunel's name appeared in a cache of court documents unsealed earlier this month, having called
and left a message to let Epstein know that he "just did a good one - 18 years" who reportedly told
him "I love Jeffrey."
"He has a teacher for you to teach you how to speak Russian," reads another note from September
2005, which adds "
She is 2 X 8 [16] years old not blonde
. Lessons are free and you
can have 1st today if you call."
Epstein also extended a $1 million letter of credit to Brunel which was used to invest in
Paris-based Elite Models. According to the
Beast,
"The venture, E Management, was first
registered by Epstein's attorney, who listed its address as 457 Madison Avenue -- the same as
Epstein's investment firm, J. Epstein & Co."
Brunel says the venture fell apart after Elite Models learned of Epstein's sex-trafficking
allegations - with the agent even suing Epstein in 2015 for tarnishing their reputation and causing
a "tremendous loss of business."
At least two people say Brunel not only knew about the
sex trafficking,
he was actively participating in it
.
Virginia Roberts (now Giuffre) -- one of the first alleged victims to speak out against Epstein
after he was granted a sweetheart plea deal -- claimed in legal filings that
Brunel was
one
of many powerful men
she was forced to sleep with in her years as Epstein's "sex slave."
She also accused Brunel of using his agency to find foreign girls, obtain visas for
them, and "farm them out to his friends, including Epstein
."
"A lot of the girls came from poor countries or poor backgrounds, and he lured them in with a
promise of making good money," Giuffre said in a 2015 affidavit. "
Jeffrey Epstein has
told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel's girls, and everything that I have seen
confirms this claim.
" -
Daily
Beast
"
My assumption was that Jean-Luc Brunel got the girls from Eastern Europe (as he
procured many young foreign girls for Epstein). They were young and European looking and sounding
,"
said Guiffre while describing an orgy she says she was forced to participate in on Epstein's 'pedo
island.'
In a 1988
60 Minutes
piece, several American models who worked with Brunel
spoke
of being plied with drugs
and taken to parties with older men
.
"My sense, based upon the allegations, is that Jean-Luc was a predator, his group was a
predator, and they used their tools of power and leverage to force sex from women who otherwise
might not be willing to engage in it," one of the reporters from the
60 Minutes
piece told
the
Daily Beast
.
Former model Thysia Huisman was 18-years-old when
she says Brunel sexually assaulted her
after giving her a spiked drink
.
"
I recall him lying on top of me, me trying to push him off,
" she said in an
interview. "I remember trying to move, but not really being able to. Like almost being paralysed. I
heard the sound of my blouse – a black blouse – ripping. I had a black skirt, too. I felt him –
this is difficult – between my legs. Pushing."
Huisman said the rest was a blur. She woke the next morning in a kimono that wasn't hers,
with soreness on her inner thighs. "I felt we had had sex," she said. "I knew. I know."
She gathered her things and fled while Brunel spoke on the telephone in the living room, she
said. Her modelling work never recovered and she embarked on a career in television, always
behind the camera.
...
"I was really ashamed," she said. Huisman said she began telling her current partner about
the incident eight years ago. He confirmed to the Guardian she then told him she was "molested"
by someone at her modelling agency, and added more details – including Brunel's name – over
time, explaining the full story about two years ago. -
The
Guardian
Another former model, Courtney Soerensen, says Brunel molested her when she was 19-years-old,
and "sabotaged" her career when she rejected him.
"He would get very handsy, start groping me, try to kiss me, try to get me to lay down on the
bed just to 'try it out'" said Soerensen. "He would try to untuck my shirt, wanting to 'see my
abs'.
He would grab my breasts and put his hand on my bottom. There was one time where he
rubbed himself up against me.
"
"
The guy was a vile pig"
says former Brunel photographer and scout Clayton
Nelson. "The girls who slept with him worked. The girls who didn't, he would tell bookers: 'I don't
want her booked for anything'."
Former MC2 bookkeeper Martina Vasquez has also accused Brunel of similar behavior, claiming that
Brunel employed scouts who would recruit teenage models from South America, Europe and the former
USSR. "
The most desirable of those teens were housed in Epstein's Upper East Side
apartments
and loaned out to wealthy clients for up to $100,000 a night, Vasquez alleged.
If they refused to be "molested," she said, they would not be paid.
(Brunel has
denied these claims and says Vasquez was fired from his agency for embezzling company funds.)"
according to the report.
Bloomberg
, meanwhile, reports that MC2 Model Management had a
growing list of
concerned corporate clients by 2014
after Brunel's ties to Epstein came to light.
By 2014, Brunel's business partner Jeff Fuller was concerned that the relationship with
Epstein could be damaging. In a letter reviewed by Bloomberg News,
Fuller told Brunel
that he was getting a "tremendous amount of worries from our clients" about the ties to Epstein
,
then went on to list as clients
Nordstrom Inc., Macy's Inc., Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman
Marcus, J.C. Penney Co., Kohl's Corp., Target Corp., Sears and Belk
. -
Bloomberg
Molesting children is an abominable crime, but using that
information to blackmail country leaders effects many more people.
Using blackmail to gain political control will destroy nations and
its citizens. It will destroy civilization. This Epstink plot will
destroy trust of government. Once trust is destroyed, our world is
destroyed.
This article contains content that some may find distressing.
Jeffrey Epstein "was" apparently a serial molester of children. He had manipulation down to an art form, as many molesters do.
He seemed to be an expert at figuring out a girl's weak point, whether it was poverty, a deceased family member, or feeling alienated
from her peers.
This is a common ploy. Many molesters seek out children or teens who have lost a parent and use this as a way to build a friendship.
Then, because children don't think like adults, they are manipulated, coerced, or threatened into sexual activity.
The story below could be told a hundred thousand times with only tiny changes. The names and the faces would be different. The
settings might not be a mansion in Manhattan or in Palm Beach but rather a quiet part of a church, a school, or some kind of activity
for teens. The setting could be in the house next door to you, where someone with evil intent befriends a vulnerable young person
with the stated goal of helping them, but an end result that couldn't be further from reality.
How 14-year-old Jennifer Araoz met Jeffrey Epstein
Jennifer Araoz was 14 years old when she first met her future rapist, Jeffrey Epstein. She wrote about how she was manipulated,
first by his recruiter, then by Epstein himself. There are many powerful lessons that we as parents can learn from her story.
During my freshman year, one of Epstein's recruiters, a stranger, approached me on the sidewalk outside my high school. Epstein
never operated alone. He had a ring of enablers and surrounded himself with influential people. I was attending a performing arts
school on the Upper East Side, studying musical theater. I wanted to be an actress and a singer. (
source )
Another
report based on court documents says that the recruiter befriended Jennifer, took her out to eat after school a few times, and
learned more about her, such as the fact that Jennifer's father had died from an AIDs-related illness and her family could barely
scrape by financially.
The recruiter told me about a wealthy man she knew named Jeffrey Epstein. Meeting him would be beneficial, and he could introduce
me to the right people for my career, she said. When I confided that I had recently lost my father and that my family was living
on food stamps, she told me he was very caring and wanted to help us financially. (
source )
The recruiter finally got Jennifer to go with her to meet Epstein. Court documents say that they all three met together for the
first month or so.
The visits during the first month felt benign, at least at the time. On my second visit, Epstein also gave me a digital camera
as a gift. The visits were about one to two hours long and we would spend the time talking. After each visit, he or his secretary
would hand me $300 in cash, supposedly to help my family. (
source )
Epstein claimed he was 'a big AIDS activist' which you can imagine would mean a lot to a 14-year-old whose father died of the
disease.
Soon the visits would take a dark turn.
By the second month of Jennifer's visits to the mansion, the recruiter no longer attended the visits., the manipulation began
in earnest.
But within about a month, he started asking me for massages and instructed me to take my top off. He said he would need to
see my body if he was going to help me break into modeling. I felt uncomfortable and intimidated, but I did as he said. The assault
escalated when, during these massages, he would flip over and sexually gratify himself and touch me inappropriately. For a little
over a year, I went to Epstein's home once or twice a week.
After that day, I never went back. I also quit the performing arts school -- the one I had auditioned for and had wanted so
badly to attend. It was too close to his house, the scene of so many crimes. I was too scared I would see him or his recruiter.
So I transferred to another school in Queens close to my home. Since I was no longer able to pursue my dream of performing arts
I eventually lost interest and dropped out. (
source )
Sure, we can say that she knew things weren't right when he asked her to take her top off. By this point, she was 15 years old.
Old enough to know right from wrong. But if she was getting $300 twice a week and helping her family with it, it's pretty easy to
see how she would want to continue helping her family despite her discomfort. Epstein knew exactly what he was doing.
Epstein's wealth, power, and connections would have made going against him seem like an insurmountable feat for a vulnerable 15-year-old
girl who had recently lost her father. Who would have believed her word against that of this presumed philanthropist?
A few days ago, Jennifer, now 32, filed a massive lawsuit against Epstein's estate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and 3 members of Epstein's
household staff. The complaint alleges that Maxwell and the staff "conspired with each other to make possible and otherwise facilitate
the sexual abuse and rape of Plaintiff."
Some of Epstein's victims recruited new girls for him.
Epstein's indictment explains how he manipulated some of the girls he sexually abused to bring other girls to him.
Prosecutors say he lured underage girls, some as young as 14, to his residences, promising them a cash payment in exchange
for giving him a massage. Instead, he would sexually abuse them -- groping them, making them touch him while he masturbated, and
using sex toys on the minors. Then, he would allegedly ask them to recruit other girls. (
source )
A detailed report in the Miami Herald referred to it as a "sexual pyramid scheme." One of Epstein's accusers, Courtney Wild, reiterates
the theme of the story told by Jennifer Boaz.
"Jeffrey preyed on girls who were in a bad way, girls who were basically homeless. He went after girls who he thought no one
would listen to and he was right,'' said Courtney Wild, who was 14 when she met Epstein. (
source )
Courtney's time spent with Epstein nearly destroyed her.
Before she met Epstein, Courtney Wild was captain of the cheerleading squad, first trumpet in the band and an A-student at
Lake Worth Middle School.
After she met Epstein, she was a stripper, a drug addict and an inmate at Gadsden Correctional Institution in Florida's Panhandle.
Wild still had braces on her teeth when she was introduced to him in 2002 at the age of 14.
She was fair, petite and slender, blonde and blue-eyed. (
source )
She began to recruit other girls for him in Palm Beach.
Wild said Epstein preferred girls who were white, appeared prepubescent and those who were easy to manipulate into going further
each time
"By the time I was 16, I had probably brought him 70 to 80 girls who were all 14 and 15 years old. He was involved in my life
for years," said Wild, who was released from prison in October after serving three years on drug charges.
The girls -- mostly 13 to 16 -- were lured to his pink waterfront mansion by Wild and other girls, who went to malls, house
parties and other places where girls congregated, and told recruits that they could earn $200 to $300 to give a man -- Epstein
-- a massage, according to an unredacted copy of the Palm Beach police investigation obtained by the Herald. (
source )
Epstein had it down to an art form.
Palm Beach police detective Joseph Recarey explains how Epstein insinuated himself into the girls' lives.
"The common interview with a girl went like this: 'I was brought there by so and so. I didn't feel comfortable with what happened,
but I got paid well, so I was told if I didn't feel comfortable, I could bring someone else and still get paid,' '' Recarey said.
During the massage sessions, Recarey said Epstein would molest the girls, paying them premiums for engaging in oral sex and
intercourse, and offering them a further bounty to find him more girls
Epstein could be a generous benefactor, Recarey said, buying his favored girls gifts. He might rent a car for a young girl
to make it more convenient for her to stop by and cater to him. Once, he sent a bucket of roses to the local high school after
one of his girls starred in a stage production. The floral-delivery instructions and a report card for one of the girls were discovered
in a search of his mansion and trash. Police also obtained receipts for the rental cars and gifts, Recarey said.
Epstein counseled the girls about their schooling, and told them he would help them get into college, modeling school, fashion
design or acting. At least two of Epstein's victims told police that they were in love with him, according to the police report.
( source )
You may look at these stories and scorn the victims. After all, they kept going back, didn't they? They liked the money, didn't
they?
But they were children. Many of them were isolated, vulnerable, and without support systems. Many of them felt ashamed but didn't
know how to extricate themselves. They were confused and scared, and Epstein was a pro at taking advantage of these emotions and
doubts.
The girls are not to blame here. The adults are.
Epstein is not the only predator out there.
While this article focuses on how Epstein was able to lure so many victims,
as Dagny Taggert recently wrote , there are
many more people in power out there preying on children. Clergy, priests, teachers, neighbors, musicians, and random people on the
internet are out there preying on and trafficking children.
Dagny wrote:
According to
The National
Center for Victims of Crime , the prevalence of child sexual abuse (CSA) is difficult to determine because it is often not
reported. Experts agree that the incidence is far greater than what is reported to authorities.
Statistics below represent some of the research done on child sexual abuse.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Children's Bureau report Child Maltreatment 2010 found that
9.2% of victimized children were sexually
assaulted (page 24).
1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse;
Self-report studies show that 20% of adult females and 5-10% of adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual
abuse incident;
During a one-year period in the U.S., 16% of youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized;
Over the course of their lifetime, 28% of U.S. youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized;
Children are most vulnerable to CSA between the ages of 7 and 13.
According to Darkness to Light , a non-profit committed to empowering adults
to prevent child sexual abuse, only about one-third of child sexual abuse incidents are identified, and even
fewer are reported .
When my children's father passed away, it wasn't too long afterward that I left my corporate job. I volunteered when the company
began layoffs and took a small payment and my retirement fund to start a new life writing freelance. It wasn't long after that when
I started this website.
I wanted to be home when they got back from school every day. I didn't want them to seem like prey to those looking for children
with weak support systems. My own daughters could so easily have had a story like the one Jennifer has told.
I know that what I did is not possible for every family that suffers a loss. I was pretty fortunate to be able to find work from
home that paid enough to allow me to be there.
What you, as a parent, must understand are the things that make your child seem vulnerable.
Loneliness
Social isolation and few, if any, friends
Lack of a support system from parents and caregivers
Spending too much time on their own
Alienation from parents
Some signs that your child could be getting abused or groomed.
Sudden secretiveness regarding their phone or computer (a lot of grooming happens online
Spending a great deal of time alone with another adult
Signs of increased anger or fear
Lack of participation in things that used to bring them happiness
Withdrawal from family and friends
Obviously, these lists are not comprehensive, nor are they sure signs of abuse. What teenager doesn't seem angry and withdrawn
from time to time? But it's vital, no matter how hard they push you away, to stay involved, particularly after a traumatic event.
Teach your kids that some secrets should not be kept.
Predators manipulate children in all sorts of ways. One of the biggest ways is warning them to keep their "relationship" a secret
or else.
Or else what?
They'll hurt Mom or Dad
They'll hurt the child's pet
They'll hurt the child's siblings
They'll cause extreme financial problems for the family
Predators often put a burden on a child where they feel as though they must stay silent to protect the people they love.
Kids need to know that if anyone threatens them if they tell a secret, then they absolutely must tell that secret. Mom and Dad
will be safe and will protect them. People who ask children to keep their presence in their lives a secret are never to be trusted.
And finally, make sure your children know that whatever they tell you, you will believe them and you know it's not their fault.
"... Except in a few Nevada counties, being a prostitute of any age, being a customer of a prostitute, procuring and arranging contacts between prostitutes and customer, running a prostitution business and soliciting sex for money are crimes no matter what the age of the prostitute in every state and territory of the United States including Little St James Island and the states of New York and Florida. ..."
@Fran TaubmanExcept in a few Nevada counties, being a prostitute of any age, being a
customer of a prostitute, procuring and arranging contacts between prostitutes and customer,
running a prostitution business and soliciting sex for money are crimes no matter what the
age of the prostitute in every state and territory of the United States including Little St
James Island and the states of New York and Florida.
The girls were prostitutes paid for sex. Epstein, Maxwell, the pilot Nadia and others were
procurers and arrangers of the prostitution.
As the Times goes on to note, even after his 2008 conviction on charges of soliciting
prostitution from a minor, Epstein was able to ingratiate himself with the scientific community
, attracting a "glittering array of prominent scientists."
They included the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered the
quark; the theoretical physicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking ; the paleontologist
and evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould; Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and best-selling
author; George M. Church, a molecular engineer who has worked to identify genes that could be
altered to create superior humans; and the M.I.T. theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, a
Nobel laureate. - New York
Times
Scientists had regular parties at Epstein's Manhattan mansion, drinking Dom Pérignon
and other expensive libations. The wealthy financier also hosted buffet lunchest at Harvard's
Program for Evolutionary Dynamics - to which he contributed $6.5 million in order to get it off
the ground.
Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker says he was invited to "salons and coffee
klatsches" at which Epstein would 'hold court.'
While some of Mr. Pinker's peers hailed Mr. Epstein as brilliant, Mr. Pinker described him
as an "intellectual impostor."
"He would abruptly change the subject, A.D.D.-style, dismiss an observation with an
adolescent wisecrack," Mr. Pinker said.
Another scientist cultivated by Mr. Epstein, Jaron Lanier, a prolific author who is a
founding father of virtual reality, said that Mr. Epstein's ideas did not amount to science,
in that they did not lend themselves to rigorous proof. Mr. Lanier said Mr. Epstein had once
hypothesized that atoms behaved like investors in a marketplace.
Mr. Lanier said he had declined any funding from Mr. Epstein and that he had met with him
only once after Mr. Epstein's 2008 guilty plea. - New York
Times
So.... Epstein lied " in an effort to worm his way into the 'upper echelons of society.'
"
So the "upper echelons of society" include Lanier, "the virtual-reality creator and
author," two unnamed "award winning" scientists, and one unnamed "advisor" to large companies
and wealthy individuals.
So, what "awards" did these unnamed scientists win? Employee of the Month, entitling them
to a reserved parking space for a week? As for "advisor," ****, I can claim to be an advisor
to wealthy individuals. ("Trust me. Go with the pink toenail polish.") I have also from time
to time offered my advice to large companies. ("Go **** yourself.")
Further, Epstein didn't "worm his way" into anything. His mode of operation was apparently
to entice/entrap his "victims" and keep them on a short leash forever after.
This whole piece is one of the most transparently disingenuous things I've ever read. They
make the guy sound like he was waiting tables in SoHo and social climbing (apparently among
people of little or no importance) to try to get a part in an off-Broadway production--by
telling funny stories.
'He bragged she was his sex slave': Jeffrey Epstein 'purchased Nadia Marcinkova as a girl from her
family, shot child porn of her with underage teen and forced her into threesomes'
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Nada Marcinkova, who now goes by Nadia, was one of Epstein's victims as well as
an enabler according to interviews with victims back in 2005
An incident report obtained by DailyMail.com reveals she was as young as 15
when she first began having sex with Epstein and other victims
She was forced to have sex with at least three other women, two of whom were
underage, while Epstein would watch and perform sex acts on himself
'Epstein had purchased her from her family in Yugoslavia,' wrote Detective
Joseph Recarey after his interview with one victim
'Epstein bragged he brought her into the United States to be his Yugoslavian
sex slave,' Detective Recarey said after speaking to that same victim
She was granted immunity as part of Epstein's 2008 plea deal, despite never
being identified as a person to criminally charge in the case
The foreign-born model who many have identified as an accomplice in
procuring underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein is just as much a victim of the serial pedophile, according
to official reports.
Incident reports from the Palm Beach Police Department's 2005 investigation
that were obtained by DailyMail.com claim that Epstein told at least one underage victim that Nada
Marcinkova was his 'Yugoslavian sex slave.'
Multiple girls also state that Epstein made them engage in sexual acts with
Marcinkova, which eventually turned into threesomes with both himself and the model.
'Epstein had purchased her from her family in Yugoslavia,' wrote Detective
Joseph Recarey after his interview with one victim.
'Epstein bragged he brought her into the United States to be his
Yugoslavian sex slave.'
Scroll down for video
... ... ...
Scene: An incident report obtained by DailyMail.com reveals she was as young
as 15 when she first began having sex with Epstein and other victims at his Palm Beach home (above)
Marcinkova would have been underage during most of the alleged incidents
described by the victims to Detective Recarey.
She was no older then 16 when she and another underage victim were
allegedly forced to stimulate each other manually, orally and with toys while Epstein watched them and
pleasured himself in the bed.
That same unnamed girl broke down in tears while revealing she had been to
Epstein's Palm Beach mansion hundreds of times in a two-year period and made thousands of dollars.
At first she was paid extra to perform an oral sex act on Marcinkova, then
each week 'things continued to escalate', states the incident report.
She said that she was 'adamant... that no vaginal penetration would occur
with [Epstein],' but then that too did occur while she was underage, she told Detective Recarey.
On one occasion, the date of which he could not recall, Epstein allegedly
raped that victim after she and Marcinkova had engaged in an oral sex act to completion.
'She said her head was being held against the bed forcibly... she screamed
no and Epstein stopped,' said the report.
Soon after this, the victim said that Epstein purchased a '2005 Doge [sic]
Neon, blue in color for her personal use.'
'Epstein bragged he brought her into the United States to be his Yugoslavian sex slave,' Detective Recarey said after speaking to that same victim (Epstein above in 2008)"
Another woman also detailed a similar progression of events, starting with
massages and leading into sexual encounters with Marcinkova.
That victim, who was of age during all visits to the house as she first met
Epstein at 18, told Detective Recarey she also performed oral sex acts on Epstein but refused his
directive to bring around other young girls.
She also claimed that she was once directed to perform a manual sex act on
herself while watching Epstein have sex with Marcinkova.
Another victim, who told police she began having sexual relations with
Marcinkova at 16, said that Epstein took pictures of the two and actually displayed them around his
home.
These incidents make it clear that Marcinkova was also an alleged victim of
Epstein.
She would later move into more of a procurement role, according to court
documents, and eventually cut ties with Epstein.
Marcinkova was granted immunity as part of Epstein's 2008 deal despite the
fact that no charges would likely have been filed against her based on the police investigation.
She was actually born in the former Czechoslovakia just four years before
the Velvet Revolution, which precipitated the non-violent transition of power in the country.
At some point she and her family did move to Yugoslavia. In recent years,
she has changed her surname and Americanized her first name, going by Nadia.
Jeffrey Epstein's longtime personal pilots have been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to the
Wall Street Journal . The grand jury subpoenaes were served earlier this month following Epstein's July 6 arrest at Teterboro
Airport in New Jersey on charges of sex-trafficking minors. He has pleaded not guilty to the yearslong scheme in which prosecutors
allege the wealthy financier sexually abused dozens of young girls from 2002 to 2005, some of whom recruited other victims.
It is unknown how many of Epstein's pilots were subpoenaed, or whether they are cooperating witnesses. According to court documents
from prior cases, Epstein employed David Rodgers, Larry Visoski, Larry Morrison and Bill Hammond as pilots and flight engineers.
Rogers, Visoski and Morrison have previously testified in civil depositions.
Testimony from the pilots could be used by federal investigators in their efforts to corroborate accounts from Mr. Epstein's
accusers. They could also provide detail on Mr. Epstein's travels and his associates. Some of the pilots were responsible for
keeping flight logs of passengers who flew on Mr. Epstein's private jet, according to court filings. -
Wall Street Journal
While prosecutors claimed that Epstein owns two private jets, the registered sex offender's attorneys said in a court filing earlier
this month that he owns one private jet, and "sold the other jet in June 2019." Considering that he was arrested after returning
from Paris in his Gulfstream G550, per Bloomberg , it suggests that Epstein sold his infamous and evidence-rich Boeing 272-200 known
as the "Lolita Express"
weeks
before his arrest .
Women in civil lawsuits have accused Mr. Epstein of conspiring with his pilots and other associates from at least 1998 to 2002
to facilitate sex abuse and avoid law-enforcement detection . One woman has said in court filings that when she was a minor in
2000, Mr. Epstein transported her regularly on his private jet to be sexually exploited by his associates and friends . -
Wall Street Journal
According to flight logs, former President Bill Clinton flew on the "Lolita Express" a total of 27 times . "Many of those times
Clinton had his Secret Service with him and many times he did not," according to investigative journalist Conchita Sarnoff - who
first revealed the former president's extensive flights on Epstein's "lolita express" in a 2010
Daily Beast exposé.
Clinton claimed in a statement earlier
this month that he only took "a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein's airplane" in 2002 and 2003, and that Secret Service accompanied
him at all times - which Sarnoff told Fox News was a
total lie
.
"I know from the pilot logs and these are pilot logs that you know were written by different pilots and at different times that
Clinton went, he was a guest of Epstein's 27 times ," said Sarnoff.
Other famous guests include actor Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, who flew with Clinton to Africa to tour HIV/AIDS project sites,
according to New York Magazine in 2002, which notes how
much Epstein revered the former president.
Lawyers for some of Epstein's accusers alleged in a 2015 court filing that flight logs provided by Epstein pilot Rodgers were
incomplete, and that they will corroborate their accusations of being trafficked by Epstein and his associates when they were underage
.
"It would not be surprising to find that some of these flight logs were likely designed to hide evidence of criminal activity
-- or perhaps later cleansed of such evidence," wrote the lawyers.
Investigators may be interested in asking Mr. Epstein's pilots whether they witnessed any efforts by Mr. Epstein to interfere
with law enforcement, according to legal experts. In recent court filings, prosecutors have
accused Mr. Epstein of tampering with witnesses , an allegation that Mr. Epstein's lawyers denied in court.
Federal prosecutors in Miami and Mr. Epstein's lawyers in 2007 negotiated over the possibility of Mr. Epstein pleading guilty
to obstruction of justice, including for an incident involving one of his pilots, according to emails that became public in civil
lawsuits. -
Wall Street Journal
Interestingly, prosecutors confirmed that there are " uncharged individuals " in Epstein's case. Aside from his close associate
and Clinton pal Ghislaine Maxwell - his 'madam,' could the pilots be on that list?"
"... A reporter at Wired tried to look into Marcinko's past to parse whether she was a willing, or unwilling, participant in Epstein's crimes, and whether she was also one of his youngest victims. Some of Epstein's other victims told police that Marcinko pressured them to sleep with both her and Epstein. Though her history of flying with Epstein is harder to pin down due to Epstein's record-keeping practices (he only recorded the first names of underage girls in flight logs, if at all), but it's become clear that during her first decade in the country, from roughly 2000 to the beginning of Epstein's prison sentence, she frequently flew between Epstein's properties in New York, Palm Beach, Monterey, Columbus, Ohio and the Azores. A pilot who once worked for Epstein testified that she had flown with him hundreds of times. ..."
"... Marcinko's relationship with Epstein presumably ended when she was given immunity from prosecution in 2008 after being named an accomplice. It's still not entirely clear how she came to live with Epstein. Was she 'sold' to him by family members in Bratislava? Or did she run away with him willingly, hoping for a more glamorous life? ..."
"... Whatever happened, as Wired claims, Marcinko is part of a small group of people who are both victims of Epstein and possible abusers. ..."
While anybody even remotely familiar with the Epstein story knows that his actions were irredeemably heinous, there are other
characters in Epstein's orbit - characters who may have participated in what appears to be a global sex-trafficking ring - who are
more complicated.
One of those characters is a 32-year-old model named Nadia Marcinko. Marcinko, who was once described in court documents as Epstein's
"in-house sex slave" was ferried out of Slovakia on Epstein's private jet when she was just 15, and lived with the billionaire for
years after,
Wired reports.
Now working as a commercial pilot, Marcinko is clearly hoping the media will gloss over her involvement with Epstein. She refuses
to talk to reporters, and even uses a slightly modified version of her last name (she was once known as Nadia Marcinkova).
A reporter at Wired tried to look into Marcinko's past to parse whether she was a willing, or unwilling, participant in Epstein's
crimes, and whether she was also one of his youngest victims. Some of Epstein's other victims told police that Marcinko pressured
them to sleep with both her and Epstein. Though her history of flying with Epstein is harder to pin down due to Epstein's record-keeping
practices (he only recorded the first names of underage girls in flight logs, if at all), but it's become clear that during her first
decade in the country, from roughly 2000 to the beginning of Epstein's prison sentence, she frequently flew between Epstein's properties
in New York, Palm Beach, Monterey, Columbus, Ohio and the Azores. A pilot who once worked for Epstein testified that she had flown
with him hundreds of times.
Marcinko's relationship with Epstein presumably ended when she was given immunity from prosecution in 2008 after being named
an accomplice. It's still not entirely clear how she came to live with Epstein. Was she 'sold' to him by family members in Bratislava?
Or did she run away with him willingly, hoping for a more glamorous life?
Whatever happened, as
Wired claims, Marcinko is part of a small group of people who are both victims of Epstein and possible abusers.
Her testimony could again be useful. That is, if she ultimately avoids being implicated as a 'rape facilitator'.
This type of adult behavior is really common among prior child sex victims, even younger than what they are stating here.
If children get sex instead of parenting and nurturing they equate sex with love and their only value. They later often turn
into over sexualized 'desperate attention whores'. They could easily help abuse others to stay in the game for their desperation
for attention validation.
This is probably the closest thing Epstein had to a mate. You can see that he cant bond with people, there is only sex, narcissism
and objectifying. Business deal is as close as he gets.
Read the Wired article. She is portrayed as both not necessarily in that order. They theorize she may have been sold to JE
or maybe he simply took her before eh engaged in recruitment and abuse herself. They conclude with:
"It's all too sad, and anyone who is said to have entered bondage at 15, and was forced to act as a sex slave, deserves much,
much better."
No its Mossad. His partner chick Maxwell's father even had an Mossad Israeli state funeral. Although the CIA is subservient
to Mossad, so same thing in the end.
That's why the Israeli Mossad guys caught in Sept 11 were eventually released.
Australia has become the first country in the world to recognise so-called orphanage trafficking as a form of modern-day slavery.
The vast majority of children living in "orphanages" in developing nations are not true orphans. About 80%
have a living parent or family .
Such institutions are often run for the profit of their owners. They are sustained by well-meaning western tourists who visit
to donate or volunteer their time.
We have a very short summary this time, but the GTRP Diagram is the Value. In this post we look at the information available
pertaining to Roy Cohn. We look at his relationships with Ronald Reagan, Rupert Murdoch, Nicaraguan Rebel propaganda. Cohn's
leadership role in the Western Goals Foundation, Larry McDonald, and the Council for National Policy. Cohn's admitted role
in CIA pedophile ring, referred to by some as Human Compromise operations. Cohn's pedophile network continued by Edwin Wilson's
pedophile network uncovered and investigated by Sen. John DeCamp. Cohn law practice ties to Organized Crime and the Catholic
Archdiocese of New York. Cohn's mentorship of bot...
Sexual Blackmail" "Pedophile Ring" "Roy Cohn and Rupert Murdoch" "Pizzagate" "John Podesta" "Iran-Contra" "Edwin Wilson"
"Roger Stone" (
https://gtrpweb.com/featured_content )
"Historically, one of Wilson's Agency jobs was to subvert members of both houses [of Congress] by any means necessary .
Certain people could be easily coerced by living out their sexual fantasies in the flesh . A remembrance of these occasions
[was] permanently recorded via selected cameras . The technicians in charge of filming were TSD [Technical Services Division
of the CIA]. The unwitting ***** stars advanced in their political careers, some of [whom] may still be in office." (Qtd. in
DeCamp 179)
Cohn also had a protégé of his own: a young, up-and-coming real-estate developer named Donald J. Trump. And though Trump
and Cohn's relationship spanned from the early 1970s until a few months before Cohn's death, in 1986 (Trump abandoned his mentor
as Cohn lay dying), there seemed to be a lot of information of contemporary significance contained within their bizarre partnership
This girl is all over the internet profiling her piloting of planes.........
Narcissism in a woman is twice as bad as in a man............
The story of Narcissus dates back to ancient Greece. It was said that this young man was the son of a nymph named Liriope,
and the river deity and personification of the river, Cephissus. Narcissus was raised in Boeotia (a region in central Greece)
and grew into an extremely handsome youth. However, he never found anyone he thought was as attractive as he was; he left a string
of broken-hearted girls (and a few young men) everywhere he went.
until one day Narcissus happened to see his own reflection in the water. He had finally found someone he found truly attractive:
himself. He tried to kiss the image, but only created a ripple in the water that hid the reflection. Obsessed with his love for
his own image, but never able to touch it, he wasted away and eventually died of hunger and thirst.
The term and the Greek story are not connected. Narcs actually hate themselves deep down and tend to only associate with those
who either make them look good or they can dominate.
A nitro story, and from what seems already apparent, one of breathtaking dimension. This would be the swamp dam break. The
scumbags who would go down ... limited only by one's imagination. True justice in this case would be the correction the U.S. needs
to really get back to greatness. It would be the story of our times ... for the ages.
Any networks covering this? Are the masses being informed? Does the guy sitting next to you, standing behind you, mowing your
lawn, stocking the shelves .... do they know who Epstein is? Nope, and the story is getting buried.
If the Clintons have the most to lose over a thorough investigation of Epstein's sexual abuse of minors then Epstein does not
have long. People posing a threat to Team Clinton usually have accidents and disappear. This is going to get much uglier for swamp
dwellers.
"Epstein also made E.W. perform oral sex on him and was to perform sex acts on Nadia Marcinkova [pictured above, on right]
(Epstein's live-in sex slave) in Epstein's presence."
Case 09-34791-RBR Doc 1603-3 Filed 04/08/11 Page 7 of 39
the Palm Beach Police Department also began investigating Epstein's sexual abuse of minor girls. They also collected evidence
of Epstein's involvement with minor girls and his obsession with training sex slaves, including pulling information from Epstein's
trash. Their investigation showed that Epstein ordered from Amazon.com on about
September 4, 2005, such books as: SMI 01: A Realistic Introduction, by Jay Wiseman; SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude
- Principles, Skills, and Tools, by Guy Baldwin; and Training with Miss Abernathy: A Workbook for Erotic Slaves and Their Owners,
by Christina Abernathy. See Receipt for Sex Slave Books (Exhibit "I")
Case 09-34791 -RBR Doc 1 603-3 Filed 04/08/1 1 Page 1 1 of 39
further, how "convenient" the synchronicity as the Virgin Islands have just been hit this week with a MOSSAD CIA MI6 FSB bleach
bit "ransom ware" "hack" huh huh.
They were the glamorous Jeffrey Epstein aides who refused to testify about Prince Andrew's visits to the 'House of Sin'.
Sarah Kellen and Nadia Marchinova both pleaded their right to silence under the US Fifth Amendment when asked if the royal had
sex with teenage girls – earning themselves the nickname the 'blondes who took the Fifth'.
Today, Epstein's former PA Miss Kellen and Miss Marchinova – his on-off girlfriend – have reinvented themselves as Sarah Kensington
and Nadia Marcinko.
Scroll down for video
Sarah Kensington - formerly Sarah Kellen - and her racing driver boyfriend Brian Vickers (left) and Nadia Marchinova, who is now
Nadia Marcinko (right)
Miss Kensington, 34, is an interior designer who boasts of renovating corporate apartments in New York, the Caribbean and Paris
– and dating a handsome racing car driver.
Miss Marcinko, 29, is a pilot and the chief executive of Aviloop, a company selling discounted flying lessons.
Intriguingly, they both operate from £1.5million addresses in a Manhattan building majority-owned by Mr Epstein's brother Mark.
Neither woman seems keen to draw attention to their past work for the billionaire paedophile.
Both women were given immunity from prosecution in a controversial deal fixed by Epstein when he was jailed for soliciting prostitution
from underage girls.
Miss Kellen was named as the chief fixer who travelled the world with Epstein and was accused by lawyers in legal filings of 'bringing
girls to Epstein's mansion to be abused'.
Quizzed under oath, she had an opportunity to deny Andrew had sex at the £6million Florida mansion, dubbed the 'House of Sin',
but chose to remain silent.
Citing the Fifth Amendment, Miss Marchinova also declined to say if she had sex with Andrew.
Since those scandal-engulfed days, both women have led dramatically different lives, a Mail investigation has discovered.
Both women were given immunity from prosecution in a controversial deal fixed by Epstein (left and right). He is said to have
gone to huge efforts to cover-up his crimes, promising to 'look after' those who kept quiet +8 <img src="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/08/2461C72500000578-0-image-a-12_1420680664559.jpg"
height="910" width="634" alt="When quizzed under oath, Ms Kellen had an opportunity to deny Andrew (pictured left with Epstein) had
sex at Epstein's £6million Florida mansion, dubbed the 'House of Sin', but chose to remain silent" />
When quizzed under oath, Ms Kellen had an opportunity to deny Andrew (pictured left with Epstein) had sex at Epstein's £6million
Florida mansion, dubbed the 'House of Sin', but chose to remain silent
Buckingham Palace denies Prince Andrew sex case claim
Miss Kellen moved to Hawaii for a number of years where she married and took her husband's surname Bonk, before taking on her
current identity. On her interior design website, sarahkensington.net, she describes being 'fortunate to say that I've been able
to travel to many locations around the world, which in turn has broadened my designing skills'. She is in a relationship with a successful
Nascar driver, stating on her website that 'most of my fans know that I am Brian Vickers' girlfriend'.
Slovakia-born Miss Marcinko's biography on the Aviloop website now states: 'Over the years, she has proven herself to be a distinguished
entrepreneur'.
Virginia Roberts (pictured) claims in court she was forced to have sex with the Duke of York three times while underage"
Prince
Andrew pictured in 2001 with Virginia Roberts. She is said to be planning a book about her life
She also penned an online blog under the name 'Gulfstream Girl' which more than 77,000 people 'liked', until the company Gulfstream
objected and she changed it to 'Global Girl'.
She described how she started her flight training at Palm Beach Airport before accepting 'an offer from a friend' to obtain her
Gulfstream II pilot rating.
Epstein, 61, is said to have gone to extraordinary efforts to cover-up his vile crimes, promising to 'look after' people who kept
quiet.
His brother Mark told The Guardian newspaper he owned 'the majority of the units in the Manhattan building' and had never heard
of the two women's companies.
The Duke (pictured) fiercely denies any sexual contact with underage girls, while Epstein's lawyer has described the claims as
lies
He said Jeffrey did not own any of the units in the building, adding: 'They're rentals. The ones I own, I rent all of them out.'
It was also claimed yesterday that Epstein intimidated a pregnant journalist by asking where she was due to give birth.
British-born writer Vicky Ward was so afraid of the US financier that she had security put on the intensive care ward where her
premature twins were being treated.
The Cambridge-educated journalist, 45, said he tried to 'control' her when he learned she was writing an in-depth article about
him for Vanity Fair magazine in 2002.
Describing how Epstein 'spooked' her, she said he feared he was 'coming for my little ones' when he asked at which hospital she
was giving birth.
The Duke fiercely denies any sexual contact with underage girls, while Epstein's lawyer has described the claims as lies.
Where Are Jeffrey Epstein's Alleged Accomplices Now?
When prosecutors gave Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart plea deal in 2007, they agreed not
to charge four women allegedly involved in recruiting dozens of underage girls for abuse.
Updated
07.09.19
1:49PM
ET
/
Published
07.09.19
4:41AM
ET
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos Getty/YouTube
For decades,
financier Jeffrey Epstein
allegedly abused dozens of underage girls in a sex-trafficking enterprise,
according to a new federal indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York.
But in order to successfully "create a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit" and
expand his network of possible targets, he relied on the loyalty and organizational skills of his employees,
prosecutors claim.
According to the
14-page indictment
filed in Manhattan federal court on Monday, the 66-year-old hedge-fund
manager/convicted sex offender "worked and conspired with others, including employees and associates" to run
a sex-trafficking enterprise between 2002 and 2005, preying on "dozens" of girls as young as 14 at his
mansions in New York and Palm Beach, Florida.
During each encounter listed in the indictment -- which charges Epstein with one count of sex trafficking
and one count of sex-trafficking conspiracy -- girls were taken to a room to perform "massages" nude or
partially nude before Epstein would escalate the encounter to "include one or more sex acts."
"Epstein typically would also masturbate during these sexualized encounters, ask victims to touch him
while he masturbated, and touch victims' genitals with his hands or with sex toys," the indictment states,
adding the money man knew that the girls were minors.
After the assault, prosecutors allege, Epstein or his associates would pay each girl hundreds of dollars
in cash and often would turn the victim into a recruiter of new girls to abuse.
"In this way, Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit," the
indictment said. The indictment goes on to detail three anonymous victims and refers to three unnamed
employees who allegedly assisted Epstein in the enterprise, including by making calls to arrange for
"massages" for Epstein.
It's not the first time that Epstein's employees and associates have been accused of helping procure
underage girls for his abuse.
In Epstein's controversial 2008 plea deal in Florida -- which was granted by then-prosecutor and
now-Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta and other DOJ attorneys, without informing the billionaire's alleged
victims -- four women are named as possible accomplices. Epstein's non-prosecution agreement, which sentenced
him to 18 months in prison, also granted immunity to the four women and any other "potential
co-conspirators," identified in the
document
as "including but not limited to Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, or Nadia
Marcinkova."
"While Epstein was at the head of the international sex trafficking organization, that conspiracy could
not have functioned without many others playing their part," attorney Paul Cassell, who represents multiple
victims of Epstein,
told The Daily Beast after Epstein's arrest on Saturday
. "Jane Doe 1 and 2 will continue to fight for
all of Epstein's co-conspirators to be held accountable in New York, Florida, and anywhere else they
committed crimes."
Details of Epstein's alleged trafficking in Monday's indictment mirror the accounts of scores of underage
women in Florida, who described several "schedulers" who organized his alleged sex sessions and one young
woman, described as Epstein's "sex slave," who would allegedly participate in the abuse while the
billionaire watched.
Sarah Kellen, Epstein's former assistant who allegedly kept a Rolodex of young girls to recruit for her
employer, is now
married
to NASCAR driver Brian Vickers. Along with traveling with her husband, the 39-year-old (who also
goes by the name
Sarah Kensington)
is the owner of an interior-design firm,
SLK Designs
.
"Sarah Kensington makes a living doing what she loves in life, interior design,"
a Facebook page connected to SLK Designs states
. "She is the owner of SLK Designs LLC. and has studies
at several schools including the University of Hawaii and New York School of Interior Design." The
social-media page also details Sarah's interests, which include "fashion, photography, travel, delicious
cuisine, and anything design related."
The page also notes that Sarah "is working with a number of clients on various projects including
renovating several corporate apartments in New York, the Caribbean, and Paris. For the houses that Sarah
manages, she does a number of duties which can involve organizing staff schedules, looking for and
interviewing housekeepers and chefs, purchase and source items that are needed for the household (flatware,
dishes, furniture, art, etc.), design floral arrangements, and interior design."
Epstein also owns homes in New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Paris.
According to public records
, SLK Designs once operated from a building in Midtown Manhattan owned by
Epstein's property-manager brother, Mark Epstein. The condominium listed to take SLK Designs deliveries, at
301 E. 66th St., is the same address
where Epstein allegedly rented units
to house
models
.
Though not directly named in Monday's indictment, Kellen has been accused in court documents related to
the Florida case of booking the "massages," often calling girls to ensure they "were available for
encounters" when Epstein would travel to Palm Beach. Several alleged victims in Florida told authorities
they were led to and from the upstairs room in Epstein's mansion by a woman named Sarah, after she lined up
the oils on his massage table. According to
one police report
, Kellen also warned the girls not to talk to authorities about the encounters.
Monday's indictment contains similar allegations about unnamed Epstein employees. "When a victim
initially arrived at the Palm Beach Residence, she would be escorted to a room, sometimes by an employee of
Epstein's, including, at times, two assistants who, as described herein, were also responsible for
scheduling sexual encounters with minor victims," the Monday indictment states.
Kellen, who has properties in North Carolina, New York, and Miami Beach, did not respond to The Daily
Beast's request for comment. A NASCAR spokesperson told The Daily Beast the organization does "not have a
comment" about Kellen's alleged misconduct.
Nadia Marcinkova
Nadia Marcinkova, Epstein's alleged "sex slave" who
was accused of
participating in sexual encounters with underage girls, is now an FAA-certified
commercial pilot and flight instructor. Marcinkova, 33, who was allegedly brought from the former Yugoslavia
to live with Epstein, now goes by the named "
Global
Girl
" on social media, and has changed her last name.
"Global Girl (
Nadia
Marcinko
) spent many years in the international marketing and advertising world as an international
fashion model and spokesperson, with clients including Chanel, Christian Dior, Valentino,
Vogue
and
MTV. After many successful years in the modeling industry, she was ready for longer runways and became a
licensed commercial pilot," her
Facebook account states
, adding that she is an "FAA certified flight instructor and Gulfstream II, III &
IV pilot."
Marcinkova also is the founder and CEO of Aviloop, a website selling discounted flying lessons and other
deals related to aviation. Since 2011, Aviloop provides a slew of services, including designing custom pilot
team and "organizing team building events." As with Kellen, the aviation company is
registered
at the building once owned by Mark Epstein and allegedly used as a model clubhouse by his
brother.
Though Marcinkova originally started calling herself "Gulfstream Girl," she was sued in 2013 by
Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. for trademark infringement. On Jan. 6, 2014, the lawsuit filed in a New York
Southern District court was settled after Marcinko changed her online name to Global Girl.
According to
written testimony by several alleged victims
, Marcinkova is described as having "encouraged and engaged
in sexual acts" with young girls while Epstein watched. According to police, Epstein told one victim
Marcinkova was his "sex slave" and that he'd purchased her from her family in the former Yugoslavia when she
was 15. Marcinkova is not directly named in Monday's indictment.
Marcinkova, who lives in New York, did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast's request for comment.
Adriana Ross
Adriana Ross, a former model from Poland who allegedly helped organize Epstein's predatory sessions,
moved to Florida in 2002 and was hired to work at the financier's mansion. Ross, who often went by Adriana
Mucinska and is not directly named in Monday's indictment, also frequently flew on Epstein's
private jet alongside Bill Clinton
, according to flight records.
Along with her fellow alleged co-conspirators, Ross was questioned in 2010 about whether Britain's Prince
Andrew participated in Epstein's alleged sex enterprise. Refusing to answer questions about the inner
workings of the alleged scheme, Ross repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment rights,
according to previous reports
. As previously reported by The Daily Beast, Ross also lived at the East
66th Street building in Manhattan.
Ross' current profession or address was not immediately clear and she could not be reached for comment.
Lesley Groff
Lesley Groff
was another Epstein assistant who allegedly coordinated travel for young girls, often calling to schedule
"massages." Though not directly named in Monday's indictment, the 51-year-old has been previously named as
one of Epstein's three female assistants. According to a
2005
Chicago Tribune
story about executive-assistant pay
, Epstein divulged his assistants made
about $200,000.
"They are an extension of my brain. Their intuition is something that I don't have," Epstein told the
Tribune
. According to public records, Groff currently lives in Connecticut and did not respond to The
Daily Beast's request for comment.
Jeffrey Epstein's Nadia, who learnt to fly at the same Mossad-linked airfield as the
Hebrew-speaking Mohamed Atta.
What links Jeffrey Epstein to 9 11 and to Mossad?
The mainstream media is so thoroughly controlled by Mossad and its friends that the general
public is unlikely to find out.
Virginia Roberts became Jeffrey Epstein's sex slave in 1999.
Epstein's Black Book lists a number of people whom Mossad and its friends may have wanted
to blackmail and control prior to the events of 9 11 .
Jeffrey Epstein's girl Nadia Marcinko/Marcinkova (above) learned to fly at Florida's Lantana Airport at about
the same time as the Hebrew-speaking Mohammad Atta, who is thought to have been a Mossad agent.
Without a doubt, the absolutely raunchiest part of the Epstein affadavit stars a mysterious young woman named "Nada Marcinkova."
Lesbian strap-on raunchiness, ending in something that sounds to us a little bit like rape. We get all the details but no explanation
of who Marcinkova is or what her relationship with Epstein was.
She's not one of his high school victims, and doesn't seem to have talked to the police. But it somehow seems fitting that this
mysterious money manager to the billionaires would have an unknown Czech sex puppet lying around somewhere.
Gawker identified her in a
NY Social Diary photo
where Nadia (far left) is palling around with Epstein's pimp assistant Sarah Kellen (right).
Here she looks very respectable. Not at all like the "large rubber penis" wielding girl we know from the affadavit. Surely there's
a more representative photo.
Of course there is. After the jump, check out Nadia looking a little more, uhm, severe, sexy and ready to get it on. And we'll
throw in the raunchy portion of the affadavit below for your, uhm, reading pleasure.
[Note: Nadia, of course, couldn't be reached to confirm that this is her. But we're pretty sure it is.] Here's the relevant part
of the affidavit.
[Annoying redacting ink blot covering up girl's name] advised that things escalated within the home as Epstein would instruct
and pay [ink blot] to have intercourse with his female friend, Nada Marcinkova.
[Ink blot] explained the intercourse included strap on dildos, large rubber penis' [sic] and other devices that Epstein had
at his disposal. Epstein would watch them have intercourse and masturbate himself. Occasionally, Epstein would then join in during
the female on female intercourse and provide oral sex to both [ink blot] and Marcinkova.
This occured during the time [ink blot] was sixteen years of age.
[Ink blot] advised that this continued to escalate during two years. The routine became familiar to [ink blot]. Epstein's assistant
Sarah [Kellen] would telephone her every time Epstein was in the Town of Palm Beach and would place appointments for her to visit
and work for Epstein.
[... Ink blot] stated during one visit to Epstein's house in which she provided a massage to Epstein, his female friend, Nada
Marcinkova, was also present. [Ink blot] provided the massage in which Marcinkova and her would fondle each others breasts and
kiss for Epstein to enjoy. Towards the end of this massage, Epstein grabbed [ink blot] and turned her over onto her stomach on
the massage table and forcible insterted his penis into her vagina.
[Ink blot] became upset over this. She said her head was being held against the table forcibly, as he continued to pump inside
her. She screamed "No!" and Epstein stopped. She told him that she did not want to have his penis inside of her. Epstein did not
ejaculate inside of her and apologized for his actions and subsequently paid her a thousand dollars for that visit.
[Ink blot] stated she knows he still displays her photographs throughout the house.
And sadly, the Australian government believes it acceptable to re-settle refugees held in off-shore detention centres in Cambodia
while being cheered on by the News Corp chorus.
samiamnotaus thedrover 06 July 2014 11:01am
because Australia will be paying them $10s of Millions. They will be treated badly and much of the money to "look after the refugees"
will be syphoned off by the apparatchik.
koeksister jimmyvanbongo 06 July 2014 11:55am
Most of the governments of developing countries are Mafia. Indonesia is exactly the same. This article is depressing beyond words.
I care a lot about animal rights and when I read this, it just seems like nothing can ever change for the better. What hope is there
for animals if even little girls are seen as commodities. Best thing to do is to not procreate. Do not bring humans onto the world
all they do is suffer and make others suffer.
lstorey 06 July 2014 8:48am
How distressing. Poverty and gender inequality combine to rob these poor girls of their innocence and corruption denies them justice.
How unfair.
arabeska lstorey 06 July 2014 10:00am
Virginity does not mean innocence. It is completely unrelated.
unifiedfield arabeska 06 July 2014 10:17am
You are choosing to define innocence in very narrow terms. From Wiki: A "loss of innocence" is a common theme in fiction, pop culture,
and realism. It is often seen as an integral part of coming of age. It is usually thought of as an experience or period in a child's
life that widens their awareness of evil, pain or suffering in the world around them. I think this description could apply to being
sold as a young virgin to a corrupt politician to be repeatedly raped, no?
jonwright 06 July 2014 9:12am
A re-worded version of the article that appeared in Marie Claire about six months ago. I do wish the author would not conflate sex
with underage virgins vs sex with virgins ... vs the paid sex scene in general - you're on an uphill battle if you want to eliminate
the latter two in Cambodia - let's just stress that this is sex with minors - and let's hope that Cambodia will evolve such that
the perpetrators start doing time.
But first Guardian writers have to evolve so they stop muddying the issues with click-baity pieces
like this.
jonwright Finisterre 06 July 2014 9:39am
Look at the second photo - read below where the author presents working in a beer garden as an alternative to working in the garment
industry. The author conflates - and in the process betrays these victims simply in order to further her nascent writing career.
Shame on the Guardian editors too.
alumbux bojimbo261 06 July 2014 9:31am
You're right. And conflict in the Middle East has been going on for years. And politicians have been corrupt in all countries for
years. And the World Cup and the Olympics have been going on for years. Let's just stop reporting on anything that has ever happened
before.
markdman bojimbo261 06 July 2014 9:47am
First point - that is not true, I don't know of a huge market for virgins in the UK or the US or Norway or....
Second point, if we
ignored everything that had been going on for years slavery would still be legal, it would still be acceptable to beat your wife,
"honour" killings would be accepted everywhere, it would still be legal to send five year olds to work in dangerous factories (in
the West)...
Don't know about virgins...its probably
there. Depends on buyer preference I guess.
Ivankinsman 06 July 2014 9:37am
If caught, these rich and powerful men should be castrated for their crimes. That would soon deter others from indulging in this
despicable trade.
Freeport Ivankinsman 06 July 2014 9:56am
Why the men? Its the women doing the selling of their kids.
arabeska Freeport 06 July 2014 10:05am
It is men that rape and infect the kids with HIV.
Freeport arabeska 06 July 2014 10:09am
It is men that rape and infect the kids with HIV. And the women that know what they are selling their kids for, and the risks
involved. It takes two to tango. The women sell, the men buy, Demanding that there be fewer buyers simply means that the price for
the girls will fall.
dxmachina Karma Sonam 06 July 2014 10:19am
8 Poverty corrupts
unifiedfield dxmachina 06 July 2014 11:15am
21 ....but power corrupts even more and then takes advantage of the most impoverished
ClareLondon 06 July 2014 9:41am
55 Too much to read about this. Too much to read about the abuse of women throughout the world. Depressing.
JoannaDark 06 July 2014 9:46am
sex work is not only criminalised under the law, leaving those who do it by choice (or lack of it) vulnerable to official abuse,
it also brings deep social shame. So why do so many Guardian writers and politicians want to bring the same to the UK?
dxmachina Freeport 06 July 2014 10:18am
Presumably because sale of child virgins in the UK Asian community is already happening in the illegal market and regulation and
legalisation of prostitution may reduce it
Manofthesouth JoannaDark 06 July 2014 10:20am
Obviously because they would like to regulate it and ensure the people who work in this area are there by choice and sufficiently
protected. Not expressing any personal view, but just pointing out that while you seem to think you're asking an unanswerable question,
you're really not.
ruthie62 06 July 2014 9:54am
This story blurs the line between virgin selling and under age sex selling. Just saying...notice a few other posters commenting similarly.
unifiedfield ruthie62 06 July 2014 10:56am
18 Hmmm, but the topic is a bit blurred because the point seems to be that they are being sold i.e. it's not the girl or young woman's
choice. If you are 18 and choose to sell your virginity, it's different from your mum selling it on your behalf. Is it much more
terrible if you're a 12yr old virgin and get sold for sex than being a 12yr old and sent to a brothel to work if you've perhaps been
raped once by an uncle and so can't be classified as a virgin? The point is that the young girls / women in this story are having
their sex lives controlled by others.
Wonkothesane76 ruthie62 06 July 2014 12:53pm
So which one wouldn't you mind hapoening to your child, pimped out before the age of consent? Or somebody else selling their virginity
once they'd come of age? If the answer is neither, please shut up as you allow uncaring idiots to change the subject away from the
actual issue.
arabeska jungney 06 July 2014 10:08am
I do not know even one man who went alone to East Asia. I believe they exist, but it is not as popular as you think. and you can
easily find a prostitute in Europe, if you want. To go to Asia to rape children, you must be really psychopath.
HerbmanHusstlin arabeska 06 July 2014 10:15am
100% agree... this is a stereotype and it does nothing for clarity. Children are sold for sex in every corner of the globe. This
article seems to suggest Cambodia alone has this problem.... making it ethnocentric and racist. I just returned from 5 months in
SE Asia and the most disgusting thing I encountered was poverty... from poverty many things spring, including the sex trade (both
in adults and minors). The evil here is poverty, this article us discussing a symptom of that poverty... we need to address the root
cause. In fact there is every possibility that articles like this one actually encourage the sex trade as it tells people where to
go to find such things.
steena 06 July 2014 9:56am
I think the image of Dara, the frightened 12-year-old, being repeatedly raped by her attacker will remain with me for a long time.
This 'tradition' of buying young girls seems to be well-established and the women interviewed don't even seem all that shocked by
it, which makes this whole thing all the more depressing.
unifiedfield steena 06 July 2014 10:07am
If all you've ever grown up with is fear and survival, I think it changes your ability to fully empathise, even with your own children's
predicament. This is linked to poverty, education and freedom to be a fully functioning woman. Old fashioned subjugation is still
part of the norm for many men and women around the world,and even in the USA or UK, as shocking as that may seems to us.
Cathel Sanglier Passion PatriciaPJ 06 July 2014 10:23am
Wealth and power inequalities breed corruption...two sides of hideous coin. Anyway, this article highlights some very distressing
realities. Part of me is sad that the name of this politician wasn't published. If I was to go to Cambodia I would have liked to
have known that name. But I suppose that is not the way. My heart goes out to these girls and the cycle of deprevity they are caught
within. Petelad: Sex trade is fueled by men. Foreign sex based tourism is lucrative. Those who solicit sex as tourists are surely
implicated in its perpetuation. All power brokers and solicitors in the trade are implicated...
Skepticsayer PatriciaPJ 06 July 2014 10:30am
Wealth and power breed corruption, poverty is its sustenance
petelad 06 July 2014 10:01am
Amazing, an article about Asian sex industry without white men implicated. I live and travel all around Asian, and the sex industry
is fueled by local Asian men. They want the "whitest" and youngest. The white man is not that sophisticated and normally settles
for an older darker woman. Thank you Guardian for speaking the truth and not hyping up the story as so many do to get foreign interest
up. This is an Asian problem. Get real.
MortimerSnerd 06 July 2014 10:07am
I have had the pleasure of travelling to many countries that might be considered off the beaten path, Cambodia among them. The people
I met there were nothing but kind and welcoming to me, but I felt a terrible vulnerability and abject poverty in many places.
One
night, while having a simple meal on a patio very popular with the locals in Phnom Penh a man with no legs came up to me. Well, he
didn't really "come up to me", he used his arms to scrape himself over to me across the pavement. I gave him some money as the tears
welled up in my eyes.
As I rose to leave I was greeted by another gentleman, we didn't share the same language, but he shook my hand
as if I had done something significant. I was almost ashamed to accept it. Maybe I was just tired, but I went back to my hotel room
and wept like I baby at the horribly unfair beauty that is Cambodia. It is a special place, and I wish nothing but peace, prosperity,
and justice for all Cambodians.
mandrake 06 July 2014 10:12am
As a man I struggle to understand having sex with prostitutes of whatever age or whatever gender. Just the idea of having sex with
someone who fundamentally doesn't want to have sex with you is totally unappealing. Obviously this is just me as millions of men
seem to have no issue with and then there is the moral/health side of it.
Then you read this, keeping a young woman in a hotel room,
having sex with her when she is obviously distressed by the experience. Just on a selfish level; where is the pleasure in it?
Just don't get it.
unifiedfield mandrake 06 July 2014 10:37am
Personally, I agree. However, I think there is an argument that some prostitutes (both genders) actually do want to have sex - just
that they want to get paid for it and don't (usually) get emotionally involved. 12yr olds haven't had a chance to develop emotionally
let alone physically so I can't see how the above can apply in such young cases. Also if you've been brought up where something is
the norm (e.g. abused) then you can't really see how your life might otherwise have been.
Huples mandrake 06 July 2014 11:21am
It is about power. They feel powerful by exploiting the vulnerable and weak. As far as I can tell (it does not appeal to me at all) it is nothing to do with sex. That taking act gives them a sense of power.
HerbmanHusstlin 06 July 2014 10:24am
Cambodia is still recovering from being brutally attacked without reason by the US during the "Vietnam war" (called the American
war in Cambodia, Vietnam and lao). Its misery these days is compounded by Western demand for dirt cheap clothing, a lot of which
is made in Cambodia. The next time you find yourself thinking about dropping into Primark for that insanely cheap skirt/shirt etc
think again.... The poverty that this article describes wasn't made in Cambodia it was exported there via US bombers and our demand
for cheap clothing.
Meneen HerbmanHusstlin 06 July 2014 10:41am
Yours is the most breathtakingly idiotic - nay, evil - comment I have ever read on this newspaper's electronic pages. Quite an achievement.
Freeport HerbmanHusstlin 06 July 2014 10:43am
The next time you find yourself thinking about dropping into Primark for that insanely cheap skirt/shirt etc think again. Absolutely.
We want those clothing workers to have to become whores. Oh. Hang on.
MortimerSnerd HerbmanHusstlin 06 July 2014 10:44am
You are quite correct, however not buying products made in Cambodia will be detrimental to those who work in those horrible conditions.
I would presume that they work in those horrible conditions because it is the best option available. The next time you hear some
asshole (probably me) squeal about what a great deal they got on some useless piece of gadgetry, remember that it came from the backs
of others.
Ask yourself this: The last time you bought an electronic gadget did you inquire as to its ethical origins? I know I didn't,
but then again, I'm not holier than thou.
queequeg7 06 July 2014 10:34am
Poverty crushes people into impossible choices. If the only way to survive is to sell your daughter's virginity? I don't know. What
do you do? It's appalling and eventually, I suppose, understandable. How do you begin to dismantle this? Surely it begins with making
sure everyone has enough to survive. We owe that to each other. Food, clothing and shelter. Health and education. If we deny these
as rights, we condemn millions to the life we've just read about.
Freeport queequeg7 06 July 2014 10:42am
Its not the only way, but its a very popular one. Seriously, if someone in Britain were to wander down to the local chav-school (every
town has one) and offer a hundred grand for sex with a virgin (should there be one) they'd have girls interested. And that's in Britain
with state of the art medical facilities, education and a welfare state. Its nothing to do with poverty (that's just a price mechanism),
or health or education (both are better than they've ever been in Cambodia - even the AIDS rate is down to about half a percent)
its pretty much to do with social culture, and changing that is pretty much impossible.
queequeg7 Freeport 06 July 2014 11:00am
I'm assuming you read the article about the poverty facing people in Cambodia, about the low wages and the levels of exploitation,
the cost of healthcare and the impossibility of finding enough money to survive? Sure, a particular culture when faced with these
resources will look for particular ways to survive - whether it's selling your child's virginity or a kidney to a health corporation.
But you begin to dismantle this way of life by removing the necessity. And that means getting rid of poverty. To say that it's got
nothing to do with poverty is silly. I don't see any rich folk selling their daughters for 'cultural' reasons or offering up their
organs because it's part of their background. Culture is consequence of economics as much as anything. You might benefit by reading
Owen Jones book about Chavs, by the way. It's called Chavs and it's about demonizing people for being poor.
Freeport queequeg7 06 July 2014 11:26am
I'm assuming you read the article about the poverty facing people in Cambodia, about the low wages and the levels of exploitation,
the cost of healthcare and the impossibility of finding enough money to survive? Yep, and its better than it was. And my point is
that its irrelevant. Cambodians aren't desperate the way they were 30 years ago, and yet here we are.
don't see any rich folk selling their daughters for 'cultural' reasons
Cough Dowries Cough. Indian weddings are pretty damn big on bling. Or if standard practice sails past you, here's a guy offering
50 million quid to the bloke that nails his daughter.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/28/hong-kong-billionaire-offers-64-million-for-man-who-will-marry-his-daughter/
or offering up their organs because it's part of their background. Errm. OK. The voices in your head are adding this to the discussion.
I'm not sure of the relevance... Maybe its a statement that rich people don't carry doner cards.
Culture is consequence of economics as much as anything. And economics is a consequence of culture.
You might benefit by reading Owen Jones book about Chavs, by the way. It's called Chavs and it's about demonizing people for being
poor Read it. It was classic Guardian "redefine for self-righteousness". The definition of Chav isn't poor, its being an asshole.
They are the non-working class. But he took a weird definition and ran with it to the bank, so well played to him.
bitofobjectivity 06 July 2014 10:43am
This problem has not "emerged" - has been going on for decades....
RickyRat bitofobjectivity 06 July 2014 11:05am
All over SE Asia.
QueenElizabeth 06 July 2014 10:45am
Cambodia is far FROM the only place where women and girls are treated as commodities. Why the capitals in FROM? Presumably this
is supposed to mean 'Cambodia is far from being the only place....'. Otherwise it reads like it is geographically far from the only
place where women and girls are treated as commodities.
samiamnotaus 06 July 2014 10:57am
My partner and I lived there for nearly all of 2012, we did lots of work with the poorest of the poor, including with girls from
the Chicken Farms, most wanted to be there, it was either that or 12 hr days back breaking work in the hot sun planting rice. Solutions,
there are none, while there is a disparity and people want to get out of grinding poverty.
The worse thing you can do is be a bunch
of judgmental pricks. I am calling bullshit on most of this articles crappy heart string tugging. Somaly Mam is that you ?
aliasboy samiamnotaus 06 July 2014 11:35am
While I get what you mean in terms of Westerners passing judgement, I think the main point of the article isn't about the choice
between selling your body for sex versus sweatshop work.
It's about a mother deciding to put her daughter through an ordeal for a fast buck. I've deliberately phrased it like that as that's
where the author is least judgemental herself.
pollystyrene samiamnotaus 06 July 2014 11:50am
So, it's ok for girls/women to be unwillingly in the sex industry if the alternative is worse? Ok then. Look if a woman (or a man)
who has a set of viable alternatives chooses to work in the sex industry, and is well treated, fair enough. Exploitation of those
in grinding poverty isn't really the same thing.
TheYid 06 July 2014 11:00am
I strongly reccomend "Metro Manila." A brilliant film, highlighting the desperate measures and sacrifices that people will take to
escape poverty and provide a future for their family.
Spencer5795 06 July 2014 11:40am
This is not an Asian problem? This is a male problem. The problem is that blokes of every colour who despise themselves get off on
raping children, girls, and women for money knowing that these same people wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire if these people
had been fortunate enough to be born into wealth. Men of every colour (so that's all of them) who buy sex are scum. The children,
girls, women who provide the sex to you HATE YOUR GUTS.
TheGlobalLie 06 July 2014 11:40am
I lived in Phnom Penh for a number of years. Chamnan is not 18 years old, her mother is lying. Rich Khmer and Chinese (among others)
pay around $1000/1500 USD for virgins that are under 15 at the very least. 18 year old virgins are of little value to them, it is
the children they are interested in; Abigail Haworth should have known this.
Uy is probably saying that Chamnan is 18 to avoid exposing
herself to possible persecution. Her daughter was probably sold much younger. With all the (justified) vilification of foreign pedophiles
in S.E. Asia, they represent just a tiny fraction of the abusers. The majority are Khmer and Chinese, but NGOs are afraid and unable
to fight these powerful and connected perpetrators.
pollystyrene 06 July 2014 11:47am
On the margins of the sex industry, an ugly market in virginity has emerged in Cambodia in which rich and powerful men coerce
desperate mothers into selling their daughters' innocence Oh FFS - so once a girl/woman has effectively been raped she's not longer
"innocent"? What is she - guilty? tainted? corrupt? Have a word with yourselves, please.
rosleinrot pollystyrene 06 July 2014 12:17pm
Oh, would you grow up and stop being the kind of parody Guardianista that delights sexist pigs. The headline writer obviously wanted
a synonym for "virginity" because that word had already been used. "Innocence" also emphasises the youth of the girls, so it is emotionally
powerful. The opposite of "innocent" is not necessarily "guilty" but "experienced." Ever heard of William Blake? Did you read this
article, or were you so upset by the horrid headline that you did not? Then you remained ignorant. Did you read it, and still think
the most distressing feature of this was a word in the headline? Then you are ridiculous. Stop thinking of yourself and your tremendous
sensitivity (actually, sanctimony) all the time.
TheAustrianOstrich 06 July 2014 12:10pm
"If you drop gold in the dirt, it washes clean and still shines. If you drop cloth, the stain never comes out." This kind of thinking
is the source of so much pain for women around the word, it's heartbreaking...
DeConstruct 06 July 2014 12:23pm
A great way to fix this problem would be to get the "customers" off to a gay brothel and auction off their "virginity" to the highest
bidder.
PlanetNat 06 July 2014 12:29pm
My heart-felt wish for every man involved in this inhumanity, is that they too get locked in a room for a week and brutally raped
2-3 times per day.
earlsnooty 06 July 2014 12:45pm
There is nothing 'emerging' about this trade, it has gone on since time immemorial.
Klothilde Stubenrein, 06 July 2014 12:46pm
Even Mohammed the prophet liked virgins. For example, he married Aisha bint Abu Bakr when she was only five and consummated the marriage
with her when she was nine.
apaliteno pollystyrene 06 July 2014 1:32pm
It's the unaltered and direct word of God, so it must be true.
MihangelapYrs , 06 July 2014 1:17pm
while all this is going on, of course, men and boys will be working in appalling and dangerous conditions where they will be injured
or killed. But they don't matter.
MihangelapYrs April1948 06 July 2014 2:47pm
agreed that the conditions in the third world are appalling, but the plight of men and boys tends to be overlooked, while women
and girls are made the face of poverty. What is worse: losing your virginity for 5 years income, or losing some of your limbs with
no compensation?
Marshallofcharlton MihangelapYrs 06 July 2014 3:05pm
I think the reason being that in many countries Women are seen as second class citizens and often regarded as possessions. So
when they talk about being at the bottom of the pile they are at the very bottom and in many cases voiceless.
Kiwi333, 06 July 2014 1:19pm
If organisations like Greenpeace can be infiltrated by police spies why can't police spies travel to Cambodia and photograph these
perverts - name and shame.
apaliteno Kiwi333 06 July 2014 1:36pm
Photograph rich, well-connected khmers? It'd be safer trying to take a few snaps of the UK's deadliest drug dealers.
April1948, 06 July 2014 1:25pm
What a sad world we live in when a young child's virginity is an item that can be sold to the highest bidder just so people,can
eat or earn a living.
missillyria 06 July 2014 1:33pm
I can only imagine how dark those men must feel inside - not in a way they'd admit to, but in a way that pierces them through
the heart when they're old or ill or on the edge of sleep and waking. On some level they must know that when they walk away after
those few days, a spirit every bit as alive as theirs has been crushed permanently. There must be some fundamental personal nourishment
that, despite all their power and privilege, they're not getting from everyday life. I wonder if there's any earthly way of finding
out what it is, and helping them to it.
Marshallofcharlton missillyria 06 July 2014 2:52pm
Castration knife comes to mind.
StanDards 06 July 2014 1:45pm
This has similarities with FGM...both based on the treatment of women as inferior to men, as existing only for men's pleasure.
In both cases, many believe they are right; they do not believe they are doing anything wrong. That makes it difficult to prevent
them.
hobbio, 06 July 2014 1:55pm
To put things in place the sentence "… rich and powerful men coerce desperate mothers into selling their daughters'…" should be
read "… perverse, rich and powerful men coerce perverse and desperate mothers into selling their daughters' innocence. Having or
not money does not hide any class of perversions and kids should be protected from both.
gnat, 06 July 2014 2:00pm
some of the comments on here are making my skin crawl men on the evolutionary scale-still at the pillage plunder and rape stage
RunEskie, 06 July 2014 2:11pm
The prices paid equate to many months work for most Cambodians, and in this sense represent the reason why this activity is profitable
and helps support otherwise deeply impoverished families. When these funds are put towards schooling or other advancement, it reflects
a positive step in these families lives.
RhondaMay 06 July 2014 2:11pm
This is appalling. The fact that our government is planning to send asylum seekers to this country is even more so. It's bad enough
that an affluent country such as Australia could even consider pushing people onto a country whose own people are living in poverty,
it is unthinkable that it should be to one which allows such practices as this article describes.
David Bradley, 06 July 2014 2:25pm
A whole lot of comments - any solutions? No? Every single time you wander into the discount garment stores you are contributing
to this trade. The cheap clothes on your back, the cheap shoes on your feet, are made from the sweat and toil of the poverty stricken,
the desperate. I bet some of you are sitting there right now commenting while wearing the spoils of poverty. So let me give you an
answer - lets insist in trackable supply lines that ensure a living wage is paid to these people. It's a simple thing to set up -
And that way you can shop in places where you know its a couple of quid extra but you've genuinely helped a poverty stricken family
raise itself up. Would you pay a couple of quid extra for that?
Rebecca Yeong Jen Wu, 06 July 2014 2:26pm
I feel bad about this. Last year, Singapore had an online vice-case involving an underage prostitute which rocked Singapore's
political and economical elite. Even a primary school principal was involved! And sadly, everybody is upset the underage prostitute
isn't revealed and imply that the prostitute exchanged her body for money. Some of them even felt that the punishment for the men
involved in the online vice ring was unjust, saying the girl lied about her age and the seller is at fault, even comparing it to
buying flour powder, only to know that it is cocaine when they got arrested. At least, nobody dares to touch an underage girl in
Singapore. I have a feeling that guys will try to act blur and give excuses like, "I didn't know she was underage!" when knowing
fully that she doesn't look her age.
Mayfair100005, 06 July 2014 2:44pm
The cambodian government is an embodiment of not only mafia but also of child abusers. In fact all the cambodian men are sexually
pervert and they destroy their country by doing sex with girls as little as 9 years and by the time she becomes 18, diseases like
AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases engulf her, so they die young. Mathematically if we calculate the number of girls die
because of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, in Cambodia, we shall find its the highest in the Asia and no future girls
maturing into a women Cambodia's future is doomed and i would --FINISHED.So why mourn for a death country.??
"... Inconvenient statistics, feral facts like the average life expectancy of prostitutes, the average age of induction into prostitution, the average income of prostitutes, and so forth – hard demographics – have never disturbed those who defined the sex business as a force of liberation. The fact that the 'freedom' being realized is mostly the freedom of men to access the bodies of women and children – or of G8 nations to access the markets and raw materials of Third World nations – is conveniently overlooked when predation is redefined as progress. ..."
Inconvenient statistics, feral facts like the average life expectancy of prostitutes,
the average age of induction into prostitution, the average income of prostitutes, and so forth
– hard demographics – have never disturbed those who defined the sex business as a
force of liberation. The fact that the 'freedom' being realized is mostly the freedom of men to
access the bodies of women and children – or of G8 nations to access the markets and raw
materials of Third World nations – is conveniently overlooked when predation is redefined
as progress. (D.A. Clarke, 2004)
Former Swedish Minister of Gender Equality Margareta Winberg noted that in prostitution,
certain women and children, often those who are most economically and ethnically marginalized,
are treated as a caste of people whose purpose is to sexually service men. Sardonically noting
the refusal to recognize prostitution as sexual violence, Andrea Dworkin said, "Hurting women
is bad. Feminists are against it, not for it." Yet liberals, including people who describe
themselves as liberal feminists, have avoided acknowledging that prostitution hurts women. In
their acceptance of the institution of prostitution, they have condoned harm against those most
vulnerable. Far from liberating women from restrictive social roles, prostitution locks them
into sexist and racist role playing that is often slavery and always a slavery-like practice.
Liberals agree about the oppression of race, class, and religious fundamentalism. But liberal
men have assumed that their entitlement to sexual access should be more protected than women's
right to survive without prostitution.
In rape cultures, the sexual terrorism of rape and prostitution are downplayed,
underestimated, or denied. A prostituted woman explained, "What rape is to others, is normal to
us." Prostitution is a cornerstone of rape culture. Rape cultures normalize the objectification
and commodification of women as sex and blame victims for their own victimization. The global
finding that women aged 15-44 are more likely to be injured or killed by male violence than
from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined – only makes sense when
understood as a result of cultural acceptance of sexual violence. Prostitution is a commodified
form of violence against women, a last-ditch survival option rather than a job choice. The lies
that prostitution is a victimless crime, that she chose it, or even that prostitution isn't
really happening at all –enable people to avoid the discomfort of knowing about the
brutal realities of prostitution. And sex businesses rely on social, political and legal denial
of denying the harms of prostitution.
In prostitution, johns and pimps transform certain women and girls into objects for sexual use. Many research studies provide
evidence for the harms caused by this process. The emotional consequences of prostitution are the same in widely varying
cultures whether it's high or low class, legal or illegal, in a brothel, a strip club, a massage parlor, or the street. There is
overwhelming psychological damage from sucking ten strangers' penises a day, from getting raped weekly, and from getting
battered if you don't do whatever pimps or johns want. While sweatshops are exploitive and vicious, they don't involve invasion
of all your body's orifices on a daily basis for years or having to smile and say "I love it" when a foul-smelling man your
grandfather's age comes on your face. Symptoms of emotional distress resulting from prostitution are off the charts: depression, suicidality, post-traumatic stress disorder,
dissociation, substance abuse, eating disorders.
Two-thirds of women, men and the transgendered in prostitution in a 9 country study met
diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This level of extreme emotional
distress is the same as that suffered by the most emotionally traumatized people ever studied
by psychologists – battered women, raped women, combat veterans, and torture
survivors.
Survivors tell us about the psychological devastation caused by strip club prostitution. A
woman who worked as a lap dancer at a strip club said,
"I can no longer tolerate the touch of a man, any man. A man's touch has come to represent
labor and degradation, and a sad, sick feeling of desperation and despair. Every sort of
hateful, spiteful, rude, venomous remark, I have endured. Vile anger, vomited from the crude,
the resentful, the desperate and desolate, has been heaped upon me until I have choked on it. I
have come away with, not hate, but worse, a numb disinterest." (Jordan, 2004)
Strip clubs are an integral part of prostitution yet the fiction is maintained that
prostitution doesn't happen there. "If I hadn't had the experience I had working in vice," a
police officer said, "I would probably think that strip clubs, escort services were cool But I
think the layperson has no idea what goes on in strip clubs and escort services. I've seen the
boyfriends, the pimps. I see how the women are treated. It's given me a whole different
perspective" (Schoenmann, 2003).
In order to perform the gynecological demonstration for men in the front row of an all-nude
strip club in Las Vegas, a woman must split off her mind from her body. Spreading the labia to
permit men to look inside women's vaginas sends the message that "the stripper has no private
self, that everything about her is open to inspection and invasion, that her very soul is up
for grabs, that she can be turned inside out, and that she has no boundaries, no conditions,
and no limits on who she lets in." (Scott, 1996)
Just when I think I've heard the most horrific example of the liberal denial of sexual
exploitation, up pops another: impoverished Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, and Korean women are
enslaved and transported by organized criminals to San Francisco for men's sexual use. Yet
these women have been renamed 'migrant sex workers.' From a neoliberal perspective these
trafficking victims are just women in the world's marketplace struggling to cross a border for
a better wage. No sexism or racism is understood in this analysis which views immigration
policy as the bogeyman. And another devastating example of the denial of sexual and racial
violence: writing about the "paradox of pleasure and violence in racial subjection," postmodern
film professor Celine Shimizu (1999) discusses the rapes of slaves by their masters and
recommends that we not prematurely dismiss "a telling of slavery from the point of view of
slave sexual contentment." These examples are reminiscent of the 18th century propaganda
released by the British West India Committee – slave traders and ship owners who
kidnapped and sold slaves from Africa to British colonists in what we now call the Caribbean.
The proslavery disinformation disseminated by the Committee included renaming slaves "assistant
planters."
The fantasied "high class independent escort" facilitates liberal denial of the harms of
prostitution; it's good for business. In that phrase, the implication is that she chose
prostitution, that she's making lots of money, and she certainly isn't being pimped. These may
be true for 1% of the world's women in prostitution, but they do not reflect the reality of
most prostitution. Third-party control is common in prostitution, with some estimates of
pimping as high as 80% of all prostitution. Pimping and other coercive control meet most legal
definitions of trafficking. Elliott Spitzer bought a woman from the Emperor's Club VIP
(described in the media as a high class escort agency) who was from an abusive home, had been
homeless, had a drug problem, had pornography made of her when she was 17 by Joe Francis,
producer of Girls Gone Wild with convictions for prostitution, child abuse, assault, and
witness tampering. The pimps at Emperor's Club VIP took 50% of her earnings. Spitzer most
likely refused to use a condom, thereby threatening her life according to several women he
bought for sex.
Commodification
Commodification is a cornerstone of sexism and of prostitution. Once a young woman is "made
into a thing for others' sexual use" as the American Psychological Association's Task Force on
the Sexualization of Girls has defined sexual objectification, then the stage is set for sexual
violence. Men's dominance over women is established and enforced by the dehumanizing process of
sexual objectification that is the psychological foundation of men's violence against women. In
prostitution, sexual objectification is institutionalized and monetized. Yet when liberals
confront this commodification, only racism and classism are addressed. In justifying women's
commodification, groups such as the International Labor Organization point out that between 2
and 14% of the GDP of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines is based on
prostitution. South Korea's sex industry generates 4% of its GDP while the Netherlands nets 5%
of its GDP from prostitution.
Liberalism today subordinates all of us to the corporations. Wages offered women by
corporations such as Gap, WalMart and Nike are so low that they actually drive women into
prostitution. Especially vulnerable to corporate control are poor women and girls of color who
are the supply side of the sex trade but who have been called "erotic entrepreneurs." The
branding of any and all consumerism as hip, fun, and even democratic has contributed to the
acceptance of prostitution.
The Liberal Belief in Choice and the Denial of Victimization
Only a tiny percentage of all women in prostitution are there because they freely choose it.
For most, prostitution is not a real choice because physical safety, equal power with buyers,
and real alternatives don't exist. These are the conditions that would permit genuine consent.
Most of the 1% who choose prostitution are privileged because of their ethnicity and class and
they have escape options. Poor women and women of color don't have these options.
"We want real jobs, not blowjobs," said a First Nations survivor of prostitution in 2009.
Prostitution exploits women's lack of survival options. Research conducted in nine countries
found that 89% of all those in prostitution said that they were in prostitution because they
had no alternatives for economic survival and that they saw no means of escape. In Indonesia
another study found that 96% of those interviewed wanted to escape prostitution. Sex
discrimination, poverty, racism and abandonment drive girls into prostitution. Women in
prostitution were sexually abused as kids at much higher rates than other women. So they are
defined as 'whores' by rapists when they are little and they then end up in prostitution
– getting paid for the abuse they have grown up with and believing that's all they are
good for.
Here are four examples of invisible coercions that drive women into prostitution. In each
case, the woman said that she consented to prostitution but her living conditions made
prostitution impossible to avoid. An Indian woman said since women in most jobs in West Bengal
were expected to tolerate bosses' sexual exploitation, prostitution was better pay for what was
expected of her in her last job, anyway. A woman in Zambia, which had a 90% unemployment rate
at the time, stated that she "volunteered" to prostitute in order to feed her family. A Turkish
woman was divorced, and had no means of support in a fundamentalist state that strongly
discouraged women from working outside the home. She prostituted in a state-run brothel guarded
by police. A sixteen year-old was sold by her parents into a Nevada legal brothel. Ten years
later, she took six different psychiatric drugs that tranquilized her enough to make it through
a day selling sex.
Survivors have described prostitution as 'paid rape,' and as 'the choice that is not a
choice,' while liberal sex industry apologists insist that prostitution is 'sex work,'
unpleasant labor much like factory work. The fetishized and objectified woman in prostitution
is seen by postmodern liberals as benefiting from her own exploitation and commodification. The
disappearance of the harm of prostitution is not an abstraction. At a Left/Labor conference in
Australia, speakers who offered an analysis of prostitution as a violation of women's human
rights were denied the right to speak. A pseudofeminist speaker who was employed by the sex
industry's Eros Foundation spoke instead about prostitution as sexual freedom. We can't let
these logical absurdities disappear the truth of women's experiences in prostitution. Each act
of violence that has been made visible as a result of the women's movement -- incest, sexual
harassment, misogynist and racist verbal abuse, stalking, rape, battering, and sexual torture
-- is one point on prostitution's continuum of violence. This violence is denied by liberals
who support prostitution as a choice made by consenting adults. Liberal sex business apologists
declare that opposition to trafficking is "sex-slave panic," and that since many trafficking
victims knew they would be prostituting, they therefore consented to trafficking. "I've never
met a Thai woman smuggled in for sex work who didn't know that's what she'd be coming here to
do," wrote Debbie Nathan. Nathan implies that if a woman knows she will be prostituted, she
deserves whatever she gets.
People who are horribly harmed "consent" to lesser harms in order to survive for example in
totalitarian regimes, battering relationships, slavery, and in prostitution. The appearance of
consent is actually a creative survival strategy. But that doesn't mean that those of us who
are able to avoid prostitution should then become passive bystanders and watch the predatory
institution flourish. The agency of a prostitution survivor in avoiding starvation is not the
same as the agency of a white European American middle class academic. Agency and oppression
coexist in women's lives. Both should be named.
Harm reduction programs that offer support groups and condoms but fail to offer exit
programs contribute to a denial of the harms of prostitution. While free condom distribution
(of female as well as male condoms) can save lives – harm reduction programs' advocates
often suggest that this bandaid solution is sufficient. While accepting condoms and support,
almost all women in prostitution seek the option of escape as well. They deserve the right to
harm elimination (by leaving prostitution) as well as the option of harm reduction.
Again and again women and men tell us that in order to turn tricks they must go numb or
split off from their real selves or dissociate. Yet the liberal opines that this destructive
removal of the self is an individual's free choice. The payment of money hides the erasure of
self that is required for survival in prostitution.
Sex Buyers
To get to the root of what is really happening in prostitution it is useful to ask: Who is
getting off in prostitution? And who is not getting off? The inequality of prostitution then
becomes clearer. Although sex buyers don't really believe it, women in prostitution almost
never enjoy the sex. Research interviews shed some light on the thinking of sex buyers in the
prostitution relationship. Sex buyers who were guaranteed anonymity said prostitution was
"renting an organ for ten minutes," and that the woman was " just a biological object that
charges for services." Another man said, "I use them like I might use any other amenity, a
restaurant, or a public convenience." For example, "If my fiancee won't give me anal, I know
someone who will."
Sex buyers are not nice guys who just need to get laid. They are predators. Men's favorable
opinion of prostitution is one of a cluster of attitudes and opinions that justify violence
against women. This includes beliefs that men are superior to women and that they're entitled
to sexual access to women. Consistent with other studies of men's sexual aggression, a 2011
study found that compared with a matched group of men who don't buy sex, sex buyers engaged
more criminal activity (in addition to prostitution), had more nonrelational sexual
relationships, a greater number of sex partners, and that they used pornography extensively.
Sex buyers had less empathy than men who didn't buy sex, were more likely to say they'd rape if
they could get away with it, and admitted having engaged in more sexually coercive acts with
non-prostituting women than men who didn't buy sex.
Torture
Sex buyers commit acts against women in prostitution that meet legal definitions of torture.
Torture is any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is
intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as punishing him or intimidating or
coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind.
According to recent definitions, torture can be either a private event or one that is
state-sponsored.
Specific acts commonly perpetrated against prostituted women are the same as those that
define the meaning of torture: verbal sexual harassment, forced nudity, rape, sexual mocking,
physical sexual harassment such as groping, and not permitting basic hygiene. The unpredictable
and extreme violence used by pimps in prostitution, like that of torture, is used for economic
gain as well as sadistic pleasure. Systematically and according to well-known methods used by
torturers, pimps psychologically traumatize women in order to establish control over every
aspect of their lives. Pimps assume psychological, biological, social, and economic control
through the use of chronic terror, cunning use of captivity, and isolation from others who
might offer support and validation. They use starvation, sleep deprivation, protein
deprivation, conditioned physiologic hyperarousal, unexpected sexual violence, and learned
helplessness. In prostitution, any autonomy is considered insubordination and is actively
suppressed by pimps. The use of torture ensures that the prostituted woman will comply with any
demands of johns or pimps. Just as torturers do, pimps insidiously season violent or coercive
strategies with intermittent rewards, special favors, promises of relief and, at times,
tenderness, all of which create a powerful and enduring trauma bond.
Pimps and traffickers aim to destroy the self by using the three-pronged strategy of
torturers -- debilitation, dread, and dependency. Torture sends the message that the victim is
utterly worthless. Experts on state-sponsored torture have explained that the specific goal of
sexual torture is to make a captive believe that she is a whore or an animal, rather than a
human. A survivor explained that the outcome of state-sponsored torture is that "they make a
non-person out of you." Prostitution, also a process of dehumanization, is a dominating
transformation of a woman into a special commodity in which the man who buys her shapes her
into his own physical and psychological masturbatory entity. Evelina Giobbe explained: "The
word 'prostitute' does not imply a 'deeper identity;' it is the absence of an identity: the
theft and subsequent abandonment of self. What remains is essential to the 'job': the mouth,
the genitals, anus, breasts . . . and the label." (Giobbe, 1991)
Liberals fail to see in illegal or legal prostitution the same sexual humiliation and
techniques of state-sponsored torture. Historian Joanna Bourke described the photographs of
U.S. military sexual torture at Abu Ghraib: "Torture aims to undermine the way the victim
relates to his or her own self, and thus threatens to dissolve the mainsprings of an
individual's personality . The sexual nature of these acts shows that the torturers realize the
centrality of sexuality for their victims' identity. The perpetrators in these photographs aim
to destroy their victim's sense of self by inflicting and recording extreme sexual
humiliation."
Liberals viewed this torture of prisoners by the United States at Abu Ghraib with shock and
horror yet when the same acts were paid for by men who use prostituted women, torture was
redefined as sexual entertainment.
Slavery
Liberals' failure to acknowledge both the intrinsic violence of prostitution and the
intersection of sexism, racism, and poverty in prostitution makes it difficult for them to
understand why abolitionists view prostitution as such a miserably oppressive institution.
Anthony Gumbs, whose relatives were enslaved, objected to prostitution as a version of
slavery.
The current practice in Jamaica of the widespread use of the sanitised or politically
correct terms 'sex workers' when referring to prostitutes, and 'sex industry' when referring to
prostitution, sends a clear message of a trend towards acceptance or legitimisation, if not
outright legalisation. Jamaicans have had a long, hard history of brave struggle and sacrifice
to lift our people out of the quagmires of slavery, poverty, indignity, ignorance and
exploitation. Are we ready to give up now? Surely those who must earn their living by renting
their genitals, instead of by using their brains or hands, are little better off than the
slaves of yore in terms of human dignity. Is this what we want to be 'accepted' in our
beautiful home called Jamaica? Is this what we want for any of our people?
The refusal to confront sexism while at the same time stepping forward to eliminate racism
is not new. Abolitionists in the 19th century attacked slavery as profoundly unjust and immoral
but at the same time refused to support women's right to vote. Suffragist and abolitionist
Olympia Brown noted with resentment, "I have often found men who, if you could believe their
words, were ready to die for the negro but would at the same time oppose bitterly any
engagement of women's opportunity or sphere."
Slavery is a loss of freedom backed up by violence or the threat of violence. All of the
elements of slavery are present in the relationship between pimps/traffickers and those they
prostitute including gross power inequity, physical abuse, and lack of free will. All of the
forms of coercion and vulnerabilities recognized by the Thirteenth Amendment are common in
prostitution such as being deprived of food, sleep and money, being beaten and being raped,
being tortured and threatened with death. A slave relationship is characterized by control of
movement, control of the physical environment, psychological control, measures taken to prevent
or deter escape, force, threat of force or coercion, subjection to cruel treatment and abuse,
control of sexuality and forced labor. These modes of control are also characteristic of pimp
and sex buyer relationships with women in prostitution.
Slavery is a condition of choicelessness. The experience of prostitution, like slavery,
varies according to the extent of unfreedom suffered by a woman. If a woman has class and race
privilege and if she has family and friends with resources to help her out with housing and
food, then she is far more able to exit prostitution when she wants to. As one man
explained,
I don't think prostitution is quite the same as rape. Rape is worse. But it's close to the
rape end of the spectrum. It's not rape, because there is superficial consent On the face of
it, the prostitute is agreeing to it. But deeper down, you can see that life circumstances have
kind of forced her into that It's like someone jumping from a burning building–you could
say they made their choice to jump, but you could also say they had no choice. (Farley et al.,
2011)
If a woman in prostitution is physically or mentally controlled by a pimp then she is
enslaved, without freedom. But less visible factors contribute to her unfreedom. For example
the more financially desperate she is and the more her life has been limited by racist
inequality or by sexual assaults then the less freedom she has in prostitution and the more
limited her resources for escape. Hunger and a lack of education or job training can compel a
woman into prostitution where it then becomes difficult if not impossible to escape. In the
United States, women exchanged sex acts for hamburgers (2012) and gas money (2011).
The commodity fetishism of slave buyers and sex buyers is seen in their obsession with
detailing the "products" they are buying. Slave sellers and buyers catalogued skin color in
fanatic detail. Sex buyers also catalogue details about women they buy for sex, criticizing,
grading, and bragging about purchased sex via online chat boards. Online advertising
facilitates trafficking, with up to 80% of today's sex businesses now operating online.
Planters sometimes mimed the conventions of romance, enabling them to temporarily forget
that they owned slaves. Similarly some sex buyers today seek what they describe as a
"girlfriend experience" in which prostituted women are paid to mimic a love relationship. The
performance must fool the sex buyer.
Central to the experience of prostitution and slavery is degradation and humiliation.
Non-slaves had little understanding of the depths of degradation of slavery according to former
slave Harriet Jacobs. Similarly, Claude Jaget describes the traumatic experience of being
selected from a brothel lineup:
"I'd freeze up inside It was horrible, they'd look you up and down. That moment, when you
felt them looking at you, sizing you up, judging you and those men, those fat pigs who weren't
worth half as much as the worst of us, they'd joke, make comments. They made you turn and face
in all directions, because of course a front view wasn't enough for them. It used to make me
furious, but at the same time I was panic-stricken, I didn't dare speak. I wasn't physically
frightened, but it shook my confidence. I felt really [demeaned] .I was the thing he came and
literally bought. He had judged me like he'd judge cattle at a fairground, and that's
revolting, it's sickening, it's terrible for the women. You can't imagine it if you've never
been through it yourself."
Women who have survived prostitution say that the experience is profoundly degrading and
that it is as if one becomes "something for him to empty himself into, acting as a kind of
human toilet." In the language of the times, an enslaved woman explained, "A slave woman ain't
allowed to respect herself." Upon refusal to permit sexual assault by her owner, an enslaved
sixteen year-old was sent from the mid-Atlantic to a southern state where she was worked to
death. One young woman said in 2007 that she felt that she was approaching death by
prostitution because her pimp forced her to work 7 days a week, servicing dozens of men a day.
A woman in a Nevada legal brothel said, "No one really enjoys being sold. It's like you sign a
contract to be raped." Another woman described Dutch legal prostitution as "volunteer
slavery."
Summarizing the psychological damage of prostitution, a survivor's description is
reminiscent of Orlando Patterson's description of the social death that is caused by slavery:
"It is internally damaging. You become in your own mind what these people do and say with you.
You wonder how could you let yourself do this and why do these people want to do this to
you?"
When women in prostitution begin to accept that role and identify with their pimps, physical
violence is not necessary to control them. Prostitution is gradually seen as a normal if
regrettable way of life rather than calculated violence. The coercive control employed by pimps
causes feelings of terror, helplessness, and dependence in prostituted women. A trafficking
victim in the United Kingdom explained, "Sometimes I don't see the point in doing anything. It
seems useless. When someone has controlled you and made decisions for you for so long, you
can't do that for yourself anymore." This same dynamic existed in slavery, with historians
noting the vacant look of despair in the eyes of the enslaved as she was about to be sold.
Challenges faced by the abolitionist movement to end slavery in 1840 are echoed in today's
movement to abolish prostitution. Buyers and sellers of slaves, and buyers and pimps of
prostituted women were sometimes described as "kind" or engaging in mild or nonviolent
slavery/prostitution. Yet the hallmark of slavery and of prostitution is that the enslaved or
prostituted are subject to domination and to the arbitrary will of another person ,
however that domination is effected. Both institutions occur on a continuum of coercive harm,
whether for example she was whipped once or one hundred times; whether she was permitted better
or worse quality food. Systems of slavery and of prostitution are rotten to the core. Improving
the food of slaves or offering them medical care during their transatlantic journey did not
alter the "beastliness" of slavery, as Patterson has named it. Similarly, offering condoms is
presented as a harm reduction quick-fix solution to the health problems of women in
prostitution, and legalizing the institution of prostitution is proposed as a solution to the
"stigma" of prostitution. Both fail to address the essential beastliness of prostitution.
Laws
A battle is being waged by those who promote prostitution as a reasonable job for poor women
against those of us who consider prostitution an institution that is so intrinsically unjust,
discriminatory, and abusive that it can't be fixed, only abolished. Prostitution was described
by Friedman in 1996 as sexual slavery and by Bishop in 1993 as sexual annihilation – in
articles published in the liberal magazine, The Nation . These views have shifted
dramatically. Today liberals including the Greens have redefined prostitution as sex work. In
that one word – work – the sexism and the physical and psychological violence of
prostitution are made invisible.
Regulationist laws were proposed to improve the conditions of slavery in the 18th century.
The argument was that a regulatory law was better than none at all. Over the opposition of
abolitionists, who feared that it would concede that the slave trade was in itself just but had
been abused, the law proposed to limit the number of slaves based on a ship's weight, to
require every ship to have a doctor, and to record all crew and slave deaths. There is a
parallel debate today regarding the legalization or regulation of prostitution. It is widely
but incorrectly assumed that legal prostitution is safer than illegal prostitution although
evidence to the contrary documents the abuses and harms of legal prostitution in Australia, the
Netherlands, and Nevada.
Frank de Wolf, a Labor Party member of the Amsterdam City Council and an HIV researcher
stated, "In the past, we looked at legal prostitution as a women's liberation issue; now it's
looked at as exploitation of women and should be stopped."
Wherever prostitution thrives, so does sex trafficking. If you were a pimp, where would you
market your 'product?' Not in Sweden where there's a law against buying or selling people for
sex. You would more likely pimp women in countries that provide a legal welcome to pimps: the
Netherlands, Germany, Australia and wherever prostitution is legally tolerated. Sweden on the
other hand has a feminist prostitution law in which buyers of women, pimps, and traffickers are
criminalized but prostituted people are not. Trafficking has plummeted in Sweden since the law
was passed. The rationale underpinning the Swedish law is that prostitution is a harmful social
institution because prostitution always exploits those who are the most vulnerable and the most
marginalized.
We can not permit a pimp's or a sex buyer's money to cover up the sexual harassment, rape,
and battering in prostitution. The same oppressive phenomena that liberals attack as evidence
of the injustice of slavery are defended in prostitution: gross power imbalance,
objectification, sexual and labor exploitation (yes women in prostitution are sometimes
expected to clean and cook), coercion, lack of freedom. If we ignore the evidence for the
structural inequalities of sex, race, and class in prostitution and if we ignore the clear
statements of women who tell us that they want to escape prostitution, then we end up in a
postmodern neverland where liberal theory unanchored to material reality frames prostitution as
a problem of sexual choice, workers' rights or sex trafficking as an immigration problem.
Prostitution is the international business of sexual exploitation. Describing the strategic
focus on sex buyers, a Swedish detective said, "trafficking is a business, we try to destroy
the market." Yes.
References
American Psychological Association (2007). Report of the APA Task Force on the
sexualization of girls . Accessed at http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualization.html
Bourke, J. (2004) Torture as Pornography. London Guardian May 7, 2004, accessed at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,3604,1211261,00.html
Clarke, D.A. (2004) Prostitution for everyone: Feminism, globalisation, and the 'sex'
industry. In C. Stark and R. Whisnant (eds.) Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution
and Pornography .Melbourne: Spinifex.
Ekman,K.E.(2013) Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy, and the Split Self
. Melbourne: Spinifex.
Farley, M. (2007) Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections .
SanFrancisco: Prostitution Research and Education.
Farley, M., Cotton, A., Lynne, J., Zumbeck, S., Spiwak, F., Reyes, M.E., Alvarez , D.,
Sezgin, U. (2003) Prostitution and Trafficking in 9 Countries: Update on Violence and
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Journal of Trauma Practice 2 (3/4): 33-74.
Farley, M., Schuckman, E., Golding, J.M., Houser, K., Jarrett, L., Qualliotine, P., Decker,
M. (2011) Comparing Sex Buyers with Men Who Don't Buy Sex: "You can have a good time with
the servitude" vs. "You're supporting a system of degradation" Paper presented at
Psychologists for Social Responsibility Annual Meeting July 15, 2011, Boston.
Friedman, R. I. (1996) India's Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to
an AIDS Catastrophe The Nation , 262 (14). April 8, 1996.
Giobbe, E. (1991) the Vox Fights, Vox , Winter 1991.
Gumbs, A.G. (2006) Prostitution: a return to slavery. Jamaica Gleaner Online April
24, 2006Accessed at http://www.jamaicagleaner.com/gleaner/20060424/letters/letters1.html
Herman, J.L. (1992) Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – from Domestic
Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books.
Hochschild, A. (1998) King Leopold's Ghost: a story of greed, terror, and heroism in
colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Jaget, C. (1980) Pr ostitutes – Our Life Bristol UK: Falling Wall Press.
Jordan, B.K. (2004) Stripped: Twenty Years of Secrets from Inside the Strip Club.
Kearny Nebraska: Satsyu Multimedia Press.
MacKinnon, C.A. (1993) Prostitution and Civil Rights. Michigan Journal of Gender and
Law 1: 13-31.
Malamuth, N. M., & Pitpitan, E. V. (2007). The effects of pornography are moderated by
men's sexual aggression risk. In D. Guinn & J. DiCaro (Eds.), Pornography: Driving the
demand in international sex trafficking (pp. 125-143). International Human Rights Law
Institute and Captive Daughters Media.
Nathan,D. (2005) 'Oversexed' Nation , August 29, 2005.
Patterson, L. (1982) Slavery and Social Death: a comparative study. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Robinson, L.S. (1993) In the Penile Colony: Touring Thailand's Sex Industry, The
Nation , November 1, 1993, 492-97.
Schoenmann, J. (2003) Reviving Downtown on the backs of taxed and regulated prostitutes.
Las Vegas Weekly July 10, 2003. Accessed at
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/2003/07_10/news_coverstory.html.
Scott, D. (1996) Behind the G-String: an exploration of the stripper's image, her person
and her meaning. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Shimizu, C.P. (1999) Master-Slave Sex Acts: Mandingo and the Race/Sex Paradox. Wide
Angle 21 (4) 42-61
Sullivan , M.L. (2007) Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalized
Prostitution . Spinifex: North Melbourne.
"... 'The women were never anything more than merchandise to me' ..."
"... The women were never more than merchandise to me. They were things, objects. I said to myself: 'If she really didn't want to do it, she wouldn't do it.' I said to myself: 'If I don't do it, somebody else will.' ..."
"... Some people say it's hard to get out of prostitution. I say it's just as hard to get out of pimping. I'm still not able to have a lasting relationship with a woman. I still closely observe every woman I meet. Nowadays I think it's a nuisance. But in the old days it was my life. I wanted to have as many women working for me as I could. I wanted to be a winner every day. ..."
"... 'My mother and my grandmother were in prostitution too. My greatest hope is that my girls will be able to break the cycle' ..."
"... 'If someone would have told me this would happen to me, I never would have believed them' ..."
"... 'Slowly it dawned on me that maybe this girl wasn't free at all' ..."
"... This article appears in the July issue of the Al Jazeera Magazine. Download it for iPads and iPhones here and for Android devices here . ..."
'The women were never anything more
than merchandise to me'
"I
was 18 when I had my first girl working
for me. I still remember her name: Karin.
Pimping came easy to me because I knew
everybody in the business. My stepfather
was a notorious pimp in the north of
Holland. He was a big guy and he used to
beat me up badly. My mother was a
prostitute, so I really grew up in the sex
industry.
Already as a young boy I was a kind of
pimp. Every time I wanted an ice cream or
needed new shoes, I waited until the johns
came along.
Forty-six-year-old Sjon
reveals a world of
manipulation and brutality
[Mona van den Berg]
At first Karin had her doubts, but I
knew how to handle that. You have to act
like it's no big deal. I took her to Appie,
a friend of mine who owned a club. At
Appie's they set out to win her over. And
once you're won over in this business,
there's no turning back.
The money went straight into my pocket.
Every night Appie told me exactly how many
men she'd had: there was no way she could
fool me. And if she tried, I made sure she
knew I was the boss. You have to flex your
muscles in this business or else you're
out.
But you know, these women are used to
getting beaten up, they are used to
problems. The quiet life doesn't make them
happy either. You just have to be careful
that they don't end up with too many
bruises. You want them to be able to keep
on working.
I was a predator. I closely observed
every woman I met. How can I use this one?
Is she alone? Where does she live? Does
she have relatives, does she have
brothers? A girl walked by and in my mind
I immediately put her behind a window or
in a club.
How does she react? That's the first
thing you turn your eyes on. They've got
to be vulnerable, pliable. You've got to
be able to wrap them around your finger.
Next thing you find out what she likes.
Does she want attention? You give her
attention. Does she like jewellery? You
give her jewellery. Does she want to go on
a holiday? Fine, but the next time you
say: 'You told me you wanted to go to
Italy, well, now you are going to
contribute.'
I always went for the soft spot; I
headed straight for the wound. I can smell
it. My intuition and all my senses are
keen on it. I told them all kinds of s**t.
I made them believe we had something
going.
'You're my girl,' I used to say. 'One
day, we're going to get married. We're
going to be so happy together.' You have
to make them believe you have plans for
the future.
But you can never allow yourself to
feel anything for a girl. There's no room
for emotions in this business. You can't
have women working for you when you have
feelings.
I learned how to switch off my feelings
at an early age. As a pimp you have to
rule, know it all, deal with everything,
make sure nothing can ever hurt you. And
the girl has to come home with the money,
or else she's got a problem.
The women were never more than
merchandise to me. They were things,
objects. I said to myself: 'If she really
didn't want to do it, she wouldn't do it.'
I said to myself: 'If I don't do it,
somebody else will.'
If they ever expressed their doubts, I
would say: 'What are you trying to explain
to me? What is it you think I don't know?
You should be grateful to me. If I hadn't
come along, you'd still be where I found
you.'
Then one night there was a john who didn't
want to pay and I beat him up. It got out
of hand. I got sentenced to four years for
assault. That was in 2006.
In jail they made me go into therapy to
kick my coke and gambling habit and to
work on regulating my aggression. I was
lucky to get good therapists. They made me
realise there is another world outside of
the sex business. They made me realise I
didn't really know how to enjoy life. I
had switched off my feelings for too long;
I didn't know how to switch them on again.
Some people say it's hard to get out of
prostitution. I say it's just as hard to
get out of pimping. I'm still not able to
have a lasting relationship with a woman.
I still closely observe every woman I
meet. Nowadays I think it's a nuisance.
But in the old days it was my life. I
wanted to have as many women working for
me as I could. I wanted to be a winner
every day.
It's a dirty business, that's what it
is. It's a world full of lies. It's dirty,
rotten and fake. I always knew it was
dirty, but I tried not to think too much
about it. It's better not to think about
what these women go through. It's better
not to think about what happens behind
those doors, about what the johns do to
the girls. Some people say it is easy
money. But it can never be easy. These
girls have to cross a crucial line. It's
the hardest work a woman can get.
I gave up pimping thanks to therapy.
But I also think that age played an
important part. I was simply tired.
When you are in your twenties it's okay
to have five girls working for you, but
the older you get, the harder it gets to
keep up the juggling act.
I thought I could run through life like
Tarzan or Rambo, and I really tried, but
you just can't go on like that forever.
You think you are a big boy, but it's a
fantasy world you're living in. It's not a
real life."
Sjon
started working as a pimp when
he was 18 [Mona van den Berg]
'My mother and my grandmother were in
prostitution too. My greatest hope is that
my girls will be able to break the cycle'
Twenty-six-year-old Jacky is a
sex worker and a mother of two
[Mona van den Berg]
"I'm a thrill-seeker. I need excitement
to know that I'm alive. I love doing
things I've never done before. And I like
sex. The sex industry always fascinated
me.
I was always drawn to prostitution. So
when I got totally bored with my job as a
manager of an indoor children's
playground, I decided to try my luck in
prostitution. That was almost three years
ago now.
I told my father about it and all he
said was: 'Just make sure you don't end up
behind a window.' He took me to a guy he
knew who owned a sex club.
You think it's a strange thing for a
father to do? Well, you're right. In a way
I was angry with him for not trying to
keep me from it. But then again, my father
has never been a regular father. When I
was still a kid, he used to go to swinging
clubs and would tell me about the things
that went on there.
He never really took care of me. I
spent my childhood with foster parents
because my mum left us when I was three
and I couldn't get along with my
stepmother.
I got pregnant when I was 17 and that's
why I never finished school. I married my
boyfriend when I was 18. I gave birth to
my second daughter at 19 and got divorced
when I was 20. About three years later I
was working as a prostitute.
The first night I was nervous. I was
going to have sex with guys I didn't know,
guys I wouldn't choose as sex partners if
I saw them walking down the street. But
after the first night it just became
automatic.
It's a game. That's what I like best
about it. A john may not be much of a man,
but I'll behave as though he's the
greatest lover I've ever had and he'll
willingly believe me. I can bend all these
guys to my will. It's a power thing,
really. And I love that.
Most of the johns are okay. They tell
me about their private lives. Some of them
are a******s who don't respect you. They
try to hurt you; they want to play it
rough. But that's part of the job. Every
job has got its downsides. With
prostitution the downsides just have more
impact, because it affects your body.
To me, the hardest part is when they
put the money on the table. It makes you
feel like a thing, like an object that has
been bought. But it comes with the job.
I'm fine with it now.
There was a time when I used to do
cocaine to be able to keep going. It got
so bad I couldn't do the work without it.
That's when I decided to stop. It wasn't
easy, but I did it. Shortly after I
stopped doing coke I met my present
boyfriend. He works in pilotage, in the
harbour of a nearby city. He's great; he
really supports me.
I never thought I would fall in love
with a man again. The work I do made me
lose all respect for men. I don't feel a
shred of respect for johns. A guy who pays
for sex is a big time loser, that's how I
see it. And you know, most of these guys
have a wife and children at home. It's
very sad when you come to think of it.
So I never thought I would fall in love
again, but I did. And suddenly it was hard
to do the work. It was weird to have sex
with johns knowing that my boyfriend was
at home. And the johns somehow sensed it;
I started losing clients. That's when I
decided to become someone else at work; to
be another Jacky. The Jacky in the club is
not me, she's a single woman. When I go
home, I leave her behind.
I told my boyfriend right from the
start I wasn't going to give up my work.
Not for him, not for anybody. I am not
going to give up my financial independence
for a man – ever. But we do agree I'm not
going to do this for the rest of my life.
That's why I've signed up for this exit
programme the city council is setting up
now.
I have always dreamed of becoming a
midwife. If I'd had a regular childhood I
would have finished school and I would
have been a midwife now. It's not too late
for me to train as a midwife, but with two
daughters it's difficult to do full-time
training. Right now I just work three
nights a week. But business has been bad
lately. I'm not earning half the money I
used to.
I always talk lightheartedly about my
work. But the truth is it has done
something to me. It has changed me. I have
become harder, it's like there is a brick
wall around my feelings now. I prefer not
to think about it too much, or else I
wouldn't be able to keep on doing it. The
sex industry didn't turn out to be that
exciting world I believed it to be.
Some time ago, my father told me my
mother and my grandmother had been in
prostitution too. That's when many of the
missing pieces of the puzzle fell into
place. It really made me think. It made me
realise that prostitution is a vicious
circle that can remain unbroken generation
after generation. My greatest hope is that
my girls will manage to break out of that
circle. I know they will, because I give
them all the love and attention I never
had.
This feeling that you are wanted, in a
way, I've tried to find it with the johns.
But I was just fooling myself. In the sex
trade you're never going to get the right
kind of attention. You're never going to
be loved for who you are."
Jacky
juggles her domestic life as a
mother of two with her work
[Mona van den Berg]
'If someone would have told me this
would happen to me, I never would have
believed them'
Twenty-three-year-old Xandra
describes how she was forced
into prostitution - first by
her pimp and then by her
boyfriend [Mona van den Berg]
"I was 15 and there was this group of
popular kids at school. I wanted to be
part of that group really badly. They met
every day at the back of the school, so I
made sure to always be there. And one day
they said to me 'we want you to meet
someone'.
He was much older than us; he must have
been 30-something. He had dark hair and he
wore a red t-shirt. Let's call him Jim.
Jim would drive along in his car and
seemed to be on great terms with the
popular kids. It didn't take long before I
found out he was a drug dealer and my
friends were running drugs for him. That's
how I started running drugs for Jim, just
because I wanted to be part of the group.
'It's no big deal,' he said. 'You can
always stop running drugs.'
I knew it was wrong and at one point I
realised it was dangerous too. So I went
up to Jim and told him I wanted to quit.
He just smiled and said: 'I said you
could stop running drugs, but you can't
stop working for me. So now you're going
to make money in another way.'
I knew what he meant and I told him I
was never going to do that. And then all
of a sudden he dragged me into his car. He
beat me up and raped me. I was a virgin at
the time.
From that moment on I was in his power.
I was so scared of him. I didn't have the
nerve to refuse him anything, because I
was afraid he would kill me. I knew I
couldn't escape. He would always find me.
Three or four times a week Jim would text
me and I would come to a spot where he
would pick me up and take me to a parking
lot outside of town. After some time, a
man would appear, hand over some money to
Jim and get in the car to have sex with
me. All the while, Jim would wait outside,
in front of the door. There was no way I
could escape. It was terrible.
My parents sensed something was going
on, but they couldn't put their finger on
it. I never told them anything, I didn't
know how. When Jim would text me, I'd tell
them I would go to see a girlfriend. I
felt so lost and lonely. I always thought
it was something that would never happen
to me. But it did.
After half a year, Jim suddenly
disappeared. Maybe he got busted, I don't
know. I just never heard of him anymore.
Suddenly I was free. But I didn't feel
free. I was still scared. I suffered from
nightmares and I tried to keep myself
awake at night listening to music, because
I was afraid to fall asleep. I didn't eat;
I didn't care about my body anymore. I had
lost all of my self-esteem. But I didn't
know the worst was yet to come.
When I was 19, I met a young man on the
internet. He was kind to me. He listened
to me. I told him my story and he
sympathised, he comforted me. He took me
to his parents' house. He told me to trust
him; that not all men were after sex. He
said he loved me.
But then, after about half a year or
so, something changed. He started telling
me stories about how he used to do drugs
and how great it was. He asked me if I
wanted to try, and I said 'yes'. Why not?
I didn't give a damn about my body anyway.
I was a broken girl.
He took me to this place where we did
drugs. The guy who lived there was an
older man and when I was very high, the
man suddenly said he wanted to have sex
with me for money. I was an easy victim. I
didn't put up any resistance. I was too
high. And besides, my body was worthless
anyway, because of what Jim had done to
me.
From that day on my boyfriend took me
to that place on a regular basis, and he
would force me to have sex with men for
money, while he waited downstairs. He
started beating me up. He started telling
me that what happened with Jim was my own
fault. And I believed him. I couldn't
think straight anymore.
He made sure to isolate me from the
ones I loved. He made me break with my
friends, he made me fight with my parents.
That was the way he liked it. He wanted me
to have nothing else in the world but him,
so he could use me any way he wanted to.
This went on for two years and in the
end I had only one friend left: my best
friend. One day my boyfriend said to me:
'You'll have to choose, either it's me or
it's her.' I just couldn't believe he
wanted me to break with my only friend.
That did it for me. I said: 'I am never
going to give her up.'
And then he told me to leave. He thought I
would never do it, he thought I would
never leave. But I did. I had reached a
turning point. I went back home to my
parents and my best friend told them
everything that happened. They were
shocked, they were sad, but they did
everything in their power to help me.
My ex-boyfriend tried to find me
several times, but he can't find me now. I
am in a shelter for victims of human
trafficking, where I get the counselling I
need. At first it was very difficult. I
was suicidal, I drank, I had bouts of
uncontrollable anger. But things are a bit
better now. I'm slowly trying to build up
a new life, but it still isn't easy. If
someone would have told me this would
happen to me, I never would have believed
them."
Xandra
says she has been left feeling
suicidal at times and has
little regard for her body
[Mona van den Berg]
The john
'Slowly it dawned on me that maybe
this girl wasn't free at all'
Forty-two-year-old Robert
remembers the woman who
unknowingly changed his views
on paying for sex [Mona van
den Berg]
"I just came out of a terrible
relationship with a woman who manipulated
me. It was sheer hell. She drove me crazy.
I'm not an aggressive guy, but she drove
me to a point where I almost hit her.
All I knew was that I never wanted to
end up in a situation like that again. So
I chose not to go out and date women
again. I didn't want to run the risk of
ending up in a destructive relationship
once more. I didn't have much time for
dating either. I was working very hard as
a lighting technician in the film
industry.
That's how the thought entered my mind
to call this escort agency. They had a
website with photos of girls you could
order. Nice looking girls, most of them
young. I would choose a girl who appealed
to me and I would call the agency. The
girl would come over, I would have sex
with her and an hour later she would
leave. It was all very easy.
At the time it seemed to me the ideal
way to deal with my sexual needs. Once a
month or so I would call the escort agency
and they would send a girl to me. Most of
the girls were Eastern European. They
usually spoke some English and I would
have little conversations with them. They
would tell me it was just a temporary job
they were doing. Just to send home some
money. It was funny, but they all told me
the same story.
I thought prostitution was a great
solution to my problem and I was quite
open about it. Whenever my male friends
had fights with their girlfriends, I would
say: 'I'm glad I don't have to go through
that kind of s**t anymore.' I would say
having sex with a prostitute was a much
better deal, much cheaper than going out
on a date, taking a girl out for dinner,
buying her presents - all with the risk of
ending up hurt. I said prostitution means
no hassle and you get exactly what you
want.
Maybe I knew deep down inside that
there are prostitutes who don't do the
work voluntarily, but I never gave it a
thought. An ex-girlfriend of mine had been
in prostitution before she knew me and she
always told me it was a great way to make
money. So that's how I came to view it: a
great way to make money for those girls,
and a very convenient service for men who
wanted to stay out of relationships. It
felt good at the time. I thought: 'If
those girls are not okay with it, they
wouldn't do it. They are free to leave.'
Then one day a strange thing happened.
I'd called the escort agency and they'd
sent me an Eastern European girl. She was
petite, with big dark eyes and dark hair.
She spoke just a little bit of English.
I'd recently bought a batch of really
cheap mobile phones and cheap pre-paid
phone cards. The phones were charged, they
were ready to use. I used them myself and
I gave them away to friends as a present.
The girl saw the telephones and she
said something about it. I said: 'Take
one. They're ready to use.' I put one of
the phones in a box together with the
charger and gave it to her. I couldn't
believe how happy she was with that cheap
little phone.
After she left, I found the empty box
and the charger in the corridor. She had
just left them there.
At first I was annoyed at her leaving
her rubbish for me to clear out, but then
I realised something was wrong. Her
behaviour just didn't make any sense. Why
take the phone and leave the charger? I
was puzzled. It was just too crazy.
Slowly it started to dawn on me that
maybe this girl wasn't a free prostitute
after all. Maybe she was a victim of human
trafficking and she wanted to use the
phone to call for help. Maybe that's why
she was so extremely happy with it. The
phone was very small, you could easily
hide it. Her pimp would never notice. But
you can't hide a box and a charger.
Looking back I can't remember anything
in her behaviour that gave her away, but
maybe she was just happy that she ended up
with a normal guy, not with some kind of
creep.
Later I realised there were other
suspicious things going on. The escort
agency used to mail me photos of girls
that didn't appear on their website. They
were all foreign girls. Why wouldn't they
put these girls on their website? The
agency also changed its name every now and
then. It was very peculiar.
That was the last time I called the
escort agency. I never paid for sex again.
I am a radical guy, when I'm through with
something, I'm through. I just don't want
to run the risk of having sex with a girl
who has been forced into prostitution. I
just don't think there is anything erotic
about compulsion. And there's no way you
can be sure whether a girl is forced or
not. She can pretend to be happy, just to
attract more customers to make enough
money for her pimp.
Not long after this experience I met a
young woman who became my girlfriend. No
manipulation this time. I'm still with her
and we are very happy together. But
sometimes my thoughts go back to that girl
with the dark eyes who was so happy with
that stupid little phone. I tried to look
for the girl on the website of the escort
agency several times, but I never could
find her.
I wonder what became of her. I'm sorry
that giving her that phone was all I could
do for her."
A former
client questions whether you
can ever be fully sure that
somebody is willingly working
in the sex trade [Mona van den
Berg]
This article appears in the July
issue of the Al Jazeera Magazine. Download
it for iPads and iPhones
here
and
for Android devices
here
.
SPECIAL SUNDAY MIRROR INVESTIGATION: Authorities failed to act over 40 years - despite
repeated warnings to social workers - with up to 1,000 girls, some as young as 11, abused in
Telford
Up to 1,000 children could have suffered in Britain's worst known abuse scandal - where sex
gangs targeted girls as young as 11.
The rape hell of vulnerable young girls in one town - Telford - went on for a shocking 40
years, the Sunday Mirror can reveal.
As many as 1,000 children could have suffered at the merciless hands of perverts and
torturers in Telford since the 1980s.
Girls as young as 11 have been lured from their families to be drugged, beaten and raped in
an epidemic that, say victims, is still ongoing.
THREE people were murdered and two others died in tragedies linked to the scandal.
Despite similar high-profile cases in Rochdale and Rotherham, authorities in Telford
repeatedly failed to stamp out a network of abusers.
The Mirror's 18-month investigation reveals abuse on unprecedented levels. We found:
•Social workers knew of abuse in the 1990s but police took a decade to launch a probe
•Council staff viewed abused and trafficked children as "prostitutes" instead of victims,
according to previously unseen files
•Authorities failed to keep details of abusers from Asian communities for fear of
"racism"
•Police failed to investigate one recent case five times until an MP intervened
•One victim said cops tried to stop her finding out why her abusers had not been
prosecuted because they feared she would talk to us
The scale of the abuse uncovered in Telford – population 170,000 – is feared to
be the most brutal and long-running of all.
The Rotherham toll was put at 1,500 – but that was in a community of 260,000.
Telford's Tory MP Lucy Allan has demanded a public inquiry and said our findings were
"extremely serious and shocking".
When you take this obvious false flag together with the other story headlining Unz at the
moment, i.e. the rape and abuse of thousands of girls in Telford, it is clear that the
British government has lost all legitimacy. It actively lies to, abuses, and tries to destroy
its own citizenry. Every British subject would be acting within the scope of his natural
rights were he to overthrow this abominable government. The conditions for a just revolution
have been met.
Officials and campaigners fear explosion in child prostitution amid rising demand from football fans
Brazil's child sex trade: Jessica, 16, who was arrested during a raid at a sex club, shows her tattoo at a shelter for girls in Fortaleza.
Photograph: Reuters
A tiny figure in minuscule white shorts and a pink strapless top leans against a metal fence outside a school in Fortaleza, the capital
of Ceará state, north-east Brazil.
She has gloss-coated lips, and her yellow headband, holding back long hair, glows in the lamplight along Juscelino Kubitschek Avenue,
which connects the city to the Castelão arena, one of the venues for the
2014 World Cup. A car pulls up. The girl climbs in.
This is a common scene around the stadium in Fortaleza, considered Brazil's child
prostitution capital and a magnet for
sex tourism, according to local authorities.
Transvestites also work the dusty pavements of this newly renovated thoroughfare but young girls are in higher demand. "As soon as
they hit the avenue they're picked up," says Antônia Lima Sousa, a state prosecutor who works on
children's rights in Fortaleza. "It's really a matter of minutes. You'll find
them around town during the day too."
Despite more than a decade of government pledges to eradicate child prostitution, the number of child sex workers in Brazil stood
at about half a million in 2012, according to the National Forum for the Prevention of Child Labor, a non-governmental organisation.
That's a fivefold increase since 2001, when 100,000 children worked in the sex trade, according to estimates by Unicef, the UN children's
charity.
And with the World Cup approaching in June, officials and campaigners
fear an explosion in child prostitution as sex workers migrate to big cities from interior states and pimps recruit more young people
to meet increased demand from local and foreign football fans.
"We're worried sexual exploitation will increase in the host cities and around them," says Joseleno Vieira dos Santos, who co-ordinates
a national programme to fight the sexual exploitation of children at Brazil's Human Rights Secretariat. "We're trying to co-ordinate
efforts as much as we can with state and city governments to understand the scope of the problem."
But the authorities have a battle on their hands as sex workers prepare to cash in on a bumper trade.
The Minas Gerais State Association of Prostitutes, which represents sex workers in one of Brazil's largest states, is even offering
free English lessons to prostitutes in the capital Belo Horizonte, another World Cup host city.
"There'll be a lot more people circulating in this area during the games for sure and the city will be full of tourists," says Giovana,
19, a transvestite working a corner near Castelão stadium. "I know there'll be more work for everybody – women, girls, everybody."
Big bucks
The tournament is expected to attract 600,000 foreign visitors to Brazil who will spend an estimated 25bn reals (£6.5bn) while travelling
around the country, the Brazilian tourism board, Embratur, says.
The championship could inject 113bn reals into the economy by 2014, Fifa has said, citing an Ernst & Young report.
Brazil's government will have spent 33bn reals on stadiums, transport and other infrastructure by the time the tournament kicks off,
as well as £6m on advertising. In contrast, very little is being spent on fighting the sexual exploitation of minors, campaigners say.
The Human Rights Secretariat has set aside 8m reals for host cities to set up projects to fight child prostitution, but not all cities
have programmes in place to absorb the funds, Santos says.
His department is finishing a review of child prostitution in key locations and will then decide what action to take. But any programmes
will scratch only the surface.
"We realise we're only touching the tip of the iceberg with these actions for the World Cup, but we hope to build capacity and implement
longer-lasting programmes in the future," Santos says.
Beyond the Human Rights Secretariat, the government could not provide accurate data on total spending to fight child prostitution
but campaigners say some schemes have been shut down. They argue that the government is not doing enough to address the problem.
"This subject isn't really part of the government's agenda and we don't see a willingness to combine efforts or increase resources
to address the sexual exploitation of children," says Denise Cesario, executive manager of Fundação Abrinq, a local partner of Save
the Children International.
The lure of Fortaleza
Sex tourism occurs across Brazil but Fortaleza – one of the north-east's top tourist destinations with white sandy beaches and about
300 days of sunshine – is the industry's main hub.
A culture of machismo, combined with extreme poverty and drug use, has created the perfect environment for sexual exploitation, say
social workers like Cecília dos Santos Góis, who works for Cedeca, a children's rights charity.
"Women in the north-east have traditionally been treated as second-class citizens, as objects even," she says. "Many fathers see
their young daughters as a source of income and that is a cultural attitude that's hard to change."
More phone calls are made from Fortaleza to a nationwide toll-free number to report child sexual exploitation than from any other
Brazilian city on a per capita basis, experts say.
Many of Fortaleza's young sex workers see prostitution as a way of escaping their circumstances. But for 16-year-old Jessica, a tall
brunette, her escape plan has landed her in trouble.
She began sex work with local clients, earning about $18 (£11) a night, before graduating to bigger nightclubs and groups of foreign
tourists for about $90 a night.
Police arrested her in September in a raid on a club on Iracema beach, a crowded neighbourhood packed with lively restaurants, hotels
and bars.
They took her to one of four shelters for underage prostitutes, a discreet two-storey house in a lower-class neighbourhood, accessible
only through a narrow iron gate watched around the clock by security guards. She is waiting for a judge to decide whether she can return
home to her mother.
Waiting for a prince
Sitting in the small room she shares with three younger girls, Jessica says one of her regular clients, a Spaniard, has promised
to take her to Europe. "I told him I was 18 and I was getting my passport," she says, tucking a rainbow-coloured tank top into green
and yellow tropical-print trousers. "I paid 500 reals for a fake ID and was saving money to buy a fake passport. But in the end I was
afraid to go."
Leonora Albuquerque, one of the shelter's co-ordinators, says Jessica's story is typical. "Like so many girls who get into this life,
Jessica has fantasies that she will find her prince charming – a foreign client who will fall in love with her – and he'll take her
to Europe and buy her fancy clothes, perfume, jewels," she says.
Pimps and clients are rarely punished and when prosecutors do manage to build a case against them, survivors often change their testimonies
and the cases are thrown out, says Francisco Carlos Pereira de Andrade, a criminal prosecutor who specialises in child exploitation.
Of 2,000 cases before his department, which handles sexual violence against children, only about 20 involve child prostitution.
The face of sex tourism in Fortaleza is also changing, making it more difficult to catch criminals, Sousa says.
Instead of working the streets, organised rings of pimps, hotel managers and taxi drivers recruit young girls. Foreign clients order
the underage prostitutes before they arrive in Fortaleza and they are delivered directly to their hotels, Sousa adds.
Girls on the menu
Friday night at Iracema beach and a small group of blond German men are drinking beer at pavement tables, watched closely by a bouncer.
Six adult sex workers stand nearby, some sitting with them, swishing their hair from side to side. But the tourists have something
else on their mind.
"They're waiting for a cue to let them know the girls they ordered are ready," says social worker Góis, on one of her routine surveillance
rounds of child prostitution hubs. "The bar is involved. The taxi drivers that wait on the corner are probably involved too. And some
hotels nearby are part of this network."
While international sex tourism is prominent in Fortaleza, it represents only a third of all reported child prostitution cases. Prostitutes
with Brazilian clients, from Ceará or surrounding states, are far more common, prosecutors say.
That was the case for Vanessa, who was 13 when police picked her up in October, not far from Castelão stadium.
She left her home in a poor neighbourhood when she was 10, after her stepfather started to beat her, she says. She has lived mostly
on the streets, going to shelters now and then and spending nights with clients, some of whom she calls friends.
Her chubby cheeks, perfectly aligned white teeth and sparkling eyes make it hard to believe she is undergoing treatment for crack
cocaine abuse. "I want to study; I really like maths. But sometimes I just want to disappear and go and live on Mars with the astronauts,"
she laughs.
Last month, Vanessa broke into the maintenance room at the shelter, took a ladder and scaled the 2.5-metre wall surrounding the building,
according to Albuquerque, who works at the shelter. She convinced two other girls, aged 12 and 13, to go back with her to the Castelão
stadium area. It was the fourth time she had escaped in less than six months.
"It's very hard to convince these girls to lead normal lives," Albuquerque adds. "Most of them think abuse and selling their bodies
is just a fact of life."
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
FAIR USE NOTICEThis site contains
copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available
to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social
issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which
such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free)
site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should
be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
You can use PayPal to make a contribution, supporting development
of this site and speed up access. In case softpanorama.org is down you can use the at softpanorama.info
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or
referenced source) and are
not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the author present and former employers, SDNP or any other organization the author may be associated with.We do not warrant the correctness
of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose.
The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be
tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without
Javascript.
Softpanorama
Pilar Melendez
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos Getty/YouTube
