Let’s better understand problems of minors trading sex

Following the successful conference that Harm Reduction Hawaii sponsored on Jan. 9, “Deconstructing Sex Work and Sex Trafficking,” there is still much to do to get better public understanding of the issues involved. Issues concerning youth and their relationship to the sex trades need better data, understanding and coordination of social services.

We were happy to see that one of the topics presented at our conference received such wonderful coverage in the Star-Advertiser (“Troubled lives of street youth,” Feb. 9). I hope you will consider more such stories that include the various other presentations made on that day.

There are a number of problems faced by youth who are either at risk of or fully engaged in trading sex. However, we need to focus a lot more attention on why they are in the situations they are in and how trading sex has become part of their survival strategy.

Too much discussion revolves around a dominant narrative of young girls being lured or coerced into prostitution. The results are knee-jerk reactions wherein communities ask for a heavy law enforcement approach. Although this narrative has done a lot to get public attention and money flow to youth, it diverts attention from problem solving to problem attacking.

Anti-trafficking laws written to mete out stiff penalties to adults who control and abuse minors in the sex trades have been misused in some U.S. jurisdictions against teenagers themselves. This problem has existed with adults as well wherein two persons who sell sex work collaboratively, both can then be treated as traffickers.

The broad group of homeless teens needs to be understood and better served. That starts with listening to their own stories. It includes an understanding that boys and transgender girls make up a large slice of underage prostitution. Many minors would pursue other avenues of support if they were available. Few teens trading sex will fit into the dominant narrative. Functional problems with child welfare systems, with legal barriers presented to minors, and with turf wars between agencies have further clouded the issues.

We need to have services that teens can access without dealing with delays and paperwork required by bureaucracy. We need to value our case workers and ensure that they have access to ways to address the stress of their work. We need to ensure that minors themselves are included in the planning and oversight of programs designed to help them. Their direct knowledge of the many frustrations they may have encountered working with “the system” should instruct us on what we need to change.

Today the new war on sex trafficking seems to be following the playbook of the old war on drugs. Scary stories that anger and alarm lead to calls for tougher laws, longer sentences and mass incarceration. Dispassionate analysis of these approaches in their relationship to solving the original problem has been offered, but only recently begun to set in.

Compare that approach to that of addressing the abuses of child labor in many industries of the past. No one suggested closing factories or mines. Instead they saw the problems of those working there, including children, as ones of labor. In the West Bengal region of India, adult sex workers have founded their own labor organization, Durbar. Among its many efforts has been to successfully identify and assist young people in the trade and to help them exit it. Maybe this is an approach we should consider in Hawaii.