Recently I participated in an internet forum about prostitution (ukpunting.com) where a thread was entitled 'Trafficking'. The man who started the thread began with "Should we report suspected trafficking to the police? Is that a moral dilemma for punters? How do you define it?".
What surprised me was the level of ignorance of most of the other contributors. They really do seem to be confused about the issue. This confusion has led to a great deal of harm to women.
I tried to explain that you have to be very careful what you report to the police. It can result in arrest and deportation for the women concerned. There were two different responses to that. One was to say that they don't believe that women will be deported. If the police don't find evidence of abuse they will leave the women alone. The other was that if they are deported it will be because they shouldn't be in this country anyway. So what's the problem?
Both responses are ignorant, but the second is also callous. When the police find women from abroad they will deport them when they can. There is lots of evidence that this is happening. When Britain was part of the EU women from Romania (for example) were entitled to live in Britain. They were deported anyway. So it's not just people who shouldn't be in this country anyway.
I'm not sure what the situation is now that we have left the EU. What I expect is that women on tourist or student visas will be deported even if they haven't overstayed.
On page 80 of Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mac and Molly Smith they say this:-
"Police Scotland put out a press release noting that they had refused entry at the border to more than a hundred people as part of their anti-trafficking work - offering as an example a Romanian woman who had 'previously worked as a prostitute in Glasgow'. The BBC reports, 'She was refused admission at Glasgow in May 2017, then again at Liverpool in July 2017 and was encountered recently at Belfast docks attempting to get to Scotland. She was removed to Romania."
They go on to write about another Romanian woman whose sex worker colleague was murdered in her presence. The police 'deported her while claiming a humanitarian anti-trafficking mantle'.
This also happens in Nordic Model countries where they (wrongly) say that women have been decriminalised. On the Nordic Model Now! site Luba Fein writes in the Has the Nordic Model worked? What does the research say? page about Nordic Model countries:-
"While there is no clear evidence that the police are violent towards those engaged in prostitution, they do tend to target undocumented migrants and report them to the immigration authorities for potential deportation. Clearly this is unacceptable and states need to provide better support and assistance to foreign nationals who have been used and abused in the sex trade within their territory."
Most people who support the Nordic Model seem to think that prostitution should be eliminated by any means necessary. They don't care about the women who are harmed. However, Luba Fein believes that it is clearly unacceptable to deport prostitutes.
So even she - a Nordic Model supporter - has compassion for deported women. It surprised me when so many people on the forum didn't have this compassion. It is also a contradictory attitude to have. You want to report a brothel to the police because you think that coercion might have occurred - presumably out of compassion for the women there. Yet if the result of your actions is for women to be deported then you say it doesn't really matter.
You have to question people's true motives. Someone says he wants to free women yet if he knew that the women had not been coerced or deceived but had been deported he says he doesn't care. It sounds like the real motivation is dislike of immigrants.
If you ask what proportion of Brazilian or Chinese nationals working as prostitutes in Britain are trafficked, the answer has to be nearly all of them. They are trafficked because someone will have organised their flight, organised their accommodation, and organized their customers. It's very unlikely that someone who doesn't speak good English will be able to organize themselves.
If you ask what proportion of Brazilian or Chinese nationals working as prostitutes in Britain are coerced or deceived, the answer has to be hardly any. There are many reasons why we know this. You can read what investigative journalist Nick Davies has written in his article Inquiry Fails to Find Single Trafficker Who Forced Anybody Into Prostitution. Read what Emily Kenway has written in her book The Truth About Modern Slavery.
Section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 says that a man who pays for sex with a woman who has been coerced or deceived is committing a crime, even if he didn't know that. 81% of police forces in England and Wales have never used it. The remaining ones seem to be using it for something other than for what it was intended.
It is clear that trafficking and coercion are two different things. Most non-European prostitutes will have been trafficked, and few will have been coerced. People don't seem to be able to distinguish between these two things. They say they will report their suspicions to the police, and if later there are prosecutions for trafficking they feel vindicated.
If a man decides to make money by recruiting women from Brazil for prostitution, he may feel that because they don't have bruises and don't look miserable then nobody can accuse him of trafficking. He will be prosecuted though, and they will be deported.
I was asked on the thread what I would do. I wrote that there should be welfare officers independent of the police. People could give information to them, and the welfare officers could pass on to the police information if they thought that it was in the interests of the women.
I was then told that there are already people like this. There are Dedicated Liaison Officers or Sex Work Liaison Officers. These however are not independent of the police. It doesn't seem that they can be can be contacted by members of the public. That's not what they are for.
I wrote that instead of the police deporting any woman that they can, it would be better if the police or a welfare officer interviewed them. First to find out if they have been coerced or deceived. If, as is usually the case, they haven't then each woman should be asked why she came to Britain. If she says that she wants to stay 3 months, earn £20,000, then go back to China to start her own small business then she should be told she won't be deported if she's out of the country in 3 months time.
She should be told that if she's not out of the country by then she will be found and deported. She will have a black mark against her name because the Chinese government keeps tabs on all its citizens. She may find it difficult to get a job or the sort of job that she would like, and may have problems with custody of her children. That's why I would hesitate to report a brothel to the police, I wouldn't want that on my conscience.
I tried to tell them about the Palermo Protocol but they weren't interested. The Palermo Protocol defines trafficking and was adopted by the UN in 2000. It says that trafficking has to include coercion or deception if the person is over 18. If there is no coercion or deception then it isn't trafficking. That definition was changed in the US and UK. Under UK law now it doesn't have to include coercion or deception. This is where the confusion comes in.
"And, from the outset, that word was a problem. On a strict definition, eventually expressed in international law by the 2000 Palermo protocol, sex trafficking involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to transport an unwilling victim into sexual exploitation. This image of sex slavery soon provoked real public anxiety.
But a much looser definition, subsequently adopted by the UK's 2003 Sexual Offences Act, uses the word to describe the movement of all sex workers, including willing professionals who are simply travelling in search of a better income. This wider meaning has injected public debate with confusion and disproportionate anxiety."
I was accused of trying to confuse people. People like me try to confuse people about trafficking. I replied that there are people who want to confuse, people whose interests are served by confusing the issue. I said who these people are. Christian Evangelicals and Radical Feminists in the UK and US. They didn't believe that.
Instead I was told that it is 'UK pro-decriminalisation advocates' who are trying to confuse people. Someone suggested that I am a pimp. That could be the only reason in his mind why I would be reluctant to help the police to raid brothels. I told him that pimps aren't going to support decriminalisation if they understand the issue because in New Zealand pimps have gone out of business. There are far fewer pimps in New Zealand now than before decriminalisation.
It is true that New Zealand has its problems with migrants. I have explained this in a recent post. It's because of section 19 of the PRA which those who campaigned for decriminalisation never wanted and are trying to remove.
Then I was accused of being political even though it wasn't me who raised the issue of decriminalisation. Now I have been banned. That doesn't bother me because there's no point in having a forum if people don't understand how to have a discussion.
