Yesterday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 5 into law. The new law creates tougher criminal penalties for human traffickers.
The Toledo Blade described the new law, as “the latest to tackle the state’s human trafficking problem, particularly when it comes to the sex trade. Past laws have increased penalties for traffickers and the “johns” who buy the services they’re selling and cracked down on massage parlors that front for prostitution.”
In Florida, we are all too familiar with the “efforts to crack down on human trafficking”, one of which resulted in the arrest of some high-profile “customers” as well as the arrests of the “trafficked” persons at a massage parlor in Jupiter.
When people think of human trafficking they think of human beings, even children, smuggled into the country and forced to work as sex slaves. That’s because the definition of human trafficking is, “the action or practice of illegally transporting people from one country or area to another, typically for the purposes of forced labor or sexual exploitation.” (Oxford Dictionary). The Department of Homeland Security describes it as, “involv[ing] the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act.”
When it comes to these laws, if that were actually the case, clearly everything possible should be done to rescue those trafficked. The only problem is, the actual definition of human trafficking doesn’t even remotely describe what took place in the Orchids of Asia Spa or in the overwhelming majority of cases that will be caught up in the net of these new laws that are being passed across the country under the guise of curbing human trafficking.
When Florida created its “John Registry” this past legislative session an advocacy group for sex workers, Sex Workers Outreach Project (known by the acronym SWOP), which promotes decriminalization as the best means of decreasing harm and promoting agency among people in the sex trade, spoke out strongly AGAINST the bill. When an organization of suggested “victims” speaks out against a law that is intended to “help them”, you know there’s something wrong with the law.
Just like the current laws designed to register and regulate the laws of people considered “sex offenders”, the majority of people caught up in the net will not be the type of predatory repeat offenders that lawmakers or the public considered when passing the law.
Another byproduct of these new wave of human trafficking laws is that it will make it more dangerous for the “victims”. Instead of operating out of store fronts or advertising online (where they are on their home-turf or have an electronic trail should something go wrong) they will be forced underground, where in the very rare occurrences where something does go wrong, they will be more vulnerable.
Just like FAC does not advocate for sexual offending, we are also strongly against actual human trafficking. But just like we feel the current sex offender laws are incredibly misguided, we also feel that these new human trafficking laws completely miss the mark as well. A laser focused, well researched law can be an effective tool. a scattershot, knee-jerk law will just create a bunch of collateral damage.
You know it. Our friend in Polk county is a prime one for bragging about his arrests when all he is mostly taking about is prostitution. For us in the know, it is a farce, but he gets brownie points from his voters who are also like him. Everone else is soooo innocent. HaHa.
Agreed 100%. Another misuse of a term to mislead the public.
Exactly my thoughts. Was just saying to someone the other day watching some TV news propaganda that it seemed to me they are twisting what has always been here (prostitution) into “human trafficking”. When did all prostitution become human trafficking? And when did prostitutes’ clients become the trafficker? If sex is so bad when are they going to ban it? Seems to be where the puritans are headed but of course that could never work so 100% of the population will just be labeled criminals I guess? Amazing as a species, top of the food chain, we can’t do any better than this.
Amerikkka continues it’s War on Sex. In this case, conflating prostitution with human trafficking. There’s big money in “combating” human trafficking. It’s mostly a myth. Lauren Crook throws this term around and uses it in her & her daddy’s war on registered citizens. Amerikkka is the most backward “civilized” country with regards to its attitude towards sex.
Media also drives this narrative. Local shill reporters act surprised to discover that Floriduh was 3rd in the nation for so-called human trafficking. What a revelation that the state with the 3rd largest population also has the 3rd largest human trafficking “problem.”
There exists a deep-state force that wants to turn Amerikka into an Islamic state. What better way to start than to criminalize all forms of sex?
This is just more out-of-control Nanny Big Government (NBG) passing as many “laws” as they possible can because ALL people in Amerika NEED NBG to fake “protect” us. It’s sad.
Amerika has never been a free country and it doesn’t seem like it ever will be. There are a lot of good things about Amerika but I wish people here were more interested in minding their business and stop trying to force their beliefs onto everyone else. Amerika is full of small-minded, self-righteous, self-entitled control freaks. They get off on trying to control everyone else.
What a mess. We need to vote out NBG boot lickers.
So eventually every human being in the U.S will be on some sort of registry if we keep going at this pace.
Sex offender registry, Sex trafficking registry and more.
I just wonder if the non sex offender registries are accessible to the public like ours are?
Lets have a bad cop registry, disgraced judge registry. Bad contractors registry.
Oh I forgot, they also DO have an animal abuser registry in Florida but think it can only be accessed by those who sell animals.
AMEN to your commentary. Just another attempt by lawmakers to pass restrictions on a subject that they know little about but want to look like justice stalwarts to the voting public.