SEX BUYING Isn’t a Game Campaign

MLB All Star Game

Rights4Girls launched a city-wide billboard campaign in Atlanta, Georgia to draw attention to sex trafficking and sex tourism surrounding this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star game. Whenever there are large-scale events attracting thousands of tourists (and predominantly men) to any one big city, traffickers inevitably seek to capitalize off the potential for increased demand for commercial sex. As a result, our billboards display a series of baseball-themed messages seeking to shed light on sex-buying and the role of sex buyers in fueling sex trafficking.

For example, during the MLB All-Star baseball game in Cleveland:

49 people were arrested during a crackdown on human traffickers and sex buyers — 28 of them faced charges of seeking sex with children.

And most recently:

8 sex trafficking victims were recovered during Final Four weekend of the March Madness Basketball tournament in San Antonio, Texas– once again, underscoring the dark reality of these occasions.

Did you know more states are increasing penalties for buying sex? Eight states have all made sex-buying a felony in recent years.

Eight additional states have all passed laws imposing fines that fund victim services and/or mandating buyer education classes, with several more states considering bills that could result in felonies, hefty fines, and even registering as a sex offender. It can even constitute a federal crime to purchase sex from a minor under the age of 18 or a victim of sex trafficking, so Buyers Beware!

Did you know that the mortality rate of women in prostitution is 200 times the rate of the general population?³ Women and girls in the sex trade face extreme violence. For example, 68% of those in the sex trade suffer from PTSD as severe as levels suffered by combat veterans,¹ while 61% experience traumatic brain injuries due to their time in the sex industry.²

Over 90% of women in the sex trade report being shot, raped, strangled, beaten, burned, stabbed, or punched, with most of that violence being committed by sex buyers.⁴

Our report reveals buyers as aware and largely indifferent to overt signs of violence, coercion, and desperation in the people they purchase for sex acts.

Did you know that buying sex can actually lead to serious consequences that result in loss of employment or professional license? It can even lead to the loss of family law rights related to child custody, child visitation, or adoption. Not only does it cause serious harm to the people being purchased but it can have devastating effects on families and communities.

End Demand, End Sex Trafficking

(Narrated by Terry Crews)

Learn more about how sex buyers create the demand that fuels sex trafficking and why policies that promote decriminalization or legalization of prostitution are so harmful in this short video created by our friends at New Yorkers for the Equality Model.

Animation & Production: Saiem Choudhury (House of Hippie Productions) & Mitha Choudhury (NYFEM member)
Script: NYFEM Communications Team
Voiceover: Terry Crews (Actor/Comedian/Activist)

Can Money Buy Consent?

(Narrated by Ashley Judd)

Learn more about how consent is impacted by issues like poverty, drug dependency, childhood sexual abuse, immigration status, physical and psychological coercion and a whole host of other factors in this short video produced by our friends at New Yorkers for the Equality Model prompting us to ask, can money buy consent?

Animation & Production: Mitha Choudhury (NYFEM Coalition member)
Script: NYFEM Communications Team
Voiceover: Ashley Judd (Actor/Activist)

Watch & learn about the campaign in Atlanta:

To read more about sex buyers, including some high-profile cases, read here:

Learn more about efforts to decriminalize “sex work” and why so many survivors prefer the Survivor Model:

For more reports and data related to sex trafficking, sexual violence, and/or the sex trade, please see our Resources page.

SOURCES

¹ Melissa Farley et al., “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” Journal of Trauma Practice 2, no. 3–4 (2004): 33–74, https://doi.org/10.1300/J189v02n03_03.

² Farley, Melissa; Banks, Martha E.; Ackerman, Rosalie J.; and Golding, Jacqueline M. (2018) “Screening for Traumatic Brain Injury in Prostituted Women,” Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 5. https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2018.03.02.05

³ Potterat, John J et al. “Mortality in a long-term open cohort of prostitute women.” American journal of epidemiology vol. 159,8 (2004): 778-85.

⁴ Jody Raphael and Katie Feifer, “Get the Facts: What We Know about Sex Trafficking, Sexual Exploitation, and Prostitution in the United States,” (World Without Exploitation, January 2020), https://www.equalitymodelus.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Get-the-Facts- January-2020.pdf.

⁵ Id.