According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, from 2007 to 2018, over 750 cases of human trafficking were reported in Washington, D.C.
Just two years ago, two Prince William County, Virginia, men pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for selling a 15-year-old girl for sex at hotels throughout Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Surveillance video used in the case showed the young victim being walked into a a hotel to be sold for sex by her traffickers just six blocks from the White House.
The victim rescued in this case fit the typical profile of human trafficking victims in Washington, D.C., but very often, victims bought and sold for sex are not as easy to profile because the criminal enterprise covers all demographics and socioeconomic groups. Traffickers are especially adept at preying on young people from disadvantaged communities and highly vulnerable populations, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, people with developmental disabilities, immigrants, and especially runaway and homeless children.
U.S. law enforcement and anti-human trafficking advocates have rightly focused on shutting down trafficking operations and rescuing victims. However, this approach is but a proverbial plugging of the dam. The primary job of law enforcement is to disrupt traffickers, and law enforcement across the country deserves tremendous credit for crackdowns on the trade across the country. But government officials at all levels must also grapple with the fact that there is a never-ending supply of vulnerable Americans forced into the sex trade. The real issue lies in demand for sex with young people, with millions of Americans seeking out and purchasing sex with our most vulnerable citizens.
Members of the Washington, D.C., City Council, have decided that instead of empowering law enforcement to fight sex trafficking, they will encourage sex-buying in the city and create more victims of sex trafficking. The purposely misleading titled “Community Safety and Health Amendment Act of 2019” now being considered by D.C. City Council, seeks to decriminalize the sex trade. This dangerous proposal codifies “sex work” as a legitimate business within the District of Columbia and decriminalizes brothel-keeping and pimping.
By removing prohibitions against brothel-keeping and pimping, the Washington, D.C., Council looks to legitimize the sex trade and create a sex tourism industry in plain sight of the White House and the U.S. Capitol.
Similar decriminalization laws are in effect in Europe and have devastating results. Legalized prostitution in the Netherlands and Germany has resulted in the creation of a prostitution industry with hotel-sized brothels and brothel chains as common as restaurant chains in the United States. European nations that have legalized prostitution have created a cesspool of sex-trafficking operations hiding within plain sight in the streets of cities such as Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Athens, Greece.
A London School of Economics report published in 2012 found that countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking incidents than nations where prostitution is against the law. Once sex purchases are legal in D.C., the city can expect a similar influx of sex tourists who will seek out newly legalized brothels and pimps who will also knowingly sell young boys and girls for sex services under the guise of “well regulated” legal prostitution.
Under the Community Safety and Health Amendment Act, brothel owners and pimps will be classified as business managers instead of sex traffickers. As the legal prohibitions against purchasing sex are lifted, trafficking stings and prosecutions will be severely hampered under the legal assumption that sex trade survivors are “voluntary and freely-given” to contracts with pimps and brothels.
Impeding law enforcement efforts to crackdown on sex traffickers may not be the aim of legalization supporters, but it will be the result. This legislation would have catastrophic consequences for the children and adults victimized in the District. Victims such as Barbara Amaya, who ran away from her home in Northern Virginia at age 12 and was forced into the sex trade in D.C for over a decade will be put at greater risk if D.C. creates a legal prostitution market.
As more and more buyers enter the market, sex trafficking of vulnerable youth will increase exponentially because of the statutory protections afforded by legalized prostitution.
The sex trade in Washington, D.C., and across the country and the world operates on a very simple law of economics. There will not be enough supply of legal sex workers to satisfy the increased demand created by the Washington, D.C., City Council’s decision to legalize prostitution. Traffickers will gladly and quickly fill that demand from the supply of at-risk D.C. youth.
Kevin Malone, a former general manager of the Montreal Expos, serves as president of the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking.
