Give sex-buyers the attention they deserve

To solve the global problem of sex trafficking, it is time to hold not only traffickers to account, but also the people who create, enable and perpetuate this problem: sex-buyers.  

Although sex-traffickers enjoy the lion’s share of the global community’s scorn, it is sex-buyers— overwhelmingly men who purchase sexual access to the bodies of women and children —who deserve far more of the outrage and should receive a much larger share of frontline law enforcement’s responses. After all, traffickers may be the ones who pocket the money that is generated from sex trafficking operations, but it is sex-buyers who pay it.  

Sex-buyers constitute the critical missing link in most responses to sex trafficking. They are responsible for inflicting incalculable amounts of trauma on those caught up within systems of prostitution. Those systems prey upon the acute vulnerabilities prevalent among poor and marginalized communities.  

Not only is the link between systems of prostitution and sex trafficking on full display in the most recent Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, but sex-buyers boldly tie the knot between them. For instance, sex-trafficking victims were found in typical prostitution venues such as legal brothels (10 percent), unofficial brothels (9 percent), night/strip clubs (10 percent), bars (14 percent), and sauna or massage parlors (9 percent). Sex trafficking victims were also exploited in outdoor public settings (11 percent) and in private and hidden venues (36.5 percent).

No matter the setting, there is a sex-buyer behind every transaction. Sex-buyers continue to evade the glaring headlines concerning “open air prostitution markets” in Brooklyn and the “scourge” of prostitution in Queens, New York. Yet, reported sex-buying incidents in more than 2,690 cities and counties in the U.S. confirm that prostitution is a demand-driven reality and document the plenteous harms perpetrated by sex-buyers across the country.

Evidence from research into sex-traffickers arrested for trafficking minors and the nature of sex-buying in the online sexual exploitation marketplace augment these insights into the problem of consumer-level demand. Whether intentionally engaging in sex with trafficked women and children or simply disregarding intuitive indications of harm in the online or offline sex trade, sex-buyers oxygenate the perpetration of sex trafficking crimes. It is futile to try to distinguish between men’s demand for victims of sex trafficking from men’s demand for commercial sex acts.

A growing number of reports worldwide further confirm this ominous reality. In New Zealand, sex trafficking is significantly under-reported and under-detected in the sex trade. This is not surprising, since New Zealand Police are constrained by legal limitations on their ability to proactively screen for sex trafficking victims “within the legal commercial sex industry.” While New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act continues to serve as a paragon for those pushing for the full decriminalization of prostitution — a policy that removes laws criminalizing sex-buying — the country’s lowered ranking to Tier 2 in the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report for the third consecutive year, raises questions concerning the fleeting promises of permissive prostitution laws. 

In Germany, a country widely called “the brothel of Europe,” a study revealed that 55 percent of sex-buyers admitted to having observed or paid a pimp/sex trafficker and “very rarely” reported trafficking to the authorities. Even though acknowledging they have witnessed sex trafficking, only 1 percent of 96 German sex-buyers reported the suspicion of sex trafficking to authorities.

The piece entitled “Raped, Forgotten, Lost,” published in Der Spiegel, provides an in-depth look into the “fatal mistake” that is Germany’s 20-year-old legal sex trade. Its prostitution law, which was ostensibly intended to protect women, has emboldened countless sex-buyers who mete out abuse and violence without compunction.

The country’s permissive laws benefit the perpetrators and abandon the victims. A South African study also reveals the grave outcome when sex-buyers are permitted to flourish in a de facto decriminalized legal environment and when brothels, cocoons for sex trafficking operations, are deeply embedded in communities.

In one case, a U.S.-based live “camming” website was implicated in a South African prosecution and conviction of two child sex-traffickers. The account used to exploit the child victim had more than 6,000 logins by sex-buyers from across the globe to view the victim over the two-year period during which she was exploited. 

Efforts to reduce sex trafficking and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation must move beyond the apprehension of sex traffickers. Law enforcement’s use of well-established demand-reduction tactics and the imposition of fines on sex-buyers, can not only facilitate accountability for perpetrators and an equitable outcome for those trapped in systems of prostitution, but also generate revenue streams that fund support services for people who seek to exit.  

Without the demand for prostitution, there would be no market forces producing and sustaining the roles of sex traffickers. Simply put: no buyers, no business. The U.S. and its global allies in the fight against sex trafficking would do well to confront the role of sex-buyers in fueling sex-trafficking crimes and creating an endless cycle of harm and misery. Radically shrinking, with a view to eliminating sex-trafficking crimes, is not a pipe dream. It can be done.

Dr. Marcel van der Watt is the director of the Research Institute at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. He has garnered international recognition for his research and work as a former sex trafficking police investigator.