(MintPress) — When it comes to eliminating sex trafficking in Ohio, it appears that local law enforcement has more work ahead of them than just finding and imprisoning the traffickers – they need to eliminate the demand for sex workers by johns and themselves.
A recent report, Domestic Sex Trafficking in Ohio, was presented to Ohio’s Attorney General Mike DeWine and the Ohio Human Trafficking Commission on Aug. 8. The report detailed three different types of sex workers: those involved in prostitution, victims of sex trafficking involved through manipulation and victims of sex trafficking involved by force.
Human trafficking involves the sale, exchange, barter or lease of a person for labor or sex acts.
All three types of sexual transactions were researched in the report in terms of how old the average sex worker is, how much they charge for each sexual act, psychological and financial issues that likely led to their involvement in sex work and more.
The report suggests the underlying reason all three types of sex workers saw success in their jobs was because of the demand by johns. The reports author, Celia Williamson, a University of Toledo criminal justice and social work professor, also reiterated this point when she presented her findings.
“If you end the demand, you end trafficking,” Williamson said. “The customers are an equal part of the problem and if you don’t address that, then you can’t significantly address trafficking.”
A shocking finding Williamson mentioned in her address to the committee was that stopping human trafficking is not easy because the customers are not just drug dealers and truckers, but those seen in more protective roles in our community such as police officers, lawyers and politicians.
Williamson’s report found that of the johns soliciting sex from a victim forced into sex trafficking through manipulation, about 45 percent of the 328 johns identified themselves as a member of a law enforcement organization, ranking law enforcement higher on the “buyers” list than any other profession. It’s a shocking statistic, especially since the fourth-worst city for human trafficking in the country is Toledo, Ohio and about 1,000 American-born children are forced into sex work each year in Ohio.
The report does note that some of the johns who were interested in raping and/or robbing the sex worker pretended to be a police officer, though the amount of johns who dressed as police officer but were not a member of law enforcement was not listed.
Victims of human trafficking generally charge more for sexual services than a prostitute for services, but other than that, there really is no way to know if a sex worker is selling his or herself willfully and how much of the pay she gets to keep.
Generally, traffickers are able to keep their victims from going to the police for help by convincing them the police should be feared and if the victim tells on the trafficker, the victim will be deported. Police officers are supposed to be a helpful source for victims and not be feared, but when many of the victims customers are law enforcement officials, it becomes a concern as to where and who these victims can turn to for help.
While Ohio has dealt with issues related to human trafficking for years, it wasn’t until Aug. 2 that a task force was created in Columbus to deal specifically with human trafficking.
Local law enforcement agencies throughout Ohio have investigated human trafficking previously, but had never been officially recognized as a task force because they worked with federal officials since victims were usually taken across state lines.