UN Panel Explores Connection Between Pornography and Sex-Trafficking

By | December 7, 2023

NEW YORK, December 8 (C-Fam) Anti-trafficking survivors and advocates told UN delegates and officials that sex-trafficking was the end stage of sexual abuse that starts with pornography and prostitution.

“The only way to effectively end sex trafficking is to take on the phenomenon of the sale and purchase of sex as a whole,” said Lisa Correnti Vice President of C-Fam, publisher of the Friday fax during an event at UN headquarters on Tuesday.

Anti-trafficking survivors and advocates emphasized the need to regulate the pornography industry, especially by protecting children, and the needs to prosecute pimps and men who purchase sex from prostitutes.

“The only way we can end sexual exploitation, is by putting the responsibility on the traffickers and sex buyers,” said Anna Ptak, a survivor leader who is now the executive assistant to the CEO of National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “If no one buys sex, then there is no demand for sexual exploitation.”

“Men who buy sex create the demand for sex trafficking,” said Helen Taylor, the Vice President of Impact at Exodus Cry. She presented the latest documentary film of Benjamin Nolot. The film — “Buying Her” — presents in depth interviews of women who were sex-trafficked, recovering sex addicts who paid prostitutes including sex-trafficking victims. It shows how the use of pornography and prostitution nurtures indifference to the plight of victims.

The film shows that most sex buyers go to prostitutes without giving any thought to whether the women are trafficked. That indifference eventually becomes a kind of hatred of women and results in the degrading sexual fantasies that men play out in pornography and prostitution, including rape and bestiality.

Taylor emphasized the need for age verification laws to limit childhood exposure to pornography. She said the porn industry was resisting efforts to protect children “due to fear of monetary loss.”

“Not every porn consumer becomes a sex buyer but every former sex buyer we interviewed for the film had been exposed to graphic content as a child,” she said.

Taylor also warned about efforts to decriminalize prostitution from powerful Western countries and the human rights groups they fund, including Amnesty International.

“By removing all penalties, a sex tourism state is essentially created, resulting in demand increasing and a welcome mat being put out to traffickers,” Taylor emphasized, citing a study of 150 countries by the London School of Economics demonstrating wherever prostitution is legal, sex-trafficking increases exponentially.

Wherever prostitution is legal, “sex trafficking victims show up in legitimate businesses,” said Marcel Van der Watt, Ph.D., Director of the Research Institute at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. The former law enforcement official was forceful in denouncing decriminalization.

“We must come to terms with the reality that the fleeting promises of prostitution full decriminalization have failed,” he said.  “Full decriminalization and sex buyer impunity is not a pathway for harm reduction. Instead, it is the operations room for harm production,” he emphasized.

Speaking on behalf of C-Fam, Iulia-Elena Cazan, C-Fam Associate Director of UN Government Relations and the International Youth Coalition (IYc), said it was “shocking” when UN agencies promoted prostitution or pornography use by minors as acceptable. Just earlier this year, UN human rights experts published a report calling for the full decriminalization of prostitution.

The event, hosted by Belarus, was co-sponsored by C-Fam, publisher of the Friday Fax, together with the anti-trafficking groups Exodus Cry and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.

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