<AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky>
Advocates for Sex Work in South Africa were furious when one research reported that there was no evidence of increased sex trafficking during the Olympics. According to the report, an anti-human trafficking campaign announced that 100,000 people would come into South Africa for prostitution before the World Cup. They pointed out that whereas the anti-trafficking advocates argued that 40,000 women and children would be trafficked before 2006 World Cup in Germany, only 5 cases of sex trafficking were reported after the game. The sex worker advocate in Canada so far went to say that the link between sporting events and increase in sex trafficking is a fiction.
However, Julie Shematz, a sex industry survivor and a founder of BeatyfromAshes, an organization working for sex industry survivors, shows that the link between the mega sporting event and an increase in prostitution or sex trafficking seems to be more than a myth or a fiction.
Sporting events are the playgrounds for johns
When a girl or woman has a pimp forcing her to make a quota in sex and drugs, why not take them to a highly concentrated area where men are looking for a good time? It makes practical marketing sense any way you look at it for traffickers and drug dealers to call the strip clubs there favorite places to hang out. They, too have a lot of opportunity to capitalize from the highly concentrated populace of men. And let’s face it, we all know men make up the highest percentage of johns and sex trafficking perpetrators.
Julie Shematz
People in sex industry think of women in prostitution as commodities. Whether they argue that each sex worker has the rights to sell her body or not, the underlying assumption behind their arguments in advocating for sex industry is that the women selling sex, including the advocates themselves, are the commodities of their businesses. Therefore, the only thing matters to themselves is how much profit one can make off of herself or the girls that one is pimping. Thus, just as candy men or ice cream sellers look for places where the children are, pimps or the people in the sex industry look for sporting events, where they can find high population of men or the buyers of sex. Julie further explains the relationship between sporting events and prostitution or sex industry as follows:
It makes practical marketing sense any way you look at it for traffickers and drug dealers to call the strip clubs there favorite places to hang out. They, too have a lot of opportunity to capitalize from the highly concentrated populace of men. And let’s face it, we all know men make up the highest percentage of johns and sex trafficking perpetrators.
Sporting event : a magnet for prostitution
From my experience in the clubs as an ‘entertainer’ for seven years and having worked with women from the sex-for-sale industry for over seven years the connection is exactly that, it’s a sex-for-sale business. In business you target markets. Largely male dominated sporting events are a lucrative market for the sex-for-sale industry
~Julie Shematz~
Julie testified that even as a stripper, any sporting events became her opportunities to make a large profit off of male customers in the clubs. In addition, her statement that "there was not a single night that she was not proposed for prostitution" for seven years of her experience in the sex industry, shows two things: 1) prostitution is not limited to the street prostitutes alone but include people in other types of work within the industry; and 2) the place, where the prostitution is occurred, is not limited to the street or a cheap motel but everywhere including "the finest gentlemen's club and a residential area:
I used to travel the sporting circuit and work because I knew the large sporting events that drew men from all over. The more men there are the more potential capital there was to be made. There wasn’t a night I worked that I wasn’t propositioned for prostitution in 13 states and over 20 clubs. And I worked in some of the finest ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ in the nation. I was not surprised when I became aware of sex trafficking that pimps take girls and women to cities with large sporting events at all.
The difficulty of conducting the research to prove the link between sex trafficking and mega sports events
Julie also said that many of the customers in sex industry are married men with no accountabilities. She also pointed out that alcohol and drug abuse are common factors involved in sex industry or prostitution:
The majority of men I met in clubs were married. They are seeking out women or girls that will let them go as far as they can and their buddies seem to have this attitude of ‘what happens here stays here’.
They (drug dealers or pimps) can sell to the girls(strippers or sex workers) so they can ‘get in the mood’ (I saw this regularly. Dope dealers come in the club early giving it away, taking orders & then returning later for the money & to sell more dope), which can feed an addiction and she may very well sell it to her john. When you get people that are drugged up, intoxicated and are in an environment of sexual stimulation, you have a breeding ground for prostitution and sex trafficking.
Most strip clubs serve alcohol, many of them push the girls to sell it and men are getting sexually charged up while inhibitions drop. One of my biggest strategies for getting their money was leading them to believe they had a chance to take me home & sleep with me.
[emphasis added]
Such statement of Julie raises the suspicion as to how accurate the research data could have spoken for the increase or decrease of sex trafficking during the mega sports event. Based on the interview with Julie, neither drug addict entertainers nor prostitutes or pimps would speak for how many sex trafficking victims were pimped during the sporting events. Nor would Johns and their friends remember whether the prostitute or the stripper that they slept with was trafficked or not. Moreover, suppose any of the above candidates spoke the truth for the research data sake. Even then, the research data would not be accurate if he or she has looked at the street prostitution, red light district or the police record alone.
Exaggeration is bad, but precaution is necessary
Critics argue that the exaggerated estimation for sex trafficking victims during the mega sports events only created media hypes. But, even if such exaggeration was factually unfounded, this is not to say that sex trafficking during the sports events does not exist. Also, as there is something to be said about the linkage between sex industry and the mega sports events based on the interview with Julie above, one cannot say that the precaution for potential sex trafficking victims during the mega sports events is not completely unwarranted.
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