Why can’t we simply shut down sex trafficking fronts?
We often say that sex trafficking is happening all around us, but what does this mean, where is it taking place, and what does it take to shut these places down? We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Joe Madison, Executive Director of Demand Disruption, and get his insight on where exactly sex trafficking is happening in our communities and what it takes to stop it.
Demand Disruption *“fights the demand for sex trafficking by eliminating buyer motivation and reducing access to the exploited.” One way they do this is by working “with law enforcement agencies and people who have been arrested for purchasing sex to support and heal on both sides of the equation.”
Through this work, Madison shared his answer to the question of where sex trafficking is taking place: “trafficking isn’t happening somewhere, it’s happening here, and that’s wherever you are….If there is a demand, if someone is willing to buy, if someone is willing to convert on either a pornography addiction, a growing unwanted sexual behavior, an acting out behavior, then there will be some sort of supply in that market.”
Sex trafficking takes place wherever there is a demand for it, and that can be anywhere from rural Kansas to downtown Houston.
“Whether it’s a strip club, a cantina, illicit massage, street prostitution - those are all outlets and those outlets exist because there are people who will buy a product or will come and try to convert on an illicit sex buying attempt,” Madison said.
One of the most common types of sex trafficking fronts we see in our communities are illicit massage businesses. According to Madison, “over 85%-90% of these illicit massage businesses exist in a strip center. When you see them they're right next to the pizza place, they’re next to the insurance agent, they’re next to the taekwondo or the daycare.”
Operating behind the front of legitimate massage parlors, illicit massage businesses are located all over our cities, selling and exploiting thousands of women for profit every day.
They stay open late at night, they have only male clientele, their windows are covered, and they operate in plain sight. So, if we know these illicit massage businesses are operating and where they are located, why can’t we simply shut them down?
The process is more complicated than you’d think. Demand Disruption has often been on-site at these illicit massage businesses at the point of a buyer’s arrest, allowing them to see how intricate the process really is. If the police walk into an illicit massage business to try and shut it down and they see what’s happening inside, they arrest that man but they also arrest the woman. “The way the owner will handle that is one of two ways,” Madison said, “they’ll say ‘oh, we had no idea she was doing this,’ or they’ll say ‘we didn’t know she was doing this, and she’s a contractor, you’re fired,’ and she’ll get arrested and taken.”
That woman was in that business because of force, fraud or coercion. She’s most likely living in debt-bondage, said Madison, with the traffickers’ goal of never letting her pay off this “debt” they claim she owes them. Because this is organized crime, once she gets arrested someone else from that network will go bail her out, and she’ll be right back in that life.
“With that in mind, we’ve got to understand how we can be more strategic because we’re not catching the trafficker, we’re not catching the person who owns the place, who’s responsible for that person’s awful exploitation. We’re at best getting the person who manages the place…and at worst we’re arresting people who are being exploited,” Madison said.
Another obstacle Madison sees when it comes to shutting down these illicit massage businesses is the fact that they know how to get around the law. They know how to pay the fine, shut down that business, and in the same place open up under a new business with a new business license so they can continue doing what they’re doing.
Demand Disruption believes that notifying the owners of the business strip centers about what is going on is an important step in shutting these places down. “If we notify [them] in a responsible way and copy local authorities, if we notify that business strip center owner and say, ‘hey you probably didn’t know this but these people have some reviews that say they’re engaging in illegal activity and we’ve copied our local law enforcement and code enforcement and others,’ that will help them get them out,” Madison said.
However, shutting these trafficking fronts down is not enough; there has to be help for the women inside. For Demand Disruption, an important part of the process is partnering with organizations like Rescue America who will provide these women services and help them truly exit the life of commercial sexual exploitation.
Madison shared how his past experience of volunteering with Rescue America as an Exit Team member opened his eyes to that in a whole new way. “You see the human being in the back seat who doesn’t know if they could even trust you to get them from where they are to where they’re going. That rocked me to my core; it made me feel a higher sense of responsibility of what can we do, and I believe that collectively we can approach this from a strategic way that is repeatable and successful,” he said.
Part of Demand Disruption’s strategic approach includes going directly to the government. They take the matter to their city council, they go to their county commissioner’s court, and they testify and talk about ordinance reform and what that should look like so these places don’t open up in the first place.
Most recently, their team was able to go to Austin to speak with different committees about illicit massage businesses, sharing “how we understand the way they circumvent and get entrenched in a community and open up, what we can do about it and what punitive action looks like,” Madison said.
When people want to get involved and help in this part of the fight against trafficking, there are two realizations that Madison has found are very important:
First, when people question why the police aren’t doing more, “we have to realize the police are bound by what they can and can’t do based on law and based on legislation.”
Secondly, when people question why our elected officials aren’t doing more or wonder how they don’t know about this problem happening in our communities, we have to realize they can’t know everything. “You’re elected because you feel a duty to serve, but it’s our duty, it’s the duty of the citizens and the people who are subject matter experts to say, ‘hey if we’re going to fight this thing, here are some things that we’ve got to understand,” Madison said.
He points out that it’s our duty to help our governing officials understand why we can’t just arrest buyers with no rehabilitation and why we can’t arrest people who are being sold in the sex industry without offering them services to get help.
As for Madison’s advice on how you can get involved in this part of the fight, “find an organization that you trust,” he said, “a national org, a local org, and ask them, ‘what’s important to you? What legislative priorities do you have, and how can we support it?’”
We believe it’s going to take an army to solve the problem of trafficking, and while that army includes people working directly with the survivors, it’s also going to take the communities across this country pushing to get the legislation in place to solve this problem from that end.
The good news? There are countless legislative and other anti-trafficking efforts taking place across the country that you can be a part of simply by finding an organization you trust and asking how you can help.
Stay tuned for part two of our interview with Joe Madison where we discuss the importance of working to change the buyer’s heart and addressing the dangerous effects of pornography and the harm it so often leads to.
*DemandDisruption.org
