Harlots Parlour

I was made aware of this research on trafficking. The full report is available “HERE”

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Human Trafficking Research Papers, Reports, Essays on Sex Trafficking, Sex Slavery, Prostitution, Sex Tourism
Posted on August 30, 2011 by bebopper76
WHERE ARE THE VICTIMS?

THE CREDIBILITY GAP IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING RESEARCH

Johnny E. McGaha, Ph.D.

Professor of Justice Studies & Director, Esperanza Anti-Trafficking Project

FloridaGulfCoastUniversity

Amanda Evans, Ed.D. MSW

Assistant Professor of Social Work & Program Evaluator

LeeCountyHuman Trafficking Task Force

FloridaGulfCoastUniversity

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Dr. Roza Pati for inviting us to be part of this very important symposium on human trafficking and for all the great workSt. ThomasUniversitydoes in this area. We were particularly interested in the varying viewpoints on the issues of human rights vs. criminal rights. This symposium highlights the dedication of advocacy groups across disciplines and demonstrates the potential for sustainable improvements in detection of modern day slavery victims, apprehension and prosecution of traffickers, and recovery services for victims.

I. Introduction
Nothing drives the passion and stirs the emotion, especially in theUnited States, more than the horrendous stories of modern-day human slavery. Whether sexual, domestic, or labor, the terror and horror that human trafficking victims have endured defies the scope of our sensitivities. Most who work in human service fields have heard many stories of these survivors. We have heard of the dedication of the practitioners and law enforcement officers who are involved in the apprehending, and prosecution of offenders, and advocate for victims in these very complex cases. To realize that that this may be happening in our own towns and neighborhoods, invisible to us as we go about our daily comfortable lives, is unthinkable. Therefore, it is not surprising that when presented with these stories, we responded as a nation via our legislators. Since Congress first acted on this issue in 1999, the federal government has supplied more than 150 million dollars to fight human trafficking in theUnited Statesalone. However, the most recent data suggests that there tens of thousands fewer victims than originally cited. While no one would argue that any victim in theUnited Statesis worth the support of our various systems, the danger of loss of credibility for those persons rises when there is a substantial gap between the cited numbers of cases and those that have be exposed. The purpose of this presentation is to examine those gaps, the language commonly used that may undermine credibility related to victims, and suggestions for action that would strengthen future arguments for federal funds to serve victims of human trafficking.

II. Background of current U.S. Policy to human trafficking

Since the mid 1990’s the Unites States has played a leading role in putting trafficking in person on the global community’s radar and in addressing trafficking in the United States. However, prior to 2000 there was no comprehensive Federal Law that protected victims of trafficking or to enable prosecution of their traffickers. [1] The passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA)[2] made human trafficking a Federal Crime and was enacted to assist countries in combating human trafficking overseas, to protect victims in the U.S. and help them rebuild their lives and to strengthen laws of arrest and prosecution of traffickers with new Federal penalties. The TVPA passed in 2000 and subsequent reauthorizations made it illegal to obtain or maintain persons for commercial sexual activity by using fraud, force, or coercion for those 18 years of age or older. Proof of force, fraud, or coercion is not required for those victims under the age of 18. The law also criminalizes the use of force or coercion to provide, or obtain, persons for any labor or services (farm work, factory work or household service)[3]. It also updated and supplemented existing in involuntary servitude statues used to prosecute trafficking crimes, enhanced the penalties for trafficking crimes and provided a range of new protections and assistance for victims of trafficking.

The authors recognize the need for comprehensive legislation related to trafficking in humans that provides standardized language for national policy. The problem lies within the context of how the need for the legislation was presented and the zealous response to the issue. Prior to the passage of the TVPA, at a 1999 Congressional hearing on human trafficking, legislators learned about the horrors of trafficking in human beings through the testimony of practitioners and rescued victims themselves. Victims testified about the terror and brutality they went though as modern day “slaves”. At that time, Congressmen requested data related to the scope of human trafficking in the U.S.The numbers presented to them were provided by the Department of State and the CIA. The data presented estimated that were as many as 50,000 modern day slaves trafficked in the United Statesevery year and 700,000 victims were trafficked globally each year. [4] It was on acceptance of these data that Congress passed the Trafficking in Victim’s Protection Act of 2000. [5]

However, in the 2003 revision of the assessed number of human trafficking victims in the U.S., the number of victims was revised by the Department of Justice to 18,000 to 20,000 people trafficked annually in the United States.[6] It is important to note, that the decline from 50,000 estimated victims as cited above to the revised number of 18,000 to 20,000 does not reflect a reported drop in the crime of human trafficking. Instead, it reflects a revision of the methodology used to estimate these numbers. The U.S. Department of Justice estimate is based upon a statistical method called “Markov Chain Monte Carlo,”[7] a statistical method often used in medical studies and complex surveys. This method replaces unknown or missing data by making use of plausible values for unknown information. It creates estimates of what is unknown. These estimates went through an additional analysis, a Bayesian analysis[8], which integrates previous estimates of human trafficking or, when those estimates are missing, expert surveys. The data provided then are, according to U.S. Department of Justice, estimates of estimates, rather than reporting of known cases. For additional information regarding the methodology used to generate the U.S. Government estimate, please contact the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at (202) 312-9672.

Given this knowledge of how the TVPA was initially passed and the subsequent disclosure of how the numbers of victims are estimated, it is important that all who work in this field move forward with caution or risk the loss of credibility on a very important issue. The large gap in estimates may call into question the reliability of any information provided and has potential consequences for future policy and funding issues related to this crime. Even though theUnited Statesis widely regarded as a destination country for trafficking in persons, the exact number of human trafficking victims within theUnitedStatehas remained largely undetermined.

III. The Hidden Crime: Reasons for Potential Underreporting

As we heard often during this symposium, by the very nature of the crime, human trafficking is largely hidden and accurate data on the extent and nature of human trafficking is hard to calculate. Trafficking victims are often in dangerous positions and may be unable, or unwilling, to jeopardize their lives to report to or seek help from relevant authorities. Victims may live daily with emotional and physical abuse, inhumane treatment, and threats to their families back home. They may fear authority figures and are often told that if discovered, they would be imprisoned, deported or tortured. Visas and other identify documents, if any exist, are often taken by their traffickers as an addition method of detaining the victims.

Fostering fear of authority in victims is a common contributor to poor detection of human trafficking victims. Douglas Blackmon [9] compares the current issue of human trafficking to the past history of post-abolition slave treatment in theU.S. in the late 1800’s. According to Blackmon, for decades after emancipation, thousands of African Americans were forced into labor after charges were made against them through the criminal justice system. To pay off these so-called debts they worked for landowners without, or at best minimal, compensation. If they resisted, new charges were filed against them, thus their debt increased. This method of control is similar to many founded cases of human trafficking today. This form of slavery very much resembles the stories of human trafficking today.

Because of these reasons, many professionals feel that human trafficking is an underreported crime, not unlike domestic violence or rape where victims have to put their trust in police, prosecutors and victims services professionals to face their accusers in court. The fact that human trafficking victims are often from other countries and cultures that do not value women as well as being unfamiliar with the language or culture here, magnifies their distrust of authority and unwillingness to come forward. [10] Another contributing factor is some victim’s fear of access to justice because of their own immigration status. Victims who entered this country without proper documentation have a limited understanding of their legal rights [11]. According toLogan, Walker, and Hunt, human trafficking perpetrators often use victims for criminal activity and victims fear that they will be perceived as criminals as well if they attempt to seek help.

Identifying human trafficking crimes continues to present special challenges to federal investigators and prosecutors. Since the primary eyewitness to, and evidence of, the crime is typically the trafficking victim the first step in pursuing these crimes is usually to discover the victims. Yet these victims are often hidden from view, employed in legal or illegal enterprises, do not view themselves as victims, or are considered to be criminals or accessories to crimes (e.., prostitutes or smuggled aliens). Average citizens, or even state and local law enforcement working in the community may be the first point of contact for a trafficking victim, rather than federal law enforcement. [12] Moreover, trafficking in persons cases are difficult to pursue because they are complex, multifaceted, and resource intensive and a single case may involve multiple victims requiring a variety of services including food, shelter, counseling protection etc.

Federal agencies must determine whether those identified as potential victim have in fact been trafficked and then secure their cooperation in order to pursue the investigation and prosecution of the traffickers. As previously mentioned victims may be reluctant to testify because of trauma, fear, loyalty to the trafficker, or distrust of law enforcement. Such crimes may involve labor exploitation, sex exploitation, alien smuggling, organized crime and financial crimes. Human Trafficking is a transnational crime requiring collection of evidence from multiple jurisdictions from overseas and may involve violations of labor, immigration, antislavery, and other criminal laws. Victims of trafficking are bought, sold, sometimes transported across national boundaries, and forced to work in legal or often illegal activities including the sex industry, sweatshops, domestic service and agriculture among others. Despite International acknowledgment of the trafficking problem as a human rights violation, estimates of the number of victims remain questionable because of the hidden nature of the crime, methodological weaknesses and numerical discrepancies. [13]

IV. Office to Monitoring Trafficking in Persons Office: A New Bureaucracy is Formed

In response to the complexities noted above, part of the outcome from the passage of the TVPA was to create an entirely new bureaucracy that attempted to consolidate several major federal departments and agencies under one roof to deal exclusively with trafficking of persons. Housed within the Department of State, the new agency is called the Office to Monitor Trafficking in Persons and consolidates the anti-trafficking activities of the Department of State, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Labor and others.

Another outcome of the TVPA was the creation of new, or expansion of existing, not-for-profit agencies that were eligible to apply for the millions of dollars in federal grants related to human trafficking. Since the enactment of the TVPA, 500 million dollars has been spent or allocated both domestically and globally.[14] Many of the domestic grants have few accountability standards, or performance measures included in the funding criteria. As a result, little data is provided to the funding sources related to outcome measures for these federal dollars. An additional concern noted is the lack of apparent coordination and collaboration among the major Government funding agencies, such as the Department of Justice or Health and Human Services in how data is collected and aggregated.

Across the U.S., over 40 local human trafficking task forces were established with federal funds however were not required to collect any data. [15] It was not until January 2008 that these task forces were required to enter any data with the Bureau of Justice Statistics. [16] In addition to the lack of accountability regarding data, the funds had very few restrictions on how they could be used. As a result, tax dollars are used to provide solutions before we know the extent of the problem. For example, it is acceptable to use this funding to purchase designated vehicles and fund special deputy positions designated to human trafficking even if there are no reported victims in the funded task force’s community. There was no requirement as to how often the task forces were to meet or even who was to be on the Task Force. The obvious purpose and goal was to establish a mechanism for the major stakeholders, federal and state law enforcement, prosecution, victim’s service providers and other NGO’s a formal way to communicate and collaborate on the human trafficking issues and cases in a particular region. However, without guidelines as to how communication and collaboration is to occur, the results can be disappointing. Failed communication among partners within the Task Force can result in duplication of efforts in some areas and gaps in others. This lack of accountability has created a huge credibility gap that is now coming to the attention of policy makers who are now reviewing their funding priorities in lean times.

According to an expose printed in the Washington Post [17] ­­ Health and Human Services (HHS) was paying people to find victims. As a result of criticism of how lack of accountability has wasted tax dollars, the Bush administration paid aNew York public relations firm 12 million dollars to launch a major campaign to train people to find victims. Last fall, HHS announced the funding of an additional $3.4 million in new street outreach awards to 22 agencies and groups nationwide. The Washington Post article cited the outcomes of one agency funded with this money inDallas, The agency received $125,000 and used the funds to increase awareness and educate area hospitals, police departments, domestic violence shelters and any other agency that might come in contact with victims of human trafficking over a year. To date, three victims have been reported.

A. The U.S. Trafficking in Person’s Report

One of the major responsibilities of the Office to Monitor Trafficking in Persons is to prepare the U.S. Government’s Official Report (TIP) on trafficking annually. The Trafficking in Persons report is considered to be the most comprehensive anti-trafficking review issued by any single government. [18] The reports over the years since the TVPA was enacted in 2000, varied considerably in official yearly estimates of human trafficking into theUnited States. The report quoted from 45,000 and 50,000 persons trafficked into theU.S. that was reflected in the 2002 report which included only estimates of females that were trafficked into theU.S. for sexual exploitation. The first year the estimates clearly did not include labor trafficking or adult males. In 2003, the Trafficking in Persons Report estimate mysteriously dropped to between 18,000 and 20,000 and dropped again in 2004 to between 14,500 and 17,500. Similar discrepancies exist in the U.S. TIP Global estimates the 2001 and 2002 TIP Reports estimated worldwide trafficking to be 700,000. This estimate increased to 800,000 to 900,000 in the 2003 report then decreased to a range of 600,000-800,000 in 2004.

B. Methodology Questions and Issues

A wide range of estimates continue to exist on the scope and magnitude of human trafficking, both internal and transnational. The International Labor Organization (ILO) – the UN agency charged with addressing labor standard, employment, and social protection issues – estimates that there are 12.3 million people in forced labor, bonded labor, forced child labor, and sexual servitude at any given time; other estimates range from 4 million to 27 million (DOS, 2006). The U.S. Department of State continues to produce estimates of the annual worldwide trafficked population at 800,000 to 900,000, with 14,500 to 17,500 trafficked in the United Statesalone. [19] These estimates, while widely quoted, are questioned by many, including the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which reviewed the estimation methods used by the U.S. government, ILO, the United Nations Office on Drugs and crime (UNODC) and IOM. GAO found that all of these estimates are questionable because of methodological weaknesses previously mentioned. Limitations also include the inability to replicate estimates based on potentially unreliable estimates not suitable for analysis over time. It goes on to report that country data are generally not reliable or even available much less comparable and that there is considerable discrepancy between the numbers of observed and estimated victim of human trafficking. [20]

As mentioned above, the Governments Official Report on Trafficking, the annual TIP report, which is published annually, shows considerable fluctuation in official yearly estimates of human trafficking into the United States.. The 2000 report, for example, stated that there were between 45,000 and 50,000 persons trafficked into the U.S.The 2002 report stated that 50,000 females were trafficked into the U.S.for sexual exploitation, the first year the estimates clearly did not include labor trafficking or adult males. In 2003, the Trafficking in Persons Report estimate mysteriously dropped to between 18,000 and 20,000. The number dropped again in 2004 to between 14,500 and 17,500. Estimates have essentially remained the same in recent reports.[21]

We believe that it is a mistake to continue to quote statistics that may not be reliable or valid such as those the U.S.government continues to cite based on estimates alone. Funding for concerns such as human trafficking can often be emotion-based. Just as the initial funding was largely due to the emotion stirred by the figures reported, current funding can be reduced drastically if the perception is that the issue has been inflated and the funds used ineffectively for assisting victims or catching perpetrators. In a depressed economy, accountability should increase. These data are too easy to challenge and the we suspect the challenges are coming. Considering the amount of funds allocated and the apparently disparity in how these funds are allocated almost no research has been done on the effectiveness of anti-trafficking efforts in the United Statesor abroad. Little is known about what really works and what does not. “Measuring Human Trafficking success remains one of the most problematic and least well-developed areas of human trafficking research” admitted the U.S. Department of State after their Seminar on Trafficking in Persons Research in 2005.[22]

Three years ago after the government downsized its estimates of trafficking cases, many state that even the new numbers do not reflect actual cases. The CIA analysis that developed and ran the computer simulation program that estimated that the new numbers of victims trafficked into the United Stateswas 14,500 to 17500 a year, which are the statistics now being quoted widely are being questioned by experts such as Dr. David Bank, a statistics professor at DukeUniversity. According to the Post report he maintains that it unlikely that this was a robust sound analysis. Others called the estimates totally unreliable. [23]

As the U.S. Government has spent over $500,000,000 worldwide and as financial resources in these tough economic times are being drastically cut and/or reallocated, how do we keep close the credibility gaps between anecdotal data, case studies, and hard concrete actual confirmed cases? In essence, how do we keep the momentum that the TVPA has generated alive?

IV. Comments from Local DOJ Funded Task Forces

The Justice Department’s human trafficking task force inWashington. D.C., according to the Washington Post report, mounted an aggressive effort to find victims. However the former chair of the D.C. task force states that in spite of hours and hours of overtime spend in multiple ways including interviewing foreign women in local brothels that it has been very difficult to find any underlying trafficking. In spite of the thousands of law enforcement officials and other first line responders nationwide who have been trained by the 42 task forces funded nation-wide in how to identify crimes of trafficking, the results are comparably small in comparison to the expected outcomes. Many of the local DOJ funded task forces are under pressure to justify their grants and find victims express their frustrations.

Orange County California

The concern about lack of communication and cooperation among some task force members in the same region are cited by the Orange County California Anti-trafficking Task Force. [24] The Orange County Anti-trafficking task force applied for, and received, an additional $1.2 million dollars. Officials from the Westminster Police Department maintained that trafficking in humans was a considerable problem in Orange County, particularly in the Asian community. Half of the funds were to be used by the Police Department and the other half by the local Salvation Army for victim’s services. These funds are in addition to the $450,000 funds previous received for the Department of Justice funded local Task Force. However, the same Westminster Police Department official, Lt. Dereck Marsh, stated at a statewide symposium on human trafficking that there were significant discrepancies between the estimate of human trafficking victims and the actual victims and that this is a significant issue he has to address. The gap between estimates and actual measures and the nebulous outcome expectations from the funding sources may contribute to the reluctance of local law enforcement to dedicate resources and personnel to human trafficking task forces and enforcement efforts. Lt. Marsh further states that law enforcement does not appear to be motivated to participate simply because a local task force has received funding. It is his suggestion that funding opportunities should be tied to local agency participation not just attending a task force meeting.[25]

San Diego California Task Force

According to an article published in the NorthCounty(San Diego) Times[26], funds from the first year of a $448,134 federal grant to establish a multi-agency human trafficking task force inSan DiegoCounty was used to train officers and improve community awareness. However, the article states that the efforts have not resulted in increased prosecutions. It further states that some area law enforcement officers remain skeptical about the extent of human trafficking in the area. The article cites concerns voiced by an immigration lawyer who has represented a number of trafficking victims. Like other stakeholders have questioned, this attorney is not sure whether the lack of victims identified is because there are not many victims or whether they are unwilling to come forward. At the time the San Diego California Task Force received a three-year grant in 2005 it was estimated that there were more than 50 victims inNorthCounty alone. So far there are a dozen open cases which have yet to be verified as human trafficking victims.

CARRY ON READING REPORT HERE”

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I was made aware of this article talking about the hysteria being whipped up in Ireland over trafficking to justify punitive legislation. It just makes you sick that the media colludes so easily in feeding a frenzy based on prejudice.
Read the full article “HERE” by Eilis O’Hanlon in the Independent IE.

The nature of prostitution remains the same. It’s vulnerable and damaged women, often with addiction or childhood abuse issues, degrading themselves for some temporary financial fix. Whether they’re from Roscommon or Romania is beside the point’

SOMETIMES it seems as if Ruhama, the non-governmental organisation which helps women involved in prostitution, won’t be happy until every kerb-crawler in Ireland is behind bars. “The sex trade is a multi-million euro industry fuelled by their demand,” as chief executive Sarah Benson put it last week on the publication of the agency’s annual report. “A positive step in overcoming this growth in the sex trade would be to stem demand by criminalising the buyers through legislative change.”

Fair enough. If that’s what they think will do the trick, go right ahead. Knock yourselves out, girls. Go get ‘em. Personally, I don’t think that criminalising users will have any more effect than criminalising women, which generally just wastes police and court time; or indeed any of the countless other ruses which have been tried down the centuries.

There’s little point going over the evidence again, because it’s now become a matter of faith for campaigners rather than reason; but even in Sweden, often lauded for its law criminalising clients, no man who wanted to hire a prostitute has ever been forced to give up the ghost and spend a quiet evening in reading the Bible instead.

Even if the Garda Commissioner did start a rolling policy of targeting the purchasers of sex rather than the suppliers, as he recently indicated he might, prostitution would merely adapt to new circumstances. It always has. The law of supply and demand is too clever and robust to wither in the face of the gimmicky efforts of well-meaning angels of virtue.

Nevertheless, if that’s what they genuinely believe, they have every right to campaign for a change in the law. What’s becoming increasingly frustrating is the obsession of Ruhama and other organisations with so-called “sex trafficking” as an argument for arresting men who visit prostitutes. Now not only are they filthy beasts who deserve everything they get for using money to lure women into their beds, they’re also being held responsible for the alleged growth in human trafficking.

Ruhama’s annual report says last year that it helped 80 women who had been trafficked to Ireland. But while organisations may deal with women from many countries who come here to take part in the booming sex trade, whether they’re what people generally think of when they picture the victims of sex trafficking is another matter altogether.

Foreign women working as prostitutes in Ireland have been “trafficked” in the loose sense that they may have paid criminals to bring them here, but they’re not so much the victims of the trade as active participants in it — and they certainly weren’t “forced into the sex trade”, as one newspaper report shrilly described it last week.

No one denies that it’s a horrible and demeaning business in which to be involved; that it can be terrifying and dangerous, and that the women who do it have messed-up lives and desperately need help. But it’s still essentially an illegal immigration issue rather than the media fantasy of modern day slavery — a fact borne out by the official evidence.

In the UK, a six-month crackdown involving every single police force in England which raided thousands of brothels failed to find a single victim of trafficking in its truest sense — an embarrassing result which the police and UK Home Office desperately tried to hush up.

What the operation did find was lots of young foreign women working as prostitutes, many of whom, ironically, were subsequently charged with various immigration and drugs offences.

Same here. Before graduating, every garda now has to complete training to help identity the victims of trafficking; thousands have received additional specialist instruction. As in the UK, there have been some high-profile operations, resulting in a small number of prosecutions for various activities defined legislatively as human trafficking. Nonetheless, as Jim Cusack reported in these pages last week, the overwhelming majority of those prosecuted for brothel keeping in Ireland are still young foreign women working independently or in small groups with one another.

Ireland’s Anti Human Trafficking Unit also published a report in 2009 which took a sample of 60 possible or potential victims of trafficking in the period covered and found that only one claimed — and the word ‘claimed’ is important because there is no further verification provided — to have been forced to come to Ireland against their will. In the 2010 report, that number rose to two. Most came at the behest of families and friends, to work illegally, or to study. That they ended up in the sex trade isn’t at issue, but to turn around and call that “sex trafficking” is melodramatic to say the least.

Failing to differentiate between forced prostitution and illegal immigration for the purposes of prostitution simply contributes to a moral panic about a practice which, despite many horror stories, remains in the realm of anecdote rather than evidence.

It’s only right that women picked up in garda operations are treated with compassion — though the fact that women who claim to have been trafficked get special treatment in the immigration system, and extra help subsequently in finding work and accommodation, does complicate matters somewhat, giving them an incentive to falsely claim to have been trafficked — but they’ve not been rescued from slavery. They’ve been caught after coming to this country deliberately to break the law. Sent home, many of them come back again at the first opportunity, for the same reason that Irish women become prostitutes too, because there’s money to be made.

The nature of prostitution remains the same. It’s vulnerable and damaged women, often with addiction or childhood abuse issues, degrading themselves for some temporary financial fix. Whether they’re from Roscommon or Romania is beside the point.

The underlying objection to prostitution among campaigners is probably best highlighted by the words of “Amy”, an anonymous escort whose testimony forms part of Ruhama’s annual report: “Men and women will never be equal as long as prostitution exists.”

If that’s so, then men and women will never be equal, because prostitution will always be around. Where you have something that someone else wants, and they’re willing to pay for it, there can’t not be a market. Thankfully, I refuse to allow my daughters’ path to equality to be forever barred because a small number of women sell their bodies. To make that the only marker of a society is not only ridiculous, it’s perverse.

Originally published in

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I was made aware of this article (via Sue Metzenrath a FB friend) reporting on a seemingly brutal and unprovoked attack upon peaceful protesters in Korea. Among the protesters were sex workers and people living with HIV. It seems to be part of the governments brutal crack down on sex workers human rights since sex work was criminalised.
Sex workers are growing louder in their protests and the government is responding with brutality so it seems.

Read post with links etc “HERE”

An anti-Free Trade Agreement protest that took place outside an International Congress on AIDS in the Asia Pacific (ICAAP) in Busan in South Korea on 27 August was violently attacked by police. One protestor was illegally detained, while others were dragged, beaten and verbally abused, according to participants at the event, writes Rachel Evans.

28 August 2011

ICAAP which runs from 26 – 30 August, 2011, expected 4,000 participants, and has not so far condemned the police attack.

The ‘Don’t trade our lives away, Networks against EU-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA), said that in the inaugural Conference session, Korean ‘People Living with HIV’ (PLHIV) activists interrupted the Health Minister’s speech with a message: “No discrimination, No FTA, and enough hypocrisy!”

FTAs are economic agreements that benefit pharma-companies and richer nations, and serve to block the production of generic drugs, which causes higher HIV drug prices.

On the second day of the conference, activists conducted a large, peaceful rally against FTAs. A statement on 27 August by 84 organizations and individual supporters of the ‘Joint Action of Korean participants at ICAAP10’ stated:

“South Korean police and private security took illegal photos of people, and when people protested this, 25 people from the Busan police station and special security team from the president office who supposed to provide security service for the Fiji president, attacked people joining the march and tried to arrest people.

“Jang Seo-yeon, a member of the joint civil action group for ICAAP and a public lawyer, was arrested while protesting the illegal photo taking and police violence.”

The statement continued:

“PLHIV, sex workers, drug users and transgenders lay down in front of the police car to stop the police car. During an hour-long confrontation, several people were physically abused by police men and security guards from the conference building. Several women and transgendered women were dragged by police and in by these violent police actions, their clothes were ripped.

“Several people living with HIV/AIDS were also beaten badly and verbally abused. Two people attending the conference had to be taken to the hospital.”

ICAAP is a biennial Conference for organisations involved in the prevention, care and scientific examination of HIV/AIDS. In 2011, its main sponsors were the South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific, UNAIDS, AusAid and the World Bank.

The conference offers full and partial scholarships to many people interested in attending the Conference, but overwhelmingly it is quite expensive (travel, accommodation and registration).

Mish Glitter Pony, the International Sex Worker representative of Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association, who attended the conference said: “We were peacefully protesting Free Trade Agreements that mean HIV treatments (ARTs) are more expensive and inaccessible to many people living with HIV.”

The statement from the Joint Action of Korean participants at ICAAP10 demanded to know why the ICAAP organizing committee allowed the police presence and did not take any action to protect people from police harassment.

The signatories to the statement also asked all UN agencies including UNAIDS and the World Health Organization to respond and prevent the police actions against basic rights of people living with HIV/AIDS.

They asked the head of Busan police office to formally apologize for the illegal police surveillance and violence, for their brutal police action on women, sex workers and transgender people and to ensure that every participant at ICAAP can join any kinds of civil actions and public discussion without any harassment and intimidation by police.

So far no response has been forthcoming.

Rachel Evans is a Sydney-based freelance writer and activist. She is one of the founders of Community Action Against Homophobia and a member of the Socialist Alliance.

Photo: Courtesy of Mish Glitter Pony.

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I really liked this piece in the LA weekly by Michael Albo. It is honest and does not have the usual judgemental snideness of so many such articles. What I find interesting is that the (in this case ) women have little qualms about selling sex; for them the issue is about how others will judge them. That is the problem with sex work. It is not the job but rather the stigma that is the issue. It was also interesting that most dream of going into business themselves and that entrepreneurial magazines were the literature of choice. This illustrates for me the divide that exists between the anti sex work fanatics and so much of the sex worker rights groups who box sex workers as victims where in reality most sex workers are using their initiative to manipulate the system and get ahead. Personally I have known so many who have used sex work as a tool to get what they want in life…..not reflected much in the rhetoric you read on either side of the activists divide is it?
Enjoy anyway. “HERE” is the link to the original article with links etc..

In the workplace lunchroom, dominated by a Formica table stocked with a condiment cradle that holds four kinds of hot sauce, Nikki furrows her brow as she fishes into her purse and retrieves her driver’s license. A resident of Riverside, Nikki is filling out some paperwork for her new job. “There’s a lot of stuff they want to know,” she says.

It’s been a busy day for the former administrative assistant. “I flew in and saw the doctor before I even got here,” she says. Dressed in “business casual,” Nikki is an attractive 24-year-old African-American woman with a retro hairstyle reminiscent of Mary Tyler Moore on the actress’s eponymous ’70s sitcom. Speaking with a slight but charming lisp, Nikki notes that she can’t work until she gets cleared by the authorities, and the doctor visit is the first part of that process. In the meantime, she says, “I’ll stay here and get some training because I don’t know anything. Tomorrow, I’ll get my license at the sheriff’s office, and then I can work.”

Nikki is one step away from becoming a prostitute in one of Nevada’s legal brothels.

She’s the sole supporter of two small children and her mother, and the work is important to Nikki. “In the Inland Empire,” she laments, “there are no jobs at all. I couldn’t even get a job at McDonald’s right now.”

And so she’s come to Moundhouse, Nevada, just east of Carson City, where four of the state’s 28 brothels are located just off U.S. Route 50, a desolate track that cuts through a high plain of sage and scrub and is known as “the loneliest road in America.” It’s here — at the Love Ranch, the Moonlight Bunny Ranch, the Sagebrush Ranch or the Kit Kat Guest Ranch — that women, acting as independent contractors, sell condom-protected sex and then split the profits with the management.

It’s perfectly legal, sanctioned by the local sheriff, and has long been a part of the local economy. But that economy works two ways: Women — many brand-new to the sex trade and acting as the sole support for their families — have chosen it because of economic hardship brought on by the worst recession since the Great Depression. While there’s always been a solid group of sex workers who support their families in this way, many on the management side of the industry say they’ve never seen anything like the large numbers the business is currently attracting.

“We’ve seen over the course of the last couple of years a massive flow of women from all around the country,” says Marc Medoff, general manager of the Love Ranch. “It’s their first time in the sexual-entertainment business and they’re showing up here — literally on our doorstep sometimes — for the purpose of seeking work to support their families: their husbands, their children, their parents. It’s a zillion-fold increase. When things started to get really bad, in the fall of ’07, we started seeing things increase and there’s been no let-up.”

Barbara Brents, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and co-author of The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex and Sin in the New American Heartland, says that while she has no hard figures regarding the current recession, turning to prostitution in times of economic hardship is a tried-and-true option for women. “When we did our interviews of brothel workers for our book, one of our major findings was that a large portion of the women who entered the brothels without having done prior sex work did so because of financial need,” she says. “They were working a low-paying, service-sector job that was just barely supporting them, and turned to the brothels to either get them through a crisis or because they were sick of working a straight job and not getting anywhere.”

Brents adds, “Service-industry jobs sometimes pay so little, it is not surprising that people are turning to other kinds of work. Prostitution, if you do it right, is one of those few jobs for women where you can earn a decent livelihood.” She emphasizes, however, that it’s not only low-income women entering the business. “It cuts across all classes.”

George Flint, a 77-year-old former minister and the owner of Reno’s Chapel of the Bells, has been the director of the Nevada Brothel Owners Association for the past 25 years. He says that while the women coming into the business may not be adopting it as a permanent occupation, they are coming in numbers he hasn’t seen before. But Flint cautions that such a career switch comes with some built-in economic risks. “When this recession started, one of the first things that happened was gas and diesel prices went up, and that had a big effect on the truckers who are the main customers at the rural houses.”

As in the state’s gaming and tourist industries, Flint says, the recession is taking a toll on the prostitution business as potential customers find themselves with less disposable income. “Right now,” he says, “the brothel industry is in the toilet. Several houses are on the verge of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Only a couple of them are turning a profit.”
One of the profitable brothels is the Love Ranch. A small compound of prefabricated portable buildings, it sits at the end of a cul-de-sac on Kit Kat Drive. In place of a street sign is a roughly designed billboard advertising what lies beyond the turn.

The parlor of the Love Ranch is dimly lit and dominated by wingback furniture and red velvet plush in the Old West style. A closer look reveals that the upholstery is threadbare and frayed. Mirrors on one wall create the illusion that the room is bigger than it is. The other walls are covered with fake gilt-and-velvet paper. The cornerstone of the room is a small gas fireplace that’s not being used in the heat of Nevada’s high summer. Opposite is a small, six-stool bar well stocked with high-end spirits. A cloud of blue cigarette smoke hangs in the close air.

A couple of young women wearing nothing but lingerie and cell phones lounge on the sofas, text-messaging. In a concession to modern tastes, a brass stripper’s pole connects the floor to the low ceiling and a petite blond with pigtails and the look of a debauched schoolgirl takes a few halfhearted spins on it. When two pudgy, middle-aged men in cargo shorts and polo shirts enter the gate, a buzzer rings and the other working girls on shift materialize like ghosts from the kitchen or the warren of 26 rooms in the back of the complex.

This is what’s called “the lineup,” and it’s endlessly repeated throughout the day. The two gentlemen callers, in a bid to be funny and show their bona fides as staunch Republicans in what’s still definitely Reagan Country, introduce themselves as “President Obama” and “Joe Biden.” The two punters laugh uproariously at their display of wit, but the girls mostly seem perplexed.

One by one, they introduce themselves to the men, stating a name (all of the names in this article are the girls’ working names) and offering a polite handshake before performing a prim turn and falling back into the line. It shows off the goods, but also says wordlessly that this part of the game is strictly business and there’s going to be absolutely no action until a deal is struck and cash changes hands.

“Joe Biden” decides to sit out this particular dance, not finding any girls to his liking. “President Obama” picks 22-year-old Eva, a cute, bottom-heavy brunette in a blue bikini and matching silk robe, and is led off on “a tour.”

It’s on this trek that the prospective client will be given a rundown of the house “menu” — sexual acts like “Asian cowgirl,” “whipped-cream party” and “bottoms up” — and will be shown special areas like the jacuzzi and the “VIP Room,” which looks like something out of a Matt Helm movie … if Dean Martin’s titular character had a taste for the sexually exotic. In one corner, some sort of basket contraption hangs from the ceiling. In another corner, for those into mild bondage, is a wooden pillory. A king-size bed takes up a lot of real estate here, but the showpiece is a huge bathtub for special “bubble bath parties.” Encounters in this room can set a customer back a couple of thousand dollars. Mostly, though, the customers just go to the girl’s rented room and conduct their encounters there at whatever rate they both agree to.

Nikki, who has been booked for a two-week stay, says that what concerns her most isn’t the work, but getting along with her co-workers. “My biggest fear is the other girls here. Living here for 15 days and not knowing anything is intimidating. That … and getting into the car at the airport made me nervous. ‘Am I going to get drugged and taken away?’ ”

The prospect of performing sexual acts for money doesn’t bother her nearly as much. “I do like sex, honestly. I don’t mind having sex with strangers, so why not get paid for it? I have to take care of my kids and I have to take care of Mom, so if it seems bad, then I’m sorry.”

According to Lynn Comella, assistant professor in the Women’s Studies department at UNLV. Nikki’s attitude is typical of many women coming into the brothel business. “A lot of them find the work enjoyable. They like sex and they have no moral qualms about approaching it as a business.”

Medoff, the general manager, comes out of his office and into the kitchen with some important news for Nikki. “Dennis is taking us out to dinner in a while, so we need to get ready.” Dennis would be Dennis Hof, owner of the Love Ranch and Moonlight Bunny Ranch and a figure of some local renown. As Nikki scurries off to change, Medoff posts a memo on an already crowded bulletin board.

The memos are an important way of disseminating information and reminding the girls of certain house rules, like work schedules, time off, proper attire and general decorum. The board also allows the girls to communicate with management.

PRESS “HERE” TO CONTINUE READING ARTICLE WITH LINKS……

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I liked this article by Ronald Weitzer discussing the human trafficking myths that fuel the rescue industry. The article with links etc is
“HERE”in the Huffington post.

As recently as fifteen years ago, the term “human trafficking” was virtually absent from public discourse. Today, it is all the rage, and a huge amount of taxpayer money has been spent fighting it. There is no doubt that, when force or deception is involved in the recruitment or transportation of laborers (the definition of trafficking in U.S. law), trafficking is an evil that deserves robust countermeasures. But there are also many popular myths about trafficking — frequently voiced in the media and by government officials — that have distorted proper understanding of the problem and, more importantly, hampered efforts to combat it. What are the chief myths?

Trafficking is a mammoth problem

Interest groups, the media, and the U.S. government have given very high estimates of the number of persons trafficked each year into the sex industry or other labor arenas. In some instances, the numbers appear to be pulled out of thin air, as in a Washington Post editorial (June 28, 2011) declaring that “trafficking is understood today as a global phenomenon exceeding 20 million cases each year.” Or consider a November 2005 episode of Oprah, in which it was claimed that “millions” of children are trafficked into prostitution each year. The U.S. Government’s figures are lower — 800,000 worldwide victims (down from an estimated 4 million in 2000) and 14,500-17,500 domestic victims (down from a high of 50,000 in 2000) — though the sources of these figures have never been disclosed.

There is a stark difference between the official estimates and the tiny number of victims identified and rescued each year or the number of traffickers brought to justice, both domestically and internationally. Worldwide, the State Department reported in 2010 that only 0.4% of the estimated number of victims have been officially located and assisted. No one would claim that the official estimates could possibly match the number of identified victims — given the obstacles to locating victims in illicit, underground markets — but the huge disparity between the two should at least raise doubts about the alleged scale of victimization.

Trafficking is growing worldwide

Not only is human trafficking said to be a huge social problem, but also one that it is escalating worldwide. Trafficking does appear to have increased in some parts of the world, especially with the loosening of controls in the former Soviet empire. But the generic assertion that trafficking is growing globally cannot be substantiated. A related claim, by activists and some government officials, is that human trafficking has progressed from the third largest criminal enterprise in the world, behind the drug and arms trades, to number two status, behind drugs. I have yet to see any supporting evidence for this claim. Estimates of the profits — said to be between $5 and $12 billion annually — are similarly dubious. We simply have no reliable data on which to extrapolate profit margins in black markets.

Conflating sex trafficking with sex work

While U.S. law distinguishes between human trafficking (use of force or deception) and smuggling (voluntary, assisted migration), the U.S. government has gradually moved in the direction of linking all commercial sex to trafficking. In 2004, the State Department created a “factsheet” called The Link Between Prostitution and Trafficking that defined prostitution as “inherently harmful” and proclaimed that it is intrinsically “brutal and damaging to people.” Some prominent activists and officials also claim that many women working in pornography and at strip clubs have been trafficked. The evidence for this is wafer thin.

Activists have fought for years to intensify sanctions against “johns,” and the U.S. Government has now embraced this campaign. The focus on clients is evident in recent anti-trafficking laws that contain provisions targeting “the demand.” The 2005 and 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Acts, for instance, allocated substantial funds for increased local law enforcement against prostitutes’ clients. The crackdown applies to all clients, not just those who may have bought sex from a trafficked person. Some officials have expressed concern about such “federalizing” of prostitution enforcement, the traditional domain of local authorities.

Outcomes

We are left with a set of farfetched claims about trafficking, claims that hardly lend themselves to evidence-based policy-making. The available evidence does not allow us to draw any conclusions about the magnitude of the problem. There are no reliable statistics on trafficking in any one nation, let alone worldwide. Even ballpark estimates are guesswork, given the clandestine nature of the sex trade. But precisely because the asserted numbers, trends, and proceeds cannot be verified, they can easily gain a life of their own and a veneer of credibility when repeatedly cited by the media and in government reports. And such grandiose claims certainly have shock value. They alarm the public, generate sensationalized media coverage, and are used to justify huge government expenditures to fight a problem that may have been blown way out of proportion.

And a ton of money indeed has been thrown at the problem — funding dubious “research” as well as enforcement and interventions in the form of raids. In the first four years of the Bush administration alone, $300 million was awarded to international NGOs involved in anti-trafficking work, in addition to what was spent on domestic efforts. In 2010, the U.S. Government spent $54 million funding international NGOs that run anti-trafficking programs, many of which are faith-based. Some very questionable field interventions have been funded. A report in The Nation noted that some leading NGO’s, such as the International Justice Mission, have staged interventions in Southeast Asia that make the situation worse for sex workers — subjecting them to police abuse, deportation, or “long, involuntary stays in shelters.”

Beginning with the Bush administration, anti-trafficking policy has largely been driven by interest groups on the far right and left, lobbyists whose mission is the elimination of all types of commercial sex activity. (Much less focus has been placed on other labor arenas.) The State Department’s own Inspector General expressed concern about “the credentials of the organizations and findings of the research that the [State Department's] Trafficking Office funded,” and called for much greater oversight and accountability.

A superior approach would discontinue the fruitless practice of “estimating” the number of victims and making unverifiable claims about trends and profits, and instead target enforcement efforts to combat unfree labor in all arenas — prostitution, agriculture, industry, domestic service — rather than fighting sexual commerce in general.

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Tracy Quan interviews Isabelle Huppert about her role as a call girl in a new film called “Special treatment” for the Daily Beast. Read the full article with links “HERE”

In Special Treatment, a darkly entertaining film starring Isabelle Huppert, the famously enigmatic cinema icon plays a neurotic Paris call girl, Alice, who offers artisanal role-play sessions to a variety of men, including Xavier, the bumbling Lacanian psychoanalyst destined to change her life.

Special Treatment, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, shows how far we’ve come from the era when shrinks were godlike saviors preaching conformity to the deviants; and prostitutes, like gay people, were to be cured. (For a taste of pre-enlightenment, check out the recently remastered Girl of the Night, based on a pop psychoanalyst’s bestselling study of 1950s call girls.)

Shrinks today are more like angels than gods, and Special Treatment is filled with sly messages—and messengers. Director Jeanne Labrune, working with Huppert for the first time, treats Alice the prostitute and Xavier the shrink (played by Bouli Lanners) as anxiety-ridden entrepreneurs with similar hobbies and problems, collecting household curios, facing similar occupational hazards. Working at home is deceptively easy: Xavier’s marriage has been poisoned by a never-ending cycle of affluent obsessives and neurotics, while Alice (who refuses to work in a brothel with her buddy Juliette) is physically endangered.

In one riveting scene, she pretends to be an abused housewife in curlers rather than the independent working woman she truly is. Special Treatment is savvier than many films in presenting this toxic client as the turning point for Alice. The imagined impotence of the 1950s housewife turns out to be more dangerous than the ball gag or leather restraints used by another fetish client.

When Alice asks Xavier to help her find a therapist, he sends her to Pierre, a colleague he barely knows. Pierre (played by Richard Debuisne who co-authored the screenplay with Labrune) turns her down because, unlike Xavier, he prefers working with the most hardcore mental patients.

Rezo Films

I spoke to Isabelle Huppert a few days after she received the Locarno Film Festival’s Excellence Award. What did she learn from Labrune about the parallels between psychotherapy and prostitution?

As an actor, Huppert was attracted to Alice’s scattered personalities. “Sometimes you’re a Japanese manga schoolgirl or a 1950s housewife. You don’t know who you are,” Huppert told me, though she doesn’t claim to have suffered personally in that respect. “I was lucky enough to know very young what I wanted to do and I was lucky enough to do it with success from the start.”

Perhaps you have to be that solid internally to experiment successfully with what Huppert calls “that border between insanity and suffering, something I’ve experienced in so many of my movies.”

Special Treatment questions “all the borders between established people and nonestablished people,” Huppert explains. “The prostitute is supposed to be the lost person and Xavier’s supposed to be the one who is OK. The psychoanalyst is supposed to personify a good mental state. And yet we see two people who equally have problems. No matter where you are on the social scale, it’s not always the one you believe to be most in control who is really in control. We are all equally healthy or sick. There is no ‘normality on one side and abnormality on the other,’” she explains.

Huppert won Best Actress at Cannes in 1978 for playing an actual1930s schoolgirl prostitute in Claude Chabrol’s Violette Nozière, and she is equally convincing as a grown-up prostitute transformed by schoolgirl drag. She perfectly captures the jaunty, businesslike hooker enjoying the absurd side of her job.

“Pretending to be a little girl, especially next to this big fat man, is cruel and embarrassing. Just putting these two images next to one another, you come up with something quite strong and disturbing,” she says.

Although it’s never spelled out, we can’t help wondering if Alice has potential as a psychotherapist when Pierre observes her in conversation with an asylum patient.

“Alice needs help, but Pierre helps her by refusing to help her,” Huppert says. “He treats her like a human being, like a responsible person.”

Searching for a new job is, for many prostitutes, as scary and uncertain as any other person’s career transition. Unless you believe selling sex is an exotic and sick behavior, a myth some shrinks are happy to promote for their own ends. Pierre, detecting the bottom line in this hypocrisy, abstains from exploiting Alice’s suppressed shame.

“I was lucky enough to know very young what I wanted to do and I was lucky enough to do it with success from the start,” Huppert says.

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Dear friends,

We have asked you to write before in support of Sheila Farmer demanding that her prosecution for brothel-keeping be dropped. We ask now if you can please write again.

Ms Farmer’s case has been widely publicised: despite her ill health she spoke to 5000 people at the SlutWalk march in Trafalgar Sq on 11 June, a protest was held outside the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on 1st July, over a thousand people have written to her MP, and Women Against Rape and ourselves met with DPP Keir Starmer urging him to intervene, which he has so far refused to do. However, there is a strong indication that all the letters and publicity are having an impact.

The CPS has put out misinformation saying that Ms Farmer ran a nuisance brothel and was prosecuted because neighbours complained. None of the neighbours’ complaints were substantiated. Some were clearly false including a claim that children were on the premises. The police visited the premises and knew that Ms Farmer was leaving and still raided the flat a week later and arrested Ms Farmer. Further proof that this prosecution is vindictive.

We include below a model letter. Please add personal details and your own views as it will have more impact.

The case comes to court on 5 September. The letter should be sent to:

Keir Starmer, Director of Public Prosecutions
Crown Prosecution Service
Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge,
London SE1 9HS
privateoffice@cps.gsi.gov.uk

COPY TO:
Jo Johnson MP,
House of Commons,
London, SW1A 0AA
Tel: 020 7219 7125
jo.johnson.mp@parliament.uk

And to the English Collective of Prostitutes at the address above.

Best wishes,

Cari Mitchell

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I am personally fascinated by historical accounts of sex workers and the manner in which they worked and about the clients who purchased their services. An historical perspective on sexual attitudes toward sex workers, homosexuality and the social divisions that shaped those opinions is important I believe in understanding attitudes that exist today.
In this account from an interesting blog called “Delanceyplace” that I was made aware of by a fellow activist the sexual experiences of often very young men called to serve King and country during the first world war gives us an interesting insight into attitudes of the times. Attitudes that sadly still prevail. Enjoy.

In today’s encore excerpt – the carnage of World War I, and the prostitutes that were a moment of relief from that carnage. World War I, the Great War, had no precedent in its bloodshed – the mere boys who marched to war from Britain and elsewhere were witness to twenty-three million casualties:

“The [British] Government’s morale-boosting propaganda had contributed in large part to the ignorance at home of the true state of affairs [in the war] abroad. Positive stories written by journalists who feared if they told the truth were designed to put the best possible slant on the news. Soldiers who longed to describe the dreadful reality of warfare had their letters censored. …

“How were soldiers to find a way to describe to their isolated, sometimes disbelieving families what happened out there? … Loneliness was constant. Men missed women. …

“Just behind the battle lines only a mile or two from the front, girls waited to ‘comfort’ men, irrespective of whether they were German, British or French, waiting for them in abandoned chateaux, village houses, hay barns, caravans, farm buildings and the upper floors of inns. Different coloured lanterns indicated the rank of clientele allowed entry. Blue denoted a place reserved for officers, the light sometimes swinging from a pole that stood next to a sign declaring ‘No Admittance for Dogs and Soldiers’. Common soldiers were directed towards the red light establishments. Sometimes the queues outside these places could number a hundred men or more, with three worn-out French women waiting inside. The price per slot varied from two and a half to ten francs or two to eight shillings, although a bartering system involving bread and sausages was also prevalent. One innocent young officer, hearing his turn called, made his way to room number six where in the bitter-sweet, dirt- smelling near darkness he could see the outline of a female figure who, turning towards him, hiked up her black nightdress to her waist and fell backwards on the edge of the bed. He realised that the highly anticipated delights of seduction were already over. She was ready.

“These women estimated that operating a strict schedule of ten minutes per man, they could service an entire battalion every seven days, a production rate that most were usually able to sustain for only three weeks before retiring exhausted, and invariably unwell, but proud of their staying power. This experience had been, for many of the prospectively syphilitic young men, their introduction to the ‘joy’ of physical love. Even the virginal Prince of Wales went in 1916 with some fellow officers to watch naked girls performing erotic poses in a brothel in Calais, concluding from his own ‘first insight into such things’ that it was a ‘perfectly filthy and revolting sight’. …

“The threat of venereal disease sometimes led soldiers to seek sexual relief with each other. The Field Almanac issued to Lieutenant Skelton cautioned men not to ‘ease themselves promiscuously’, although the detailed instructions on the necessity for cleanliness of the body at all times were impossible to implement in the filthy conditions of the camps. George V, hearing of the extent of homosexual activity in the army some two decades after the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, had been heard to mutter: ‘I thought men like that shot themselves.’ There was also a belief that homosexuality might be infectious and Scotland Yard kept a register of known homosexuals. Recovery from prosecution was at best rare and in reality unknown. Two hundred and seventy soldiers and twenty officers were court-martialled for ‘acts of gross indecency with another male person according to the Guidance notes in the Manual of Military Law’.”

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