hardboiled

sex trafficking

What exactly is sex trafficking? The Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 classifies human trafficking in the United States as follows: “Sex trafficking is 1) in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion or in which the person induced to perform such an act is under 18, or 2) The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.” Due to the high influx of immigrants sold into sex slavery, it can be perceived as an international human rights problem finally hitting the mainstream American media. It is hard to receive accurate, up to date numbers, but the underground atmosphere of sex trafficking is enormous, estimated at about $8 billion dollars of human exploitation. One of the few statistics we can use is from the San Francisco Chronicle, where they reported around 600,000 to 800,000 women and girls being sex trafficked internationally, with San Francisco being a major business port. According to a recent article by the San Francisco Chronicle, the two other major countries of sex trafficking are also modernized, industrial nations: Japan and Australia.

When thinking about sex trafficking, images of male pimps might come into play. Yet in Asia, it is women traffickers who trick most women into the cruel business. If anyone has immigrant parents or grandparents, the importance of living out the “American Dream” is what drove most of them to leave their families and careers behind in seach of new fortunes in the hearlded “land of opportunity.” This same idea is what the traffickers use to lure these women into the business; by creating descriptions of America as a place where they can be “models or hostesses”.

Sex trafficking has not become an $8 billion international business by chance. Traffickers usually have connections with organized crime, but first-hand accounts of such transactions are rare because of the clandestine nature of traffickers. Only now, through narratives by escapees such as Yumi interviewed by Meredith May in the Chronicle’s shocking four part series on the Korean sex slave industry are we able to get a little glimpse at the horrors of what can be seen as modern day slavery.

For most sex-trafficked women, who are given a fake passport and business escorts telling them how to act and what to say, it is not too hard to get into the United States through Canada and Mexico. In Canada, certain Native American Reservations have restrictions on border patrolling at night, which leaves open borders for illegal immigration. If the girls are coming from Mexico, usually they drive or walk through to what is known as “El Norte,” (literally, “the north”) in order to find work. Once arriving into the United States, major cities like New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles become first targets.

With so many obstacles blocking the way into America, the shiftiness of the business is all too evident. But once stepping into the system, what can these women do? Many of the girls are brought into sexual slavery because they were financially desperate, raised in poverty-stricken families and communities. Although they may have faced poverty, from the few narratives of escapees available, it seems as if naivete was a major cause of their belief in a “quick and easy” way of making money in America.

In our urban culture today, with the help of media and popular culture, sexual promiscuity is common in younger generations. Many of us could name more than a dozen songs where the idea of a “stripper, hoe, prostitute, bars, pimps” are mentioned. In such a culture, how could we possibly understand and sensitize ourselves to the personal narratives of sexual slavery? Although San Francisco has a long history of sexual promiscuity, even to the most informed reader, the story of South Korean sex slave Yumi, featured in the SF Chronicle series by Meredith May and her team, still shocked readers.

Yumi, coming from the town of Busan, a port-city in Korea, with a family struggling to pay her $6,000 college tuition, and was just like any other college girl wanting to fit in, discovering the joys of new-found freedom. With a newly attained credit card and friends to treat, clothes to buy, and a look to keep up, she accumulated a debt of $40,000 in no time. As May goes on to narrate, Yumi, with hopes of paying off her debt quickly and with assurance that “no touching would be involved,” swallowed her fears and set off to America with someone, whom she would later recall as her sex trafficker, to Mexico City, then to LA. After little profit, Yumi’s boss sent her to San Francisco, where customers were numerous. For three years she worked in every type of prostitution listed: brothels, apartment appointments, bars, spas, and massage places. Truly the ending to Yumi’s sex trafficking story is nothing short of a miracle. While she was working at a massage parlor in San Francisco called Sun Spa, she met a man who would eventually become her boyfriend. Secretly, he would take her out to dates and even offered to help her pay her debt to leave the business. Luckily, by that time Yumi had already paid off most of her $40,000 in debt. As soon as she worked her debt off, she left the business, and with the help of her boyfriend continues to try and restore the life that was so quickly taken away. Upon leaving, May’s article writes of how Yumi’s boss gave her $1,000, signifying the hardships in a former sex slave’s ability to survive in her environment, thus enticing her back to the business.

Thankfully, this story had somewhat of a happy ending, which most sex slaves could only dream about. Sex trafficking as mentioned earlier is an international trade, and even the most isolated of countries such as North Korea partake in their share. According to researched information from LiNK (Liberty in North Korea), there are three ways in which North Korean women are put into sex trafficking; they can be 1) kidnapped and sold as brides, 2) sold as brides in what amounts to $50-$1,250 in U.S. dollars, or 3) voluntarily submitting themselves into the trade. In all types of sex trafficking, the key to many of the personal stories is deception. Just as women from South Korea and other parts of Asia are brought into the trade with offers of being hostesses or at worst, drink servers at bars, North Korean women are deceived with offers of food, water, and shelter. Many women who go into marriage express gratitude for just being alive rather than starving back home. LiNK shared a quote from a former sex slave saying, “It is better to find a man, any man, than to starve to death in North Korea.” For other sex-slaved women, the United States is a very likely place for trafficking, but for North Korean women, a very common sex-trafficking hub is China. According to personal accounts retrieved by LiNK, many of these women are forced into arranged marriages to Chinese farmers, who are considered “undesirable” by other women for reasons such as “age, poverty, disability or previous marital history.”

There are cases on either extremes, from inhumane cruelty to more merciful luck. Two accounts from LiNK (Liberty in North Korea) references illustrate the myriad of sex slavery situations. In one situation, a woman stumbled upon a more gracious host: “I was sold to a Chinese man, around 50, who processed potato noodles. He has been a widower for the last 12 years, and his young son was 13. Since I got a temporary place to stay, I took care of the house, made clothes and did some knitting. Because he was a nice man, he used to tell me not to work hard.”

Others are not as lucky: “He took us to a home saying that we would gradually contact our relatives there. However, later on, we learned that he was a professional bride trader and made 2,000 yuan (US $250) each in Yanji. They confined us in an apartment and stripped us of our clothes, so that we had to cover our naked bodies with only a blanket. They intended to sell us again after they found a proper buyer.”

From third world countries to our very own Bay Area, sex trafficking of Asian women continues, regardless of class and location. Yet many turn heads on the issue or dismiss it as something that has always been around. If only we would even take the time to spread awareness on this type of modern day slavery, I think we would be doing our fellow men and women a humanitarian favor.