Sexual exploitation of minors racks up billions

By Barbara Grady
Oakland Tribune
Article Launched: 04/24/2008 08:05:54 PM PDT
http://origin.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_9046514?nclick_check=1

The economic rule of supply and demand drives the market for everything from toothpaste to sports cars.

It also drives the sexual exploitation of minors.

If adults weren't interested in paying $120 or $200 to have sex with a child or teenager, girls and boys would not be peddled on the street by pimps.

"It's basic supply and demand,'' said Norma Hotaling, founder and executive director of San Francisco-based SAGE, or Standing Against Global Exploitation. Sexual exploitation is a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide, she said, "paid one dollar at a time by men who have decided to use their money, use their family's income, to buy a human being.

"They use these girls like sewers.''

Girls as young as 11 or 12 are increasingly being sold for sex on Oakland streets in what one law enforcement officer called "an epidemic.''

Sexual assault of a minor is a felony, punishable by long prison sentences. Hotaling said most of the johns she sees seem surprised to learn that buying sex from a minor is sexual assault.

Under contract with the San Francisco Police Department, SAGE runs a class for men arrested on a first offense of soliciting prostitution, from minors or adults. Police call it the "john school.''

"I teach a class of about 60 men every other month,'' Hotaling said. "I look out at that class and see men of all types.''

They are rich and not so rich, in distinguished professions and in manual labor,
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young and old, from the suburbs and the city.

That experience is echoed by young girls who formerly worked the streets. Three sexually exploited girls now in Alameda County juvenile hall said their customers ran the gamut.

"Rich dudes,'' said one 16-year-old. Another said she had a customer who was a judge. Both mentioned businessmen and lawyers as customers, and said some johns drive from the suburbs into Oakland.

The sheer number of men who come through Hotaling's class is startling. Add it up, and she sees 360 men a year who have been arrested in San Francisco on first-time prostitution charges. That number does not include men who police determine are ineligible for the one-day class that is offered as a substitute for prosecution.

Hotaling teaches her students about the potential legal consequences of paying for sex with a minor.

"When I tell them what they are doing could be charged as a felony, that sexual assault of a minor is a felony, that really has an impact,'' Hotaling said. "Their faces turn ashen.''

She also teaches the men about the damage they inflict on the young girls, how it ruins their lives and traumatizes them for decades to come. And she teaches them about sexually transmitted diseases.

John schools are now offered in 40 cities across the country. Oakland does not have a john school program in place.

The National Institute of Justice studied the effectiveness of the classes for a report released earlier this month. By studying the behavior and arrest record of 198 men who had taken the classes, the report found that participation reduced the number of men who reoffended by 35 percent.

"The study adds to the rapidly mounting evidence that prostitution and sex trafficking can be successfully fought by focusing on the demand for commercial sex,'' the study concluded.

Michael Shivery, senior Associate of the Center on Crime, Drugs and Justice at Cambridge, Mass.-based Abt Associates, which conducted the study for the Institute, said the johns cite several reasons for turning to prostitution. The most common is that they have not found successful intimate relationships through "normal channels,'' he said.

Some, however, are merely risk-takers, drawn by the illegal status of prostitution, he said.

Contact Barbara Grady at 510-208-6427 or bgrady@bayareanewsgroup.com.

John school takes a bite out of prostitution

John school takes a bite out of prostitution
by Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, April 14, 2008

"John School" Students. Chronicle Graphic Norma Hotaling, an ex-prostitute, got the idea for the jo...

Every two months, Valentina visits about 30 men enrolled in San Francisco's "john school" to tell them a sex story they don't want to hear.

The men are part of the city's First Offender Prostitution Program because they've been arrested for soliciting a prostitute, usually in the Mission or Tenderloin. If they agree to pay a $1,000 fee and spend a Saturday afternoon listening to sex-trafficking experts, neighborhood activists and doctors who subject them to photographs of venereal diseases, the district attorney's office will drop the misdemeanor charge.

Valentina, a striking Russian woman with jet-black hair (to protect her privacy, her full name is not given in this article), explains how she was molested from age 8 to 13 by a cousin; how she was a full-blown alcoholic and heroin addict at 21; how she became an "escort" a year later, and by age 25 was working Mission Street.

She hated every interaction with every client.

"Sometimes I see it register on their faces," said Valentina, 37, a mother and San Francisco resident who's been off the streets and sober for 10 years. "The fantasy isn't what they thought. ... I don't get much feedback from them. I do my presentation and go about my day."

Yet Valentina's presentation as well as the other components of john school are effective, according to a study to be released in the coming weeks by the U.S. Department of Justice. In the largest study of its kind, researchers concluded that men who attended San Francisco's john school were 30 percent less likely to be rearrested for soliciting a prostitute than men who did not attend such a program.

Researchers compared data collected from 5,000 johns who completed the daylong class in San Francisco over the past 12 years with roughly 75,000 men arrested for soliciting prostitutes in California who did not attend john schools. The costs of the school are covered by the men's fees, according to the district attorney's office.

"The punch line is, these programs work," said Michael Shively, a criminologist at Abt Associates, a Massachusetts-based research firm and the primary author of the two-year study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice. "Some men are probably responding to the appeal of their own self interests, which in the class emphasizes the personal risk they face if they continue to involve themselves in prostitution. And some men may be responding to the information conveyed about the harm they are causing the women they hire, and to the communities where the prostitution takes place."

The study arrives at the same time Supervisor Jake McGoldrick asked for an audit of the city's program, wondering if the arrests are worthwhile and the money for the program is being well spent. He did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.

When the First Offender Prostitution Program began in 1996, it was considered a noble experiment in a progressive city. Since then, 39 cities have modeled programs after San Francisco's.

The class was co-founded by Norma Hotaling, a former street prostitute arrested 30 times before she gained sobriety and started Standing Against Global Exploitation, a San Francisco group committed to ending commercial sexual traffic.

Hotaling said a San Francisco police officer who repeatedly arrested her was the first to suggest that her johns needed an education instead of jail time. Hotaling recalled the advice and later developed the curriculum, which includes a six-hour course featuring multiple speakers who explain the negative impact prostitution has on women, their clients and the communities where it thrives.

More recently, Hotaling said, presentations have focused on global sex trafficking, to help men consider their role in the illegal phenomenon.

"The men who seek out prostitutes don't like to think they're part of exploiting someone," Hotaling said. "They like to believe it's a victimless crime."

Since the program's inception, critics have wondered if the classes had any real impact on the men and the streets, Hotaling said. Previous studies have shown that recidivism rates among men arrested for soliciting prostitutes is particularly low compared to other crimes, such as robbery.

Shively, the study's author, said in San Francisco the recidivism rate for such men was about 8 percent before the program began. Now, it rests at about 5 percent.

"It's a significant drop if you consider it didn't have much further to go," Shively said. "The results are surprising."

Anecdotally, the researchers also found that police departments reported street prostitution declined in the cities where the classes were available. Shively said the study could not factor what role online prostitution may have played in reducing street prostitution in the past 12 years.

"But for some people, it's good enough that street prostitution is out of their faces and behind closed doors," Shively said, "where the entire community doesn't have to deal with it."

Robert Garcia, a member of Save Our Streets Tenants and Merchants Association in Lower Nob Hill, credits the john school program as helping to reduce street prostitution in his neighborhood near Post and Hyde streets. As part of the agreement between Hotaling's organization, which facilitates the school, and the district attorney's office, which agrees to drop the charges, the Police Department is required to run eight sting operations per month designed to arrest the johns. Last year, the department arrested 335 men, up from 130 in 2006.

Garcia has monitored the Post and Hyde intersection near his home for about 20 years, and said he was skeptical the program would have any impact.

"This place used to be infested with prostitutes," Garcia said. "But we don't see as many hanging out on the corners, and we don't have as many cars circling the blocks, whistling and all that."

Hotaling said the study's results validate the once-experimental school, and hopes the city will expand the program.

"It doesn't matter if they get picked up on the streets or through a new Web site that's popped up," Hotaling said. "There's always a need for the education."

Learn more

For more information about Standing Against Global Exploitation, the nonprofit that facilitates the First Offender Prostitution Program with the S.F. Police Department and district attorney's office, go to: www.sagesf.org.

E-mail Justin Berton at jberton@sfchronicle.com.

Craigslist Slammed For Hosting Prostitution Ads

The company says it has implemented a new screening process for erotic service ads that has substantially cut down on the number of such ads.

By Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek
March 28, 2008
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000476

Craigslist, we have a problem.

No, not the baby being sold for drug money earlier this week -- that was a hoax and the person who placed the ad was arrested.

Not the malicious ad placed last Saturday that left a Jacksonville, Ore., man with a plundered home, recalling a similar incident last May.

The problem is prostitution. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Thursday sent a letter to Barry Reingold, Craigslist's lawyer, demanding that the community-driven site clean up its act.

"I am astonished and appalled by Craigslist's refusal to recognize the reality of prostitution on its Web site -- despite advertisements containing graphic photographs and hourly rates, and widespread public reports of prostitutes using the site," Blumenthal wrote.

Though Blumenthal acted on behalf of citizens of Connecticut, following the arrest earlier this month of a Connecticut woman who allegedly used Craigslist to advertise prostitution services, his concerns reflect problems with Craigslist across the nation.

On Tuesday evening, police in Aurora, Ill., west of Chicago, arrested five people for alleged drug possession and prostitution. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the prostitutes advertised on Craigslist.

Blumenthal contends that Craigslist is ignoring the "serious and growing problem" by refusing to hire anyone to review postings that contain graphic nudity or solicitations with hourly rates. "The company effectively denies the undeniable, incomprehensibly and unacceptably," Blumenthal said. "Although Craigslist touts measures to ban illegal activities and limit or remove inappropriate postings in its erotic services section, a cursory review of this section shows that its supposed solutions are woefully and obviously inadequate."

Erotic postings aren't confined to the erotic services section either. A brief scan through the "therapeutic services" section on sfbay.craigslist.org suggests that that particular category should be relabeled "therapeutic erotic services."

Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, said in an e-mailed statement that illegal use of Craigslist won't be tolerated. "This month we implemented new screening procedures for erotic service ads, which [has] dramatically improved compliance with our terms of use and reduced the volume of such ads by up to 80%," he said. "Mr. Blumenthal's office is aware of these improvements, and we are disappointed that he has not recognized the tremendous progress we are making."

Buckmaster said that using Craigslist illegally isn't a good idea since posting information leaves an electronic trail and Craigslist staff regularly works with police officers.

And Buckmaster also challenged the claim that Craigslist profits from prostitution. "In the New Haven Register, Attorney General Blumenthal is quoted as saying that our company profits from prostitution," he said. "That is both utterly false and significantly defamatory, as 100% of our revenue comes from paid job listings and broker apartment rental listings. We certainly hope that the attorney general was misquoted or misinformed, and we look forward to an immediate retraction of this false and damaging allegation."

Buckmaster said that telephone company yellow pages, weekly newspapers, and other offline and online media in Connecticut regularly include paid erotic ads. "In this country, that's legal," he said. "Unlike these media, of course, Craigslist does not derive any revenue from such ads."

Underage prostitutes marketed on Internet

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