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"You're just another crack whore from the street. No one will know if you're missing?" Worse, He Seems to be Right.

Thu, 2009-11-05 10:31 — figleaf

From CBS News Early Show website, about alleged Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell. (Emphasis mine.)

[Early Show host Harry] Smith read a statement from a woman who escaped from Sowell’s house after, the woman says, Sowell started to try to choke her. The woman said Sowell remarked, “You’re just another crack (blank) from the street. No one will know if you’re missing.“

Read the quote in context here.

What pisses me off is he was right. Smith interviews the mother of a woman, Tanya Charmichael, who disappeared from Sowell’s neighborhood a year ago. When she tried to report her daughter missing she says police joked that “Oh, go home, she’ll show up by Christmas, after the drugs are all gone.” Oh, and refused to take the report.

I don’t know if there’s much we can do about substance dependency problems, which Charmichael evidently had. And I don’t know if we can do much about whatever it is that makes people become serial killers either. And I don’t know if maybe another 3,000 years of experimentation with law enforcement might finally make prostitution go away.

What I do know, though, is that there’s a class of people — street or subsistence prostitutes — that’s extraordinarily vulnerable to predation because a) nobody cares but also b) even though “nobody cares,” the work they do is still illegal and so c) they are obliged to avoid, lie to, and generally invite the contempt of the people who would most be likely to protect them.

I talk a lot about legalizing prostitution, not because I think it’s hunky-dory. I don’t. In particular, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, I believe it reinforces the idea of male sexual scarcity and heterosexuality as inherently transactional, and those are enormously destructive not only to women but to heterosexual men.

Instead I talk about legalizing it because here in the Pacific Northwest, including locations just a mile or so from my house, serial killers are known to have gathered and murdered something like four hundred human beings since the 1980s. And nearly all of them were street/subsistance prostitutes who were chosen expressly because their killers knew of, and typically shared, society and law-enforcement’s distain for them.

So when I talk about legalizing prostitution, again, it’s not because I think it’s just hunky-dory. It’s because I think it’s the only way to start transforming society’s relationship with an extraordinarily vulnerable population… and to transform that population’s relationship with society.

(Via Google Alerts on the term “serial killer”)

Thu, 2009-11-05 10:37 — Mike (not verified) #permalink

An interesting perspective, but what you are saying definitely makes sense.

Thu, 2009-11-05 11:09 — Redleader (not verified) #permalink
I think your assertion that legalizing prostitution will lead to a “transformation” on anything is not supported by the experience of other countries that tried it. The Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark-all known to be generally very progressive nations with high law enforcement and health standards-all experienced a drastic increase prostitution, human trafficking, corruption, and organized crime with few of the much touted “benefits of legalization” panning out. The whole idea that legalizing prostitution would guarantee that every prostitute ends up with these wonderful working conditions and routine health checks has turned out to be a fantasy. And to claim that a lack of legal prostitutes caused Ted Bundy or Gary Ridgeway to become serial killers, shows very little knowledge about the nature of such persons. Rather than legalizing prostitution, Sweden’s model where the enforcement is focused on the BUYING rather than selling, seems like the way to go. Also Italy has a good model for dealing with trafficking victims.

“http://www.justicewomen.com/cj_sweden.html”

[You know what’s cool, Red? We’ve been arguing over this since before blogging happened. We might not agree on everything, but we do agree on some things. For instance you don’t think there should be prostitution. I don’t think there should be prostitution. I just don’t agree that keeping it illegal makes it safer for the women doing it.

For instance while you’re absolutely right that legalizing prostitution wouldn’t stop Gary Ridgeway, or Robert Yates, or the Pictons, or this guy Sowell from being serial killers. Duh. In fact, DUH! But what it might do… just might do is make it so after the first victim goes missing the family member or friend she’s closest to can go straight to the cops and say “so and so was supposed to check in an hour ago. She was with a customer. Here’s the photo she took with her cell phone of the car she got in. Here’s the caller-id of the last 10 calls she received.” Call me an optimist but, gee, I just don’t think it would have been necessary for, say, this guy Sowell to rack up ten victims in a year, let alone Robert Picton’s 40-100(!) before someone decided to do something about it. All I’m saying, you know?

I’m delighted (if somewhat skeptical) to hear that Italy now has actually helpful policies for dealing with trafficking. Because the same time the carnage of serial killers here in the Northwest was sinking in I heard a report on NPR about how when pimps in Italy got tired of their kidnapped and coerced undocumented prostitutes they’d just turn them in to the police, knowing that the police would be more interested in deporting immigrant sex-workers than prosecuting their traffickers.

Finally, good to know that no policy should be tried unless it’s 100% guaranteed to help 100% of the people it’s meant to help.

—fl]

Thu, 2009-11-05 13:04 — SnowdropExplodes (not verified) #permalink

The Swedish Model is harmful to prostitutes in many of the same ways that traditional approaches have been. Since, in order to do business, prostitutes must ensure that their clients (“johns”, if you prefer) do not get arrested, they are still denied the basic protections that other members of society enjoy.

Furthermore, as I demonstrated theoretically (and as numerous Swedish sex workers have already reported happening), it has negative effects on consent, health & safety, or living conditions (or all three).

As far as I understand it, the Dutch and German approaches were not full decriminalisation, but rather limited legalisation (I am unfamiliar with the details of Denmark). The model preferred by sex worker advocates and decriminalisation campaigners is in fact that adopted by New Zealand, where the positive effects have been observed, and government reports checking on progress have revealed this. There are states in Australia that have had similarly positive outcomes from full decriminalisation.

And to claim that a lack of legal prostitutes caused Ted Bundy or Gary Ridgeway to become serial killers, shows very little knowledge about the nature of such persons.

I don’t know where you got that from, because it wasn’t in the OP. What the OP said instead is that the fact that prostitution is illegal means that it is a lot easier for serial killers to find vulnerable targets. The second point was that society as a whole shares serial killers’ contempt for sex workers, and unless we change society’s attitude then the vulnerability and harm will remain. As long as society continues to treat sex workers as subhuman (and making sex work a special case in law reinforces those attitudes in the general population) then society is implicitly saying that serial killers are right to target prostitutes.

[The obstacle for a number of countries (Holland, Germany, Denmark, even Australia, certainly Italy) was that legalization covered only legal residents, leaving migrant sex workers in pretty much the same dangerous, extra-legal position they are here in the States. Folks I’ve talked to about Australia say it’s a lot like Nevada in the states: brothels rather than sex workers are licensed, with less than pleasant outcomes for the workers. And finally, even in seriously “progressive” parts of Europe policies still work from the premise that sex workers are nasty, criminal, possibly sub-human victims who subvert the “natural” order of… sexual scarcity for men and a transactional nature of heterosexuality. So yeah, that’s not going to work out any better now than it did when St. Augustine talked about the need for “legal” prostitutes as a way of preserving the virtue of “good” women way back before the middle ages.

And thanks for the backup on what I was trying to say in my original post. No one individual should ever be able to rape, rob, rough up, or murder more than one sex worker before they’re locked up.

Thanks, SD. —fl]

Sun, 2010-01-31 11:37 — Shadow (not verified) #permalink

Well, it’s an old post, but I will elaborate on a single point.

Denmark don’t have full legal prostitution. In fact you hear about cases where people are on trial for brothels or ‘massage clinics’ from time to time.
It’s often discussed to make prostitution legal, but never gets the necessary backing to actually make it happen.

As it is now the focus is more on the customer and pimps (especially trafficking of women from other countries), but it’s still not fully legal.

[Thanks for the update, Shadow! —fl]

Thu, 2009-11-05 21:19 — tlt (not verified) #permalink

This is just rhetorical, I don’t expect that you’d actually know but:

Why isn’t it illegal for the police to refuse to take a report on a missing person for ANY reason? That should NOT be at their discretion. Do they refuse to take reports from people who are robbed and assaulted at home because they left a window unlocked? I mean, they were asking for it, right? Are doctors and nurses at the ER allowed to decide they can’t be bothered treating sex workers who get beat up because they find their vocation objectionable? Whoever that guy is, he shouldn’t be allowed to be so much as a crossing guard, let alone a police officer any more, ever again.

Fri, 2009-11-06 04:49 — Redleader (not verified) #permalink
It strikes me as strange to argue that the Swedish model makes prostitution more dangerous when the Netherlands has become a magnet for human trafficking and child prostitution. Why? Because legalization has normalized the idea of seeing a prostitute, and there simply aren’t enough Dutch women who “choose” prostitution to fill the demand. So the pimps found it very lucrative to bring slaves into the area. And the same bloody thing has occurred in Thailand, Germany, Australia, and even Nevada. While in Sweden the number of street prostitutes has dropped considerably since the current law has been adopted. Estimates vary, but this extreme skepticism as to whether the law can ever possibly influence the prevalence of the crime, is simply another manifestation of the view that prostitution simply part of the human condition and that nothing can really be done about it. That men simply have to go to prostitutes, apparently. And therefore, testing the prostitutes for diseases so those Johns can get “clean meat” is apparently the only thing that can be done. (BTW, HIV tests for prostitutes really protect the Johns rather than the prostitutes themselves. It only takes one encounter to get HIV, after which apparently the prostitute stops “working”. HIV infection may not be what it was in the 80’s, but it’s still a horrible thing.) Ultimately this belief that the demand is a universal constant and can never be subject to any influence by law, culture, or norms of behavior assumes that men do not have free will in this matter, and are above and outside the idea of any societal inputs when it comes to their sexual behavior. And leads to arguments that if some societies had bad results from even partial decriminalization, that it was only because they didn’t go whole hog and legalize it entirely. Or ignores the fact that even in countries with legal prostitution, prostitutes still have an extremely high rate of having been sexually abused by family members, of having come from ultra-fundamentalist backgrounds, and much higher PTSD rates than combat veterans. So if legalization of prostitution led to an explosion of child prostitution and human trafficking is the logical conclusion of this to legalize child prostitution next to make it safe? And to regulate trafficking for safety purposes rather than outlawing it? Thus reversing the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States and similar rules in other countries?

The Swedish model not only has never been tried prior to 1999, but was ridiculed when it was first proposed and adopted. Now Norway and Iceland have adopted it, and in Norway’s case this was done after a careful study comparing Sweden’s model to various countries who tried decriminalization or legalization in multiple forms. Scotland and Germany are seriously considering it.

And the serial killer argument is just plain specious. Serial killers are what they are. Ted Bundy’s victims were mostly college students and many criminologists believe that he started killing many years before his accepted killing spree began. For example when he was 14, an eight year old girl right in his Tacoma neighborhood disappeared and was never found. Also his first accepted murder was elaborate enough to suggest that he had experience. And he managed to kill again after escaping prison-twice. And the Zodiac who targeted non-prostitutes was never caught, despite also threatening school children, blackmailing the SF Chronicle, and leaving various “hints” for the police. In fact, there are many, many serial killers who didn’t target prostitutes and were never caught. So that argument just isn’t terribly compelling. I think the reason we have so many serial killers in the Northwest is because of the low crime rate overall. People are more trusting and police give more benefit of a doubt to things they find mildly suspicious. So it is easier for somebody to rack up a series of murders without getting caught. Whereas in other places the police and population are more vigilant so they are found out before they have enough victims to be a serial killer.

Fri, 2009-11-06 21:11 — fiveofnine (not verified) #permalink

It doesn’t matter if prostitution is legal or illegal when you have attitudes on a jury, that actually would think that the prostitute deserved it.

I recently saw a comment on another blog that blew my mind. A 16 year girl had been given a life sentence with out parole for killing her pimp. The story goes is that the pimp had raped her at 13 and forced her into prostitution. Another commenter had felt some compassion for the girl, because of the hard life she’d had and there been no one to rescue her at 13. What I found disturbing that immediately one person started to question whether a raped hadoccurred, sort of implying that 13 the girl had willingly sought out the pimp. The comments were made to appear to be playing Devil’s advocate, but I felt a sick undercurrent in the tone.

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