CBA Record Feb-March 2017

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YLS Special Issue lPROTECTING OUR CHILDREN
CBA RECORD 33
Sheriff Vice Unit conducted between 2010
and June 2012, girls and women selling sex
were found in 41 different area hotels and
motels. Schiller Park, Schaumburg, and
Lansing were the most frequent venues,
and major hotel chains were often the
sites used. (J. Raphael & L. LaPointe,
The Cook County sheriff’s human traf-
ficking response team: A law enforcement
model (2013), available at http://bit.
ly/2mmp1b9).
Recently enacted legislation in Prince
George’s County, Maryland holds land-
lords and property managers accountable
for prostitution and human trafficking
at their rental sites. The bill makes it a
misdemeanor to “knowingly” allow use of
an apartment or home for prostitution or
trafficking, punishable with a $1,000 fine
or 6 months in jail. (A. R. Hernandez,
New law could make landlords liable for
sex trafficking at their rentals, Washington
Post (Nov. 18, 2016), available at http://
). When mothers com-
plained that units in their apartment
buildings were being used as brothels
and the property managers had been put
on notice about it, without any action
taken, the new law was the result. Critics
wondered how prosecutors would be able
to prove landlords or property managers
knew about the prostitution or trafficking.
The County Council responded it hoped
that property owners, faced now with the
possibility of criminal charges, would be
motivated to act early when so informed.
Taxi Drivers
Cab drivers also transport underage girls,
accompanied by traffickers, to assigna-
tions on a regular basis. They also provide
information to customers after being asked
about where to find young girls available
for sale. For these reasons, taxi drivers are
another first line of defense against traffick-
ing of children. In New York City, every
licensed driver must watch a training video
on trafficking before he or she can proceed
with a new (or renewal) of a license (George
& Smith, 2013).
WHAT ATTORNEYS CAN DO
• Ask your clients with domestic violence issues about forced prostitution;
• If you represent any hotels, educate yourself about International Codes of Conduct, like the Resolution
against the Sexual Exploitation of Children of the International Hotel and Restaurants Association, and
available training programs from Business Ending Slavery & Trafficking (BEST);
• Lobby for mandatory training programs for taxi drivers before license issuance or renewal;
• In your place of business advocate against company-sponsored visits to strip clubs where trafficked
individuals can be found;
• Educate the boys and men in your life about trafficking for sexual exploitation and the presence of
trafficked individuals in strip clubs and bachelor parties;
• Resist calls for legalizing prostitution, which normalizes and accepts the buying of bodies, providing
the cover traffickers need to operate;
• Memorize the national hotline (1-888-373-8888); and
• Volunteer to provide legal services to trafficking survivors. Contact Brian Gilbert, GilbertB@metrofamily.
org or Christine Evans,
Customers: Normalization of Sexual
Exploitation of Youth
Customers are, of course, the main reason
for trafficking; without paying custom-
ers there would be no reason to coerce
individuals into sexual services. Drying
up demand for paid sex is imperative.
Customers who buy sex, especially those
paying for sex from minors, need to be
criminally charged. Most men do not buy
sex in the United States. Reputable survey
research (M. A. Monto & C. Milrod,
Ordinary or Peculiar Men? Comparing the
Customers of Prostitutes with a Nation-
ally Representative Sample of Men, 58
Int’l J. of Offender Therapy & Comp.
Criminology, 802-820 (2014) finds that
only 13.9% of men aged 18-75 report
having paid for sex during their lifetime
and only 1% during the previous year. As
one expert concludes,”There is no credible
evidence to support that hiring prostitutes
is a common or conventional aspect of
masculine sexual behavior among men in
the United States.” Thus law enforcement
efforts to prioritize arrests of customers,
only a small percentage of men in the U.S.,
is a major anti-trafficking strategy. For this
reason, we must revise our thinking about
legalization of prostitution and its harm-
lessness. All customers are in some way
responsible for trafficking for commercial
sexual exploitation.
Jody Raphael is a Senior Research Fellow at
Schiller DuCanto & Fleck and is on the staff
of the DePaul University College of Law’s
Family Law Center