Boys and men: the other half of the slave trade

Caught: Sex Trafficked Boys & the Violent Cycle of Powerlessness
February 24, 2014 by restoreone

Sexual violence against men and boys is a topic that is seldom discussed. Often we hear victims are women and children, and we assume that the children are girls and that males are the primary perpetrator. At Restore One, we seek to serve a population that is often unspoken for, sex trafficked and sexually exploited boys. The phrase, sex trafficked children, does not specify an exact gender or ethnic population. However, folks are always very surprised to hear that boys are sex trafficked and sexually exploited just like girls. You may ask, how are boys sold and where and who buys them?
The sexual exploitation of boys remains hidden. I’d go as far as to say it is an even more hushed crime than female sex trafficking. It is an immense moneymaker for those governing the trade. The buying and selling of boys for the purposes of sex are found throughout the United States both in the ritziest neighborhoods and poorest districts of the city. The research study The Commercial Exploitation of Children in New York City in 2008 estimates that as much as 50% of commercial sexually exploited children are males.

Regardless of the location or by which means the deed is done, one link remains true to every story I’ve witnessed or heard, the sexual violence against boys is directly linked to powerfully exploiting the powerless. While money is the blatant fuel behind the sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of boys, the cycle of powerlessness is what leaves boys vulnerable to violence. To explain the cycle of powerlessness in relationship to the sex trafficking and exploitation of boys, I created the story of Paul. Paul was inspired by my countless interactions with male survivors and the honor it’s been for me to hear their many stories. Thus, The story of Paul.

Paul is a teenage boy with a jaded history of sexual abuse, foster care, low self-esteem and parent maltreatment. He had no part in the choices that his parents, the state and others have made on his behalf that have caused him much harm and heartache at a young age of 15. Life has left him vulnerable and powerless. In the mist of his despair, he is sought out by a pimp and recruited into the life.

The men he is forced to service are men in power, patrol cops, wealthy business owners, a college football coach, politicians and even pastors. His pimp is part of a large criminal ring, and they traffick boys and girls in every state. If Paul were to run, he’d never really get out because they would find him and welcome him with a beating. His pimp tells him that since he’s had sex with men, he’s not good for nothing but turning tricks.

One night during a large undercover rescue operation, Paul was found along with other children who’ve been sex trafficked. When the agents see Paul they are stunned. When he was first interviewed, they were testing him to see if he was a trafficker but after some probing they saw that he was a victim. Determining this though was not much help because there were no services specifically for boys who’ve been sex trafficked. Law enforcement did their best and referred him to the Department of Social Services, and he was then placed in a foster care home. Within a few weeks Paul is groped by one of the older kids in the home and he immediately remembered the words of his pimp, “You ain’t good for nothing but turning tricks.”

In a state of frustration, Paul believed the haunting words of his pimp, ran away and went back into the life.

Unfortunately Paul is the story of many boys. Boys find when seeking services or wanting out of the life that their power is rendered and immobilized when service care providers refuse to provide proper services due to gender. With no services specific to meet their fragile needs, there is little hope for boys to exit the life. A victim of violence again is left powerless and the cycle continues.

I’ve had countless conversations with community members advising me to focus on women and girls and that the community is not ready to deal with sex trafficked boys. When it comes to the topic of male victimization, our culture demands we look the other way. Direct services for victims of sexual violence are harshly female centered with few gateways for males. The Department of State claims that the often hidden crime of sex trafficking boys remains under wraps largely due to the cultural climate and taboos around the practice. I’ve found that the majority of Americans want to believe two things about the sex trafficking of men and boys: 1) Men and boys always have the power to get out, therefore they are not considered victims; 2) Men and boys are not in need of the same victim services that are offered to women and girls. However, I believe with an able body and willing heart, the story of Paul can change and so can these taboos around the trafficking of males. Males, who are victims of sexual violence such as sex trafficking and sexual exploitation, need you to advocate on their behalf by being a voice. I charge you to speak up and to do your part to begin addressing the gap in victim services for males within your own community. Remember, the cycle of powerlessness can end with just your voice.

Source

Now also take into the fact that most sex traffickers are women. We can reasonably conclude that it is women who are trafficking boys and men while white knights with guns hold them hostage to do their mistresses bidding. I can see why feminists abandoned human trafficking. They would have implicated themselves.

Sexual abuse by women

male victim of female sexual violence

Teenage girls who admit to sexually abusing others are more likely to indulge in victim-blaming and to be preoccupied by sex than their peers who aren’t sexual offenders, a new study finds.

The findings are similar to what is seen in men, researchers report in the December issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Female sex offenders are less common than male sex offenders, but women who sexually abuse are under-studied, said lead researcher Cecilia Kjellgren of the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at Lund University.

"People have a tendency to neglect the fact of females who sexually offend," Kjellgren told LiveScience. "Young people who have been sexually abused by a female, they don't get the same attention." [6 Gender Myths Busted]

Studying sexual offenses

Kjellgren and her colleagues wanted to move beyond the small, clinical samples of female sexual offenders that have been the main source of information about this group. In 2003 and 2004, they surveyed third-year high-school students in cities in Norway and Sweden, gathering anonymous responses from 5,059 young women between the ages of 17 and 20.

The students completed the surveys during school hours, answering questions about alcohol consumption, drug use, sexual behavior, their relationships with their parents and certain attitudes, including their acceptance of gender stereotypes and their belief in "rape myths." Rape myths are common but false beliefs about rape, Kjellgren said, such as "many guys think sex is more exciting if the girl resists his advances," and "a girl who follows a guy home after the first date implies that she is willing to have sex."

The students also reported whether they had "ever talked someone into, used pressure or forced somebody to masturbate them, have oral or anal sex, or sexual intercourse." This was defined as coercive sex, which falls under the umbrella of sexual abuse. Gender of the victim was not specified.

Sexual coercion

Of the 4,363 female students who completed enough of the survey to be included in the study, 0.8 percent admitted to coercing someone into sexual activity. Only the Swedish data allowed a gender-to-gender comparison, Kjellgren said. In the Swedish subset, of the 124 students who said they'd coerced someone sexually, 23 were female and 101 were male.

Among those teens, "females constitute one-fifth of the total of sexually coercive young people," Kjellgren said. That number was higher than seen in studies on sexual abuse incidents reported to the police or social services, she said, where women make up about 1 percent of sex offenders.

"It's really a small tip of the iceberg that is reported to authorities," Kjellgren said.

The researchers compared the characteristics of the sex offender females with those of girls who had nonsexual behavior problems, such as aggressive behavior, to find out whether there were any risk factors specific to sex offenses. Several turned up.

For both young men and women, those who reported more preoccupation with sex and sexual thoughts were more likely to have coerced someone sexually, the researchers found. Another risk factor was acceptance of rape myths — even though those myths typically cast men as aggressors and women as victims. Kjellgren suspects that the victim-blaming inherent in these myths helps justify sexual coercion no matter the genders.

"When you do something wrong, you turn to excuses," she said. "Those rape myths work for you in a sense. They help you find excuses."

Violent pornography

Having friends who watched a lot of violent pornography was also associated with being a female sex offender, Kjellgren found, though the girls' own rates of watching violent porn was not. That could be because the girls are hiding their own porn-viewing habits under the veil of their friends, Kjellgren said.

"It's easier to tell on the questionnaire when it comes to friends, not to yourself," she said.

The study doesn't prove, however, that violent porn in a social circle causes sexual assault, as there are too many variables to be sure of such a connection. For one thing, porn-watching was common across all young people, Kjellgren said, not just behaviorally troubled youth.

"It could be different factors all influenced by each other," she said. "To watch a lot of porn, that could get you sexually occupied, or you could be very sexually occupied and you turn to lots of porn."

Sexual abusers also reported worse parental care, more aggression and alcohol consumption and more sexual partners than teens who didn't show any behavioral issues. They had also been victims of sexual assault themselves more frequently. However, sexually abusive teens did not show higher level of any of these factors than non-sexually abusive but otherwise troubled teenagers, so these risk factors were not specific to sexual abuse.

Kjellgren said that while the studies were on Scandinavian teens, she would expect to see similar results in other countries. Two U.S. surveys in 1996 and 1997 found that 0.8 percent and 1.3 percent of female ninth- and 12th-grade girls had ever forced someone to have sex.

The estimates in this study are likely conservative, Kjellgren said, as about 10 percent of Swedish youth have dropped out of school by the third year of high school. That's a relatively small drop-out rate compared with other nations, she said, but the 10 percent of kids who do drop out — and thus weren't included in this survey — are more likely to be troubled, and are more likely to be both victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse.

"I think this study just encourages us in Sweden and in other parts of the world to do further research on young people who sexually offend," Kjellgren said. "For a few individuals, this can be a starting point for being abusive more than once in life."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas.Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

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It seems that women have become what they despised in men. What was it that feminist groups demanded from male rapists,that a certain type of operation be peformed so they can't do this again? Well if it's good enough for men then it's good enough for women. Women demanded equality and here it is,enjoy.