FOSTA/SESTA Was Passed Based On Made Up Stats About Sex Trafficking

from the this-seems-like-a-problem dept

Last year we had a post detailing how the numbers that supporters of SESTA were pushing didn't appear to have any factual basis. Some huge numbers were thrown around, claiming that trafficking was a $9.8 billion industry or that thousands of kids were lured into sex trafficking every year. But, when reporters and experts dug into those numbers, they found that they were either made up, involved egregious sampling errors or insane extrapolation. These reports all suggested that while sex trafficking is real, the problem is not nearly as big as politicians and supporters of SESTA were making it out to be.

Now an article in Buzzfeed by two academics provides even more details in how the claims about sex trafficking used to pass FOSTA/SESTA were based on myths. The two academics, Drs. Jenny Heineman and Brooke Wagner point to a ton of empirical research they did (funded by the Justice Department) that completely debunked some of the key claims behind SESTA/FOSTA. The first myth? That no one chooses sex work, but that nearly all sex workers are victims of trafficking by pimps. That's not what they found.

In our subsample of youth under the age of 18 who were, at the time of interview, engaged in survival sex, 33 individuals — 24% —had a pimp or trafficker, liberally defined as someone with whom the respondent shared their earnings. That definition raises questions of its own, and one young woman’s experience stood out as representative of those questions. Rena, who was 16 at the time of the interview, laughed when we asked if she had a pimp. She tipped her head toward one of her friends.

Again, that's not to take away from the issue about those who are trafficking or are dealing with abusive pimps. But, if we're going to tackle a problem it should be focused on the actual problem.

The researchers also studied Backpage and how much of it was used for trafficking as opposed to sex workers choosing to use the platform themselves. Take a guess what they found:

Another myth is that the internet — and in particular sites like backpage.com, which was recently shuttered by the FBI — is primarily used by pimps. This is not what our research showed. In fact, the percentage of respondents who used the internet to find customers remained the same, whether or not they reported having a pimp. In fact, the only variable that correlated with using an online platform to find clients was neighborhood conflict — respondents whose neighborhoods were marked with disputes that led to physical fights or altercations were more likely to seek customers from the internet. This suggests online platforms act as safety nets and buffers against violence.

And, their research also shows -- as we noted in a few of our posts -- that shutting down sites like Backpage actually puts sex workers at much greater risk of being harmed or killed:

Because law enforcement routinely uses online platforms to entrap and arrest sex workers, it’s clear that these women would rather advertise online and risk arrest — which can spell death for black, brown, and indigenous people, trans people, and people with mental illness — rather than face the violence of the street. Our current federal policy is to take away that choice, and the crackdown on online platforms used by sex workers is likely to push those women into violent situations.

There are ways to deal with the actual victims of course. But that involves doing actual police work. Tracking down actual victims (something that online platforms like Backpage actually helped in doing) and arresting their abusers. But that's actually harder in a post-FOSTA/SESTA world.

And what do we get for this? Well, as Vox recently noted, nothing less than undermining the internet as we know it. If we're going to do that, it seems like it should have been done based on, you know, actual facts, rather than completely made up statistics and lies. Alas.

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Filed Under: exaggerations, fosta, sesta, sex trafficking, stats

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