and I’m a senior at TCU I’ve been
studying human trafficking for the past
two years here as a research assistant
for dr. Vanessa Boucher and through
studying in her class this semester as
well I was going to India last summer to
study human trafficking there
I came back to TCU and founded the
international justice mission at TCU
which is an organization that raises
awareness about human trafficking in an
acts action against it I work and so
today I’m going to be talking about sex
trafficking slavery in our back yards
I’m kind of shattering its global image
and so before I start I want to define
sex trafficking for you so I’ve
summarized it as the ownership of a
person for compelled commercial sex acts
through the use of force fraud at
coercion okay now I want to tell you a
story and as I’m telling you this story
I want you to kind of imagine where you
think it’s happening in the world what
the victims are like and that so think
about that in your head so a trafficker
and his accomplices held four victims
for a period of three years in
prostitution as three minor victims and
one adult victim and they were punished
and beaten when they did not comply with
what he wanted one victim was punched so
hard in the head that her eardrum burst
and bled and one victim was gang-raped
by her trafficker and his accomplices
when she didn’t comply and all the money
that these victims made over the three
years went directly to the trafficker
they saw none of it and they were
constantly watched over for three years
so when you heard this story where did
you imagine it was taking place in the
world did you think of maybe a South
American country or the red-light
district and Amsterdam or maybe a
brothel in India awareness about human
trafficking has grown immensely in the
United States but when we think about
trafficking we usually think that it’s
happening in other countries we push the
blame outside of our own country so this
story actually took place in the u.s. so
now that you know that where do you
think is happening
I find that when I remind my friends
students family that sex trafficking
does happen in the United States they
say you know what you are right it’s
happening in Houston or Atlanta which it
does happen there but it
happens in other cities too this story
actually took place in Fort Worth Texas
14 minutes away from where we are right
now
TCU so a pop quiz for you think about
the hypothetical answer in your head
what does GB road which is the red-light
district in New Delhi India
have in common with Dallas massage
parlors both our venues for sex
trafficking
I watched GV road two summers ago which
is a road were a hundred brothels fit
and thousands of trafficked women are
prostituted day and night
servicing 11 to 25 clients a day from
June 30th to September 15th of this year
32 massage parlors in Dallas were
charged with sex trafficking so while
the venues for sex may look different
around the world there are a lot of
similarities between sex trafficking
here and in other countries and so I
compare the United States with India
using the Colorado Law Review and found
some similarities between what it looks
like here and there and so what John’s
want are the same and the John is a
purchaser of commercial sex and what
John’s want are victims who look distant
who look like they deserve the abuse
deserve to be bought and sold
additionally a culture of complacency is
the same so in India prostitution and
sex trafficking is illegal yet there are
places like GB Road where brothels are
out in the open and nobody does anything
about it because that’s just what’s
always been happening or nothing can be
done police are paid off by pimps and it
just keeps happening additionally in the
United States prostitution and sex
trafficking is illegal yeah we glorify
places like Las Vegas where the number
one thing to do on your list is go to a
strip club or purchase a prostitute
additionally we hold a players ball
every year in the United States we’re
pimps around the world are invited to
come here and be awarded for their
pimping success this is not a joke you
can Google players ball there’s a
website celebrities go to this event and
so we say we’re against trafficking we
say it’s illegal and yet we glorify
pimping billions and profit is the same
while in India they have a much larger
population and obviously more sex
trafficking victims and more billions in
profit about 7 billion dollars is made
in sex trafficking in the United
States every year and then pimping
tactics are the same so I met a
trafficking victim when I was in India
two summers ago and she was trafficked
from her village when she was 15 she
lived in absolute poverty and a man came
to her village and said I can get you a
big job in the city which is New Delhi
you’ll make money and you can send it
back home to your family so they can
survive and so she went and has been
trafficked on GB Road for the past ten
years has not received a penny of that
in my human trafficking class that I’m
in this semester we Skyped with a sex
trafficking survivor who has pimped in
the same way she was on a full ride
athletic scholarship to college and she
got injured and that scholarship was
taken away so she couldn’t pay for
school and so her new boyfriend at the
time said I can get you some money to
pay for school if you just dance in
these clubs and do some favors for my
friends she agreed and she ended up
being trafficked in strip clubs up and
down the East Coast for three years and
so pimps relying on vulnerabilities of
their victims and exploiting them in
whatever they think they need is a
similar tactic around the world and so
how can this happen here how is sex
trafficking flourishing in the United
States who is purchasing sex and driving
this demand for sex trafficking in my
class we wanted to figure out the answer
to this question and so we set up a
reverse staying observation with a
nonprofit in Fort Worth and so the
nonprofit we were working with created a
fake advertisement for sex on
backpage.com backpage.com is one of the
main sites where sex is bought and sold
in the United States and so we created
this fake advertisement that had a fake
picture on it had a number that went to
a burner phone that one of the employees
from the nonprofit answered and
pretended to be the girl in the
advertisement and so when the men would
call she would answer and tell them to
go to a hotel kind of an outdoor hotel
about three minutes from TCU in my class
was stationed at a restaurant across the
street outside so we could see the men
that were coming to purchase sex and and
we could see them because they’d be on
the phone and we’d ask them what car
they are driving they tell
so we could literally see who was trying
to purchase sex and this is at 5:00 p.m.
on a Monday in Fort Worth Texas and so I
couldn’t take pictures of the men
because we were undercover that would
have blown it so but I do remember the
cars that they drove and it kind of
explains the kind of men that we saw on
that day and so this red car
very nice car was driven by a Caucasian
35 year old man dressed in business
clothes coming from work obviously very
well-off this black car was driven by
like a 45 year old Hispanic man and this
minivan was driven by a white
grandfather who on the phone when he was
talking to the girl he thought he was
about to purchase sex from he told her
about his wife his kids and his
grandkids and so we learned from this
reverse sting operation is that a
there’s a high demand for commercial sex
in Fort Worth Texas we were the ad was
up for about three hours and we had
hundreds of phone calls and texts we
couldn’t even keep up we could only
contact a dozen of them but what we also
learned is that there is no typical kind
of John they’re all races across the
spectrum of socioeconomic status
relationship status like I said one of
the guys told us about his wife on the
phone and in a survey survey I read from
formally prostituted women they said
that 50% of their clients are married
then
and then geography because so much sex
is bought and sold online there really
is no limitation to where sex
trafficking can happen but with that
being said even though online is the
main place to sell and purchase sex
street prostitution is still a reality
my class went on a ride-along with the
Fort Worth Fort Worth police officer and
he showed us where street prostitution
happens in Fort Worth and so these are
the three main areas where street
prostitution occurs my class got to go
to the dots that are in the center of
Fort Worth I’m every pin that’s dropped
it’s a place where I saw a prostituted
women or a pimp outside the window
so it’s a very real thing and it’s very
much happening in our country and in our
city so what do we do about it what do
we do with all this information I just
gave you we can’t do nothing about it
and so I think the
first thing we need to do is accept
blame we have to understand as Americans
that some of our citizens are trafficked
and some of our citizens traffic other
people and understanding that we have a
role to play in stopping the demand for
this additionally we need to seek to
understand that means looking at victims
of the sex industry and understanding
that choice is not really a thing in
entering this life 80% of sex
trafficking victims come from homes of
emotional sexual or physical abuse and
so coming from a childhood where your
worth is already destroyed you’re
incredibly vulnerable to trafficking and
understanding that instead of thinking
that someone would choose this life and
then refusing to contribute pornography
drives sex trafficking one of the
professors from Michigan law school
Catherine MacKinnon relates pornography
to salty water just like drinking salty
water is never gonna quench your thirst
and an in an addiction to pornography
you have to continue to watch and watch
and watch until nothing will really
satisfy you except for purchasing
commercial sex in the flesh and so
trying to separate pornography being
okay but sex trafficking not being okay
is a very fine line
strip clubs additionally like I said the
survivor that we scribed within class
was trafficked out of strip clubs for
three years and every girl that she
worked with in these clubs either had a
pimp was new and was about to have a
pimp or was old enough that she was kind
of let go by her pimp and she was a
renegade and so again separating strip
clubs and sex trafficking is a very
difficult thing to do and then culture
like I mentioned we with glamorized
places like Las Vegas we sing songs like
jay-z’s Big Pimpin which if you read the
lyrics is explicitly sex trafficking and
so we have to refuse to contribute to a
culture that glamorizes pimping and
prostitution and then lastly share what
you know if you see a building that’s on
fire and you’re like that is a huge
bummer I wish that would stop happening
and you put your head down and you walk
away that building is gonna continue to
burn but if you stay in your own heart I
don’t want that fire to burn anymore I’m
gonna refuse to contribute to sex
trafficking and you pick up your little
pale
water and you throw it on that fire
that’s a win for the anti-trafficking
movement and if you tell your friends
about this fire if you tell your friends
that are going to Las Vegas that people
are trafficked out of strip clubs they
may not go to that strip club they may
pick up their pail of water and throw it
on the fire too and if you get enough
people to do that eventually that fire
is gonna go out my favorite abolitionist
is William Wilberforce he started the
anti-slavery movement in England in the
1800s way before we did it in the United
States and this was when abolishing
slavery was not a popular idea he worked
his entire life to abolish slavery and
he did it and one of his quotes I think
perfectly sums up what we do now he says
in relation to slavery you may choose to
look the other way but you can never
again say that you did not know and I
think from here we have to understand
that we and we know that we can never
again say that sex trafficking doesn’t
happen in United States and we can never
again say that we don’t know what to do
about it we provide the demands for this
issue and we can stop that demand
William Wilberforce ended slavery in
England when everyone thought that was a
crazy idea and we can end slavery to sex
trafficking is happening in our country
in our city and we have the power to put
that fire out so let’s do it thanks [Applause]