Massachusetts Groups Draft Letter Criticizing Federal Study of Sex-Trafficking Bill
Three Massachusetts-based sex-abuse survivor groups are drafting a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticizing her bill directing a federal study of 2018 anti-sex-trafficking legislation (see 1912170041). Warren introduced the bill with Reps. Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee, both California Democrats, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. It would direct a study of the small percentage of consensual sex workers who claim a 2018 anti-sex trafficking law made their lives less safe and their trade more difficult, Living in Freedom Together (LIFT) CEO Nikki Bell told us. Some 200 survivors signed the draft letter, she said. The House version of the bill is HR-5448.
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Bell’s preparing the letter with the Eva Center and My Life My Choice, groups she said represent the majority of sex workers, who are coerced and abused. Bell said the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers-Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA-FOSTA) was a positive step because it blocked major websites from openly facilitating sex trafficking. Warren voted for SESTA; her office didn’t comment.
SESTA has been successful because “fewer women and children are being sold online,” bill author Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told us before the congressional winter recess. “It’s disrupted what was open trafficking online and not because people have been criminally prosecuted but because companies have chosen to shut down now that we’ve exposed what was happening, which was people knowingly selling women and children online.”
If the Department of Health and Human Services does a study, it “should include what’s been the impact on women and girls who are sold online,” Portman said. Backpage was shut down because it “was literally altering ads to take out references to underage girls, so they could still get the money from the ads and exploit these girls,” he said.
Wyden, who opposed SESTA, said his fears about the legislation have played out. “I thought that these horrible sex traffickers were going to move to the dark web,” he told us before the break. “I think that’s clearly been the case. I said it on the floor of the Senate. I think the reality has borne that out, and I think the study” is a constructive development.
If SESTA-FOSTA was beneficial, proponents should welcome a study because it will vindicate their claims, said NetChoice Vice President Carl Szabo. He cited various complaints from sex worker groups saying the original legislation makes it harder to screen clients and do their jobs safely. Laws have consequences, he said, and it’s encouraging that Warren and other Democrats are reviewing the bill’s impact. He said until Congress understands the effects of SESTA-FOSTA, the sole amendment to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, it should avoid any further alterations to the content liability shield.
LIFT isn’t opposed to a study, but as it appears in the Senate bill, it wouldn’t account for the victims and children forced into the sex trade, said Bell. It’s “frustrating,” she said, because there’s no data indicating the groups pushing for this study are anything more than the minority in the sex trade. She wants a comprehensive study, saying the legislation as written is “insulting to survivors.”