Letter to The Guardian

You may have read Nick Davies’ controversial article in The Guardian on Tuesday, in which he argued that there has been a ‘tide of misinformation’ surrounding sex trafficking and that figures have been exaggerated. This, I believe, is a highly dangerous and misleading conclusion to draw. I responded to this article with a letter, which was printed in yesterday’s edition of The Guardian. You can read it here. As I make clear, trafficking figures are often very difficult to determine since victims are frequently too afraid to come forward. Even if they do pluck up the courage to speak out about what they have endured, many find themselves too afraid to give evidence. As a result, the guilty are often charged with an offense that is quite different to the one they have committed (if they face prosecution at all).

If, like me, you feel strongly that trafficking is a vicious crime which must be tackled using the greatest possible resources, then join the hundreds of people who have already signed my petition to stop the Met closing down its specialist trafficking unit.

2 thoughts on “Letter to The Guardian”

The Anti Trafficking Alliance welcomes your opposition to the closure of the Met’s specialist trafficking unit. This is a regressive step at a time when more investment is needed to develop expertise amongst police and frontline service providers to handle the complexities and sensitivities of sex trafficking.

ATA’s focus is on addressing the demand side of trafficking by raising awareness about the causes and consequences of sex trafficking amongst young men. It has developed a short, 7 minute film (Behind the Smile) and an interactive line game (www.thesohogame.com) that are both aimed at young men in London who are likely to be experimenting with sex workers in the UK or overseas.

Nick Davies’s report in the Guardian last week is misleading. He would do well to watch ATA’s video to better understand the factors that prevent trafficked women speaking out about the terror they have experienced, making the task of collecting reliable data about trafficking so very challenging.

http://www.atalliance.org.uk

There is a lot of controversy over the numbers of adult woman who are forced sex slaves. The real factual answer is that no one knows. There is hard evidence that the sex slavery/sex trafficking issue continues to report false information and is greatly exaggerated by politicians, the media, and aid groups, feminist and religious orgainzations that receive funds from the government, The estimate of women who become new sex slaves ranges anywhere from 40 million a year to 5,000 per year all of which appear to be much too high. They have no evidence to back up these numbers, and no one questions them about it. Their sources have no sources, and are made up numbers. In fact if some of these numbers are to believed which have either not changed or have been increased each year for the past twenty years, all woman and children on earth would currently be sex slaves. Yet, very few real sex slaves have been found.

“If media reports on sex trafficking in Nepal are to be believed, there would be no young girls left in Nepal at this time”

A key point is that on the sidelines the prostitutes themselves are not being listened to. They oppose laws against prostitution. But no one wants to listen to the prostitutites themsleves. Only to the self appointed experts that make up numbers and stories.

This is a story that continues to give false information and is greatly exaggerated by politicians, aid groups, and the media.

It is not easy for criminals to engage in this acitvity:
Sex trafficking is illegal and the pentities are very severe. It is very difficult to force someone to be a sex slave, they would have to have 24 hour guards posted and be watched 365 days a year, 24 hours per day. Have the threat of violence if they refused, and have no one notice and complain to the authorities or police. They would need to hide from the general public yet still manage to see customers from the general public. They would need to provide them with medical care, food, shelter, and have all their basic needs met. They would need to have the sex slaves put on a fake front that they enjoyed what they were doing, act flirtatious and do their job well. They would have to deal with the authorities looking for the missing women, and hide any money they may make, since it comes from illegal activity. They must do all of this while constantly trying to prevent the sex slaves from escaping and reporting them to the police. This is extremely difficult to do, which makes this activity rare.

What hard evidence does the police have that these women were forced slaves? Were all the women that the police saw in fact slaves? Did the police prove without a doubt due to hard concrete evidence that the women were victims of being slaves and forced against their will? Did they account for all the benefits they would receive if they lied?
I find it very hard to believe that most women in this business are forced against their will to do it. It would just be too difficult. There may be some exceptions but, I believe this is an attempt to over inflate an issue in order to get more government money to fight this cause. As a tax payer, voter, and resident I don’t want the government to mislead me.

The following links will give you more information about this

News night BBC video: