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Five problems with the current
CSE/CSEC law enforcement
We are
incorrectly defining sexually abused children as criminals,
rather than as victims of statutory rape, physical abuse,
and commercial sexual exploitation. When a child tells a court-mandated
reporter or police officer that they have had sex with an
adult and received money, that reporter or officer is and
should be legally bound to report the incident as an instance
of child sexual abuse. But not only does the reporting not
occur, the child rather than the abuser is at risk of criminalization
and punishment.
By
focusing on the behavior or alleged "crimes" of
children, we are ignoring the perpetrators. Research shows
that we rarely go after the pimps and almost never go after
the purchasers of sex with children, or the “johns,”
and rarely to never arrest the men as sexual abusers or statutory
rapists. Even calling the purchasers of sex with children
by the neutralizing term “johns”, rather than
child sexual abusers or statutory rapists, helps misrepresent
what’s happening and creates an acceptable group of
children to abuse. This misrepresentation makes it less likely
that we will question the social system which is very organized,
complex and well funded and is depriving children of safety
and basic survival resources. As a society, we are encouraging
and enabling the perpetrators of child sexual abuse; we are
creating a group of men who are learning how to be sex abusers
of children, and often how to be torturers and batterers.
Many of these men bring these behaviors home or into other
social arenas, and most of them continue to prey on children
who are exploited within the sex industries.
Studies show that most prostituted children are integrated
into the mainstream sex industry and tend to be concentrated
in the cheaper end of the prostitution market where conditions
are the worst and the concentration of customers the highest.
Some children are prostituted by and/or specifically for pedophiles
and preferential abusers. However, the majority of the several
million men per year who purchase sex are first and foremost
prostitute-users who become child sexual abusers through their
purchase of sex with youth who have not reached the age of
18.
The world of prostitution, whether legal or illegal, provides
and arena where child-abuse and statutory rape laws can be
evaded. Laws and social conventions make it difficult and
dangerous for individuals to buy children for sexual purposes
in non-commercial contexts, but prostitution potentially provides
instant access, often to a selection of children. Men surveyed
in San Francisco through The SAGE Project, Inc. and the First
Offenders Prostitution Program offer a common response when
asked how a person justifies having sex with an underage prostituted
child: "I didn't even think about that.” They know
that law enforcement efforts are focused on pursuing and prosecuting
the youth/child for prostitution, rather than arresting and
prosecuting them for purchasing sex, statutory rape, or child
sexual abuse.
Effective prevention programs require a stern message that,
“Age is not a defense. You will be prosecuted. You will
be jailed and you will be required to register as a sex offender
after release from prison." In short, the message should
be, “If you purchase sex with a child, you will be prosecuted
as a child abuser and statutory rapist, and your next victim
will be spared.” Of the thousands of men/johns that
SAGE staff have worked with through the FOPP program, most
realize that they have a lot to lose, yet they don’t
look at themselves as being criminals, and they say they would
change their behavior if they knew that they would face the
severe consequences of arrest and prosecution.
Our approach
to the sexual abuse of children within prostitution rarely
involves the provision of resources which truly enable healing
and recovery, rather than punishment and stigma. The Office
of Victim Compensation and other resources intended to meet
the needs of crime victims deny resources to children abused
through prostitution, based on the incorrect definition of
these children as criminals. This means that resources are
rarely available in any venue, except for tradition punitive
approaches involving the humiliation and further traumatization
of arrest and incarceration. If the child is arrested, she
or he is cycled through the criminal justice system, sometimes
repeatedly, intensifying the shame, pain, and vulnerability
that make children easy prey to pimps and abusers, and decreasing
the possibility of helpful intervention or trust.
Arresting children or even arresting traffickers
or pimps is a very far cry from committing to effective prevention.
Rather than responding to the urgent needs of children who
are being abused, we are still asking them to prove to us
that they are not one of the “bad kids.” We need,
and sexually abused children deserve, a communal rejection
of the myth that if a girl has lipstick and a mini-skirt on,
and is put on the street bu a pimp and purchased by a "John"
that she has somehow consented to sexual abuse and that by
allegedly consenting it is she who has committed the crime
most worthy of pursuit and prosecution.
When a child sexual abuser or statutory rapist says “but
she said she was 18”, we need to be educated enough
to know that "I didn't know she was younger than 18"
is not a defense not a defense for either child sexual abuse
or statutory rape. After all, liquor store owners and bars
are put on notice or closed down altogether if they sell liquor
to under-age customers. Is it too much to ask that we take
the same approach when the crime is sexually abusing a minor?
In law enforcement, we have to take away the right of men
to buy children, and this has to be accompanied by very strong
public education and rehabilitation, or these men will simply
seek new victims or take the abusive behaviors home. Working
solely in crisis mode is neither the moral or ethical approach.
These children have already been desperately hurt and changed.
It is important to work on the crisis end but not without
prevention programs for boys, men and girls and full criminal
sanctions focused on the men/abusers/buyers and the pimps
and traffickers.
This piece is adapted from,
a speech given by The SAGE Project, Inc. Founder Norma Hotaling
on December 13, 2002, at the U.S. Department of Justice "town
hall," Protecting Our Children, Ending Child Prostitution.
To read Ms. Hotaling's speech in its entirety, or to review
other CSE/CSEC issue papers and resources, visit our Information
Center using the links above.
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