NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Sex trafficking survivors say even in #MeToo era they struggle to be heard

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Sex trafficking survivors say even in #MeToo era they struggle to be heard

By: MEGAN CERULLO, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 

Nikki Bell was 16 years old the first time she had sex for money. Her mother had recently died, she became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and soon thereafter, wound up in the arms of a pimp.

For 10 years, she was paid to be sexually assaulted multiple times a day in an industry that normalizes and thrives on exploitation.

“You are trying to survive at this point in your life, which is why most people enter into prostitution. Because they are at an economic disadvantage,” Bell, 37, told the Daily News.

She disputes the notion that choices existed for people like her.

“It wasn’t empowering. It was, if I don’t engage in oral sex, I am going to get my head kicked in, I am going to starve,” she said. “It’s only a choice if you have choices.”

Advocates and survivors of commercial sexual exploitation say the industry is fueled by the same sense of entitlement Hollywood producers use to coerce aspiring actresses into sex. Yet victims do not feel like they are included in or represented by the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements targeting abuse and sexism.

“In the midst of the #MeToo movement, sex trafficking seems to stay in the shadows,” said Shandra Woworuntu, who became a victim at 25.

 Survivors are speaking out ahead of an expected Senate vote Monday on a bill that holds websites accountable for facilitating the illicit trade.

Online advertising has contributed to the explosion of domestic sex trafficking — making buying sex as easy as finding a roommate or selling furniture. More than 60% percent of survivors have at some point been advertised online, according to a 2015 report from Thorn, a non-profit that fights child sexual abuse.

While advocates say the legislation — known as FOSTA-SESTA — would allow victims to pursue legal action against culpable websites, critics argue it would stymie free speech on the Internet.

Under federal law, “sex trafficking” is defined as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.”

The #MeToo movement has helped oust longtime perpetrators of sexual exploitation from positions of power. But sex traffickers continue to lurk in the shadows as their victims struggle to be heard.

“It’s all part of the same deeply rooted societal problem in gender inequality. It stems from the same place. To try to section off commercial sexual exploitation from these other issues is a really big mistake,” said Lauren Hersh, the national director of non-profit World Without Exploitation.

“When you pull a lot of stuff away, you are dealing with the privileged and entitled who are doing whatever they want to women and girls who are fearful of reporting it, or feel like they will not be believed,” Hersh told the Daily News.

Woworuntu, now 41, recalls being “treated like a rag doll” while being forced to perform sexual acts.

“I wasn’t treated like a human being. They could do whatever they wanted with my body because they bought me,” she said Thursday at a United Nations conference on gender and trafficking.

She believes that the #MeToo movement “should be extended from the workplace to every place.”

Human trafficking survivors say that in some ways, celebrities’ experiences — accounts that have garnered major attention and turned hashtags into worldwide social movements — resonate with them.

Jennifer Gaines said she can “definitely relate to the feeling of being used to get your own needs met” that has been chronicled by everyone from farmworkers to actresses in harrowing tales of sexual abuse.

Gaines entered “the life” as a teenager and says she was one of the first to advertise herself for sex on Backpage.com in the late 1990s.

The website, which features classified listings for a variety of services, allows buyers to shop for sex online, effectively enabling human trafficking to flourish. The Washington state Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that Backpage.com edited ads to conceal the underlying criminal activity.

The bill package the Senate is expected to vote on Monday, titled “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” and “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act,” would close a loophole that shields websites like Backpage.com from criminal liability for content published by third parties. It would only target sites that “knowingly” facilitate sex trafficking.

“The term ‘knowingly,’ from the legal perspective, is a pretty serious threshold. You have to show significant evidence to prove that knowingly standard, it’s not haphazard,” Hersh said.

Hersh noted that the bill seeks to protect one of society’s most vulnerable populations.

“We are mostly talking about the faces of women and girls at the intersection of racial inequality, gender inequality and income inequality.”

The House of Representatives passed a version of the bill late last month with a 388-25 vote.

Supporters of the bill note that the Internet has evolved tremendously since the CDA was created.

“It was never designed to shield criminal activity, and that’s exactly what it’s doing right now and we need a fix there,” Hersh said.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, speaking at a press conference Wednesday, said FOSTA-SESTA “would finally enable action against what are essentially online, open-air bazaars.”

Opponents — including some survivors — contend that the bill would make the industry more dangerous by removing advertisements that allow victims to communicate with each other about potential clients.

But Bell argues that it’s the industry, not the legislation, that is dangerous.

“The work is not empowering. If that were true then you wouldn’t need an online mechanism to be able to share with other sex workers that a potential customer tried to kill you,” Bell said. “I have yet to find a catering company that needed to warn another catering service that a customer was going to assault them.”

Yasmeen Hassan, the global executive director of Equality Now, said FOSTA-SESTA is essential to ending sexual exploitation.

“We have to attack the business of sex-trafficking and disrupt the demand for commercial sex,” she said at the UN conference.

It would be a mistake to exclude its victims from the #MeToo movement, Hassan added.

“Everything that happens to women is rooted in gender equality so sex-trafficking cannot be attacked from outside of that,” she said.