More on the Great Sex Trafficking Scam in the U.K.
October 30th, 2009 by Robert Franklin, Esq.In this BBC Newsnight interview, moderator Jeremy Paxman questions former British MP for Europe, Dennis McShane and Nikki Adams of the English Collective for Prostitutes about the recent article in The Guardian showing that the Home Office had, over many years blown out of all proportion the problem of human trafficking for sex in Britain (BBC, 10/21/09). That article revealed government documents showing that a massive sweep of English brothels by dozens of law enforcement agencies and that resulted in the arrests of over 400 people, had netted not a single person who had coerced anyone into prostitution.
So Paxman understandably wants to know how McShane and so many others could have trumpeted the claim that 25,000 women per year were trafficked into the U.K. for the purposes of prostitution. Tellingly, McShane never gets around to defending the claim other than to say that he was simply quoting, presumably the Home Office figures that have so distorted national dialogue and policy on the issue.
Indeed, throughout the whole interview, McShane never provides any guidance as to how much trafficking, if any, is going on. At one point he tries to change the entire topic to that of rape (where have we seen that before?), but never gets close to explaining how, if so many women are trafficked into the U.K. each year, such a vast police effort could locate none of them.
Nikki Adams, for her part, has some ideas about that. She and her organization have defended sex workers in court and attempted to help them in many ways for years. She says that in all that time of helping prostitutes in the United Kingdom, she has encountered a grand total of two who had been coerced into the trade. Her very strong opinion is that essentially all prostitutes engage in sex for hire as their free choice for the purposes of earning an income. That view, of course, accords with the findings (or non-findings) of Operation Parameter Two, the police sweep of houses of prostitution, that found no traffickers whatsoever.
As a brief aside, clearly some level of sex trafficking goes on in Britain, but as recent events have made clear, the level is nowhere near that claimed by the Home Office and numerous other organizations.
Interestingly enough, when McShane inquired incredulously whether Paxman believes that Amnesty International and other organizations were just making up figures about sex trafficking, Adams quietly responded that there are "a lot of vested interests" at work. The interview was cut short, so neither followed up on that statement, but what I believe Adams to have been saying was that certain entities have developed entrenched interests, both financial and "moral" in the issue of sex trafficking.
We see this frequently. As but one obvious example, in the United States, DV shelters, advocates, and those who claim to provide treatment, receive massive sums of money from state and federal governments as well as private fundraising. For them to admit the truth about domestic violence - that it is nowhere near as pervasive as they've claimed all along, that their approach to it has no hope of solving the problem and that they ignore, as a matter of policy, half the population who need services - would be to seriously jeopardize their livelihoods. Likewise, they've staked out certain intellectual positions - that women don't perpetrate and men aren't victims of domestic violence - from which it would be embarrassing to climb down.
And so it is with sex trafficking in the U.K. I don't pretend to know what the financial arrangements are, but the intellectual ones are clear. Countless people in the Home Office and elsewhere, as well as a welter of NGOs have staked out the position that sex trafficking is a pervasive blight on British society. For them to acknowledge the painful (for them) truth, to in effect say "never mind," would be to display greater reserves of character and honesty than I suspect they're capable of.
And if Dennis McShane's performance on BBC NewsNight is any indication, my suspicions are correct.
Thanks to Kendall for the heads-up.
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October 30th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
The bigger issue is how to deconstruct these massive bureaucratic pork structures that have taken rout in America and Britain,..who were constructed and are perpetuating themselves on faulty and inflammatory misinformation, or "manufactured statistics"??
Who's going to tell these "porkocrats"..that they are going to have to get a job??
October 30th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Isn't it fraud to manufacture hysteria and then "cash in", on this hysteria with state and federal dollars?? Oh, i see, they will not be held legally accountable because they are women, and women are not to be held equally accountable "like the men are".
Is the "old girls network" above the constitution because the constitution was "man made"??
October 31st, 2009 at 5:12 am
One of the reasons behind these inflated claims is that women are not always seen as free moral agents,. Rather like a woman's experience of sex being re-classified as rape by the researcher, a woman might be deemed not to have made a free choice, despite what she herself says, if the researcher considers that appropriate.
October 31st, 2009 at 11:47 am
Note that Mr MacShane 's partner is well known gender feminist Joan Smith!
She's even written an article basically defending him.
ANyway, the best article to read is MacShane's blog in the Guardian compalainaing about his treatment on Newsnight:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/21/sex-trafficking-newsnight-denis-macshane
October 31st, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Amazing. I'm so glad this is getting exposed.
Sex workers, where legal and safe, are very self-empowered people. They're honest, hard working, and therapeutic to millions and millions of people all over the globe, especially to men. They very beneficial to society whether we care to admit it or not. And, without hurting anyone, they don't give a crap what others think of them, which I admire. And they don't need radical feminists or self-serving moralists trying to "protect" them, especially with these hyped up myths about trafficking.
November 1st, 2009 at 1:08 pm
The problem is that the UK government is driving prostitution underground, not unlike prohibition in 1920's USA, whereas in Germany and Holland the girls work with government blessing, add tax Euro's to the economy, and have regular health checks. Compare this with the shady brothels and especially the street girls who are most often drug addicts working to feed their habit.
Freeing prostitutes from selling their body is a feminists twisted point of view, they can't accept that many of the working girls WANT to to do the job they enjoy. Prostitution, it is said, is the oldest profession in the world, so do the feminists really think they can stop it now?
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:47 am
As a brief aside, clearly some level of sex trafficking goes on in Britain, but as recent events have made clear, the level is nowhere near that claimed by the Home Office and numerous other organizations.
Does this sort of trope need trotted out every time? Each time a lie about the prevalence of some sort of female victimhood is exposed there is always some behind covering "but we're not saying there isn't ANY *female victimhood under discussion*," included in the story.
It would seem a better use of column inches to mention how many sex workers Nikki Adams has encountered who are in it by choice so that the 2 she has encountered who were coereced might be seen in perspective.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:48 am
Would it be possible for this site to get a follow-on interview with Nikki Adams? Presumably she had more to say on the issue and it would be interesting to hear that.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:46 pm
"The problem is that the UK government is driving prostitution underground"
The police close only a few of the thousands of brothels, and most of the closed category re-open within a few days.
Even those brothels where people have been chaining girls to the wall, are re-opened, and there have been such cases. Britain is lousy with brothels operating openly.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:53 pm
"whereas in Germany and Holland the girls work with government blessing"
In Amsterdam they're frequently operated by organized crime, and hence the closures, in German we are also seeing large scale raids. In Holland girls lose their unemployment/welfare entitlements if they leave a brothel. There is that to it, whether it is a blessing ot not is debatable.
Amsterdam Closes Many Brothels and Marijuana Cafes - Associated ...6 Jan 2009 ... In an effort to control the rise of organized crime in the city, Amsterdam officials announced Saturday that they intend to close brothels, ...
There R your search terms.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
If you haven't, do follow the link and watch the video. It's a debate worth watching, as McShane dances around throwing nets full of red herrings out, and Adams nails it: these inflated numbers form the bases for new legislation.
this has been an excellent find, and they touch on the sources of the information (4:35) - the International Labor Organization, Amnesty International, International Red Cross, as having "vested interests."
November 5th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Nick Davies article was evidence of systemic sex trafficking, I gave the same data to his newspaper ( before he published) and I de-convicted the first pimp re: Pentahmeter II.
I also blasted Amnesty in 2008 for hyperbole. Sex trafficking in the UK is widespread, the police are simply a waste of skin. The vested interests are a tiny group of feminists (circle of friends) who get all the money. That part is true enough.
Te Brit govt, doesn't even pretend to be running a legitimate thing. So, Nick Davies article, was about a strategic police agency, which if directed to address something else, couldn't arrest a violent mugger in New Orleans. The Brit police set standards in hopeless incompetence.