By Tanya Dennis and Vanessa Russell

Although California Senate Bill 357 was intended to alleviate arrests of willing sex workers under anti-loitering laws, it opened a Pandora’s box loophole that hinders the ability of law enforcement to halt human trafficking, especially of young Black and Brown girls. This segment explores who is ‘buying’ people for sex exploitation.

The overlying unintended effect of SB 357 is that it gives priority to the needs of the person ‘buying’ sex over the predicament of those forced into the sex trade through human trafficking.

In Part 1, the Post shared that 40% of the victims of human trafficking in our nation are Black women and girls.

This statistic is alarming especially when we look at who is ‘buying’ them.  A 2006 online research project by Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) revealed the following ‘buyer’ demographics: 99% of the buyers are men; 86% are 26 and older; 42% earned more than $50,000 a year; 29% graduated from college; 69% are employed and 49% are married.

The public wonders if ‘buyers’ are consciously purchasing Black girls and women or if they are merely purchasing whoever is available.  Top search results on sites like Pornhub, reveal that demand for Black bodies is intentional.  Black girls are in the top three search results for Pornhub and other exploitative sites.

In 2020, Pornhub was investigated for showing 118 videos of confirmed cases of child abuse and human trafficking and hosting videos titled “Black Slave” and “Black Slave Pleasures White Master.”  In one case, a set of videos with this theme was watched 527,000 times and received 70% ‘thumbs up’ from the viewers.  These racist themes confirm that the purchase of Black girls for the purpose enslavement is part of the ‘buyer’s’ fantasy.

Several different approaches have been attempted to deter sex buying.  In the mid-1970s, the Oakland Police Department engaged in reverse stings, placing an undercover female officer on a street corner to catch buyers in the act.

Convicts had their vehicles seized and paid fees of up to 20% of the cost of the vehicle as well as towing and storage fees.  “Between 1997 and 1999 the Oakland City Attorney seized and impounded over 350 vehicles.”

A federal court later ruled that seizure ordinances violated state laws.  One interesting point from this program that holds true today is that 60% of those who were caught buying sex were not from Oakland.

Other Oakland approaches to deterring sex buying included getting buyers fired from their jobs and placing buyers on neighborhood ‘stay-away’ lists.  The EPIK Project, which is devoted to disrupting the demand for sex trafficking and increase the capacity of law enforcement, attempted to solve sex buying by creating a decoy trafficking site which was accessed up to 40,000 times a month and using it to engage with buyers and have men speak with them about their behaviors.

In 2014, Oakland attempted to address demand by launching a Buyer Shaming website. Then in 2016, the Alameda County CEASE (Cities Empowered Against Sexual Exploitation) Network and the City of Oakland launched a coalition and a tool titled ReportJohn.org, which was based on the “Dear John” initiative by Oakland non-profit East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC) that sent a letters to the registered owner of every car that neighbors reported as trolling for sex.

Melissa Farley, a Bay Area trafficking expert and researcher, studied a group of sex buyers in Boston. She found that individuals who purchased sex feared female rejection and endorsed rape myths, such as the belief that “prostitution reduces the likelihood of rape.”

These men revealed their violent tendencies toward women, sharing that they would “force a woman to have sex or rape them if they could get away with it, and engaged in sexually aggressive behavior with very little empathy for the exploited, believing that “prostituted women are intrinsically different from other women.”

One buyer comment perfectly and horrifically summarizes buyer sentiment toward the women and girls he purchased.  He said the transaction is like disposing of a coffee cup after you’ve finished drinking it, “When you’re done, you throw it out.”

Buyer diversion programs — like those provided to domestic violence perpetrators bring survivors in to tell their story in hopes of creating a more human narrative in the minds of buyers — have been successfully rolled out in Fresno and Orange County resulting in very low recidivism rates.

When the group of buyers from the Boston study were asked what would change their behavior, a few said a fee and a few days in jail would be enough of a deterrent. One hundred percent said that a 30-day jail stay would deter their buying behavior completely.

Tanya Dennis, is CEO Adamika Village and serves on the Board of Oakland Frontline Healers (OFH). Vanessa Russell, the author of “Love Never Fails Us,” is the COO of the Violence Prevention Coalition and a member of OFH

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