http://www.rifuture.org/sex-trafficking.html

@CoyoteRI howls...

RI just wont listen to sex workers about how to keep minors out of the sex industry but they will travel to CA and follow the failed polices in CA.

In 2015, at the RI trafficking task force event, both Hasbro Children’s Hospital and dayoneRI explained to the audience that they integrate minors found working in the sex industry so they can purposely isolate the teens from anyone they know in the future. This is why the teens just run away again. They also admitted they had no direct and vital for trafficking victims. They admit they can not provide victims with housing, or jobs that pay a living wage or a higher education without debt. So instead they focus their efforts with the task force that gets sex workers arrested so they can be introduced to the justice system and offered free course yoga classes which they seem to think will change the plight of poverty for this population.

http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20150430/NEWS/150429123

When a young person says that their family isn’t safe, that foster care isn’t safe, that they aren’t safe in police custody or at the shelter, we need to listen and believe them.

We already know why so many youths are entering the sex industry it because they cant access shelter and other vital services from the state. The majority of minors engaged in survival sex say that they don’t have pimps and they teach each other how to find clients while avoiding the police and social workers.

Surviving the streets of NY: Experiences of LGBTQ Youth, YMSM & YWSW Engaged in Survival Sex
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/2000119-Surviving-the-Streets-of-New-York.pdf

Yet this didn’t stop RI from recently convicting a 18 yr old boy for sex trafficking and sentencing him to 10 years even though he was only 17 yrs old when the crime occurred. The boys crime was that his girlfriend was a underage sex worker. Ironically when 40 yr old police officer get caught pimping out 14 yr old girls, not much happens to him.

http://patch.com/rhode-island/eastprovidence/second-ri-teen-sentenced-sex-trafficking-underage-girls

Please don't leave the whores behind!

After all, we had much to do with the privilege you hold today. It was the transgender sex workers at Stone Wall who fought for you rights, so I beg to ask... why are you leaving the whores - or anyone else -behind. Have your not heard #WHORENATIONS cries.   Sister, I beg you to use your voice to give Sex Workers the platform they desperately need to stop the violence. Please promote the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, which will be observed this year - and every year - on December 17 

Even after the 2013 award winning film "American Courtesans" won the huminarity award, The Associated Press STILL ignores sex workers, and they promote stigma and violence towards us. 

The stigma  and hatred forces our youth into the sex industry. The US has has 2.5 million homeless kids and rather than create stable housing, access to higher education, and jobs that pay a living wage, they are funding so-called anti-trafficking NGOS at 686 million a year to stigmatize us, and these NGOs and society continue to shame and judge people who are using the only means at their disposal to survive and escape poverty. Meanwhile, these NGOs do not provide any of them with direct services for those who may want to get out of the sex worker business.  

Why are Americans obsessed with finding ways to exclude those with which they find some kind of moral fault, rather including them inn the process of building communities?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.../lgbt-homeless-youth...                                            

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/2000119-Surviving-the-Streets-of-New-York.pdf

They just caught the man who murdered 24 year old, Ashley Masi. Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza and the Providence police are spinning their wheels trying to get rid of sex solicitation services like backpage.com, despite the fact that federal judges have already ruled this unconstitutional. See:  Backpage.com, LLC v. Cooper 

End The Demand...  for sex?

“End the demand” actions and legislation have increased violence toward sex workers  in every country in which it has been implemented. Even that bastion of liberalism, Sweden got it wrong.  Yet in New Zealand where prostitution is decriminalized they haven't had a trafficking case since 2003. Even if they could scare the majority of men who would into not seeking paid sexual services,  why don’t they seem to care if the women can pay their rent and feed their kids?

In my role as director of the Rhode Island Chapter of Coyote, I attended the   “Trafficking Task Force” event in Rhode Island in April 2015.

During the event, a trafficking NGO called Dayoneri  publicly admitted that they can not offer emergency housing to trafficking victims and all they can do is try to find the victim a bed in a shelter.  During this discussion it was concluded  that shelters won't take in juvenile trafficking victims and that sex workers are not welcome at Domestic Violence shelters, because the “other women” are scared of the stigma attached to sex workers.  Yet, if my house burns down the Red Cross will put me in a hotel for at least a week; maybe up to a month.  In Rhode Island,  trafficking victims can not access emergency housing.

The anti-trafficking NGOs are funded to the tune of $686 million a year, and most of that money is wasted, “creating awareness about trafficking”.  Many of the board members of these NGOs are making 6 figure salaries and not one of them provides for emergency housing, jobs that pay a living wage, or a higher education without insurmountable debt to these victims. Around the globe, the anti-prostitution advocates spend most of their effort - and dollars -  promoting a negative stigma and license to commit violence toward sex workers. Every effort is made to make life more difficult for sex workers.

This was not my first encounter with Dayoneri, as I also confronted them during the screening of the film “A Path Appears” and asked them why they are telling people that there are 300,000 kids being exploited in the US and that the average age of entry into prostitution was just 13 or 14. I had previous explained this to them,  yet they were still sticking with the false data, and even had signs with this fake data at the “Trafficking Task Force Event”.

Dayoneri was also suggesting that we train U.S. postal workers to spot residential brothels. Residential brothels  are - more likely than not - 2 or 3 women sharing a space to ensure their safety, and that the end result of these "brothels" being identified may be that these women may be charged with trafficking.  I wonder if their plan was to teach postal workers to look out for Asian women moving mattresses!

I also pointed out that a 2014 research study in NYC, found almost 300 people that entered into survival sex while minors did so because they could not access shelter and other vital services from the state or federal government.  Only 6% of the women in the study felt that they had been exploited and they reported that they taught each other how to find clients safely.  More often than not, there is no big bad pimp exploiting sex workers.

The Task Force also included the Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, representatives from the Office of Homeland Security, the Providence Police, and a clinician from  Hasbro’s Child Protection Center. Each one of these promoted the "End the Demand" campaign. 

Rhode Island instituted this campaign, and within 30 days, a 24 year old escort named Ashley Masi was murdered.  I told them that I had just begun interviewing Rhode Island sex workers and that my second interview was with a woman who had survivor's guilt because she had been attacked by a man posing as a client a year before, and she had not reported it. She thought he may be the man who killed Ashley.   

I explained my concern that sex workers could not safely report violence to law enforcement without fear of prosecution, and asked what we plan to do about that. Harm reduction policies didn't seem to be on the table.  Providence Detective Michael Correia weighed in and said he would provide the victim with witness protection. I doubt the detective can even authorize this without an OK from the prosecutor, and even if granted, would the victim be offered immunity, or would she still be subject to arrest or investigation for being a sex worker?   Next, I mentioned how the police are allowed to have sex with prostitutes and then arrest them for prostitution! Detective Correia screamed out, “not true!” We agreed that this is common practice in many states, yet Correria says it NEVER happens in Rhode Island. As if...

I sat there wanting to pull my hair out as I listened to the false claims; Claims of a huge increase in trafficking and underage prostitution. When we look at the data from the Dept. of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation websites, we can see that when looking at ALL prostitution and disorderly conduct arrests for a 30 year period that only 1.8% of those arrests involved minors.  In fact, more women were being arrested for prostitution in Rhode Island, prior to 2009, when indoor prostitution was criminalized!