Tanya's Story: Human Trafficking is the Responsibility of All of Us

by Erin O'Hanlon, Coordinator of Community Initiatives, The Women’s Center

Tanya (not her real name) was 13 years old when she first met the woman who introduced her to “The Life.” She was out at 11 o'clock on a Wednesday night, hanging in the park across from the apartment building where she lived with her mom in Detroit.

The woman, driving a beautiful Mercedes, showed lots of concern for Tanya. Why was she out at that time of night? Would she be able to get up for school the next day after being out so late? What would her parents say about her hanging on the street corner?

Tanya blew all that off with a scowl. Her mom was a drunk, and she could see the truant officer coming in his government issued vehicle a mile away. Her mom's boyfriend was the main one to be avoided, with his grabby hands and offers of cash or pot in return for silence.

The woman bought Tanya something to eat, gave her an Ed Hardy hoody to keep warm. The woman said girls like them, girls who had it hard growing up, had to stick together. She said she would come back to check in with Tanya, make sure she was doing okay. She did, always providing food and warmth in her nice car, sometimes taking Tanya to get her nails done.

Before long, Tanya was crashing at the woman's place whenever she wanted, had a disposable cell phone the woman put minutes on, borrowed her clothes. It all seemed too good to be true. Tanya took on the nickname “Shorty.” The woman and her boyfriend, who watched her from across the room, promised to take her on a weekend trip to Atlantic City where they like to gamble. That trip to Atlantic City changed Tanya's life.

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The average age a girl enters into commercial sex work is 13 years old. The same age some girls get their first boyfriend or go to their first formal dance, there are girls who are being bought and sold in America. Atlantic County has the some of the highest rate of arrests for juveniles being prostituted in the state of New Jersey. It also has the second highest rate of adults being prostituted. Atlantic City is a human trafficking hub.

Despite what many believe to the be case, these human trafficking victims are not always foreign born\or brought to this country illegally. Many are lured from local areas in other states, including large Midwest cities and small towns on the East Coast.

They come from environments that act as training camps for exploitation. Dysfunctional families of origin, with histories of substance abuse and previous sexual violence, is all too common for women and girls who are being commercially sexually exploited. Their vulnerabilities are preyed upon by those who “turn them out” or introduce them to the streets. The person who turns them out may be a “bottom girl,” – a female who recruits for a pimp and helps to monitor and dispatch workers. It may be a pimp who portrays himself as a boyfriend initially eager to treat a girl like a princess, and then later eager only for the money she can hand over.

For every girl or woman walking the streets, answering escort calls or working the bars in the casinos, society also plays a part in putting her there. American cultures aggrandizes pimp culture and promotes sexuality available and ready, 24-7. Look no further for this than LasVegas' nickname, “Sin City,” and Atlantic City's slogan, “Always Turned On!” When society doesn't recognize a larger system of poverty and dysfunction at work or tries to make excuses – “She chooses to do it,” or “It's hers to sell” – we all participate in human trafficking. When society doesn't recognize that these girls' lives aren't filled with choices, but are completely void of them, and that this often leads to their involvement in trafficking – we look away from the real root of the problem.

In Atlantic City, a group of nonprofits, law enforcement agencies and community members want to stop the selling and buying of women and girls that happens daily. The Anti-Trafficking Task Force of Atlantic County (ATTAC) is working a multi-leveled strategy: prevention, protection, and prosecution. Strong partnerships between child protective services, police departments and local youth shelters have formed to bring awareness to the issue and offer better options for those being sold. ATTAC's latest goal is to create a “John School,” to deter the demand for commercial sexual exploitation. This would offer a re-education program for anyone arrested for soliciting commercial sex. The fees paid to the school would help to fund ATTAC's prevention and intervention efforts.

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When Tanya got to Atlantic City, everything changed. She was told the trip wasn't free, and she would have to earn her way back to Detroit on the “track” doing “dates.” When she resisted, she was beaten into submission and raped by the pimp. Her “wife-in-law,” the woman who had recruited her, showed her how to dress to gain attention. She had her 14th birthday on the street.

After 2 months she fled, called her mom from a pay phone, walked into a police station. Still today she thinks about that time, the flashes of money she saw, but never had. Over $2,000 a week passed through her hands. With support and counseling, she has recognizes that she has been changed by that experience, but refuses to be defined by it. She hopes someday to talk to young girls about The Life and its false promises. First, though, she wants to finish 8th grade.

For more information about ATTAC or the services offered by The Women's Center, please contact our 24 hour hotline at 1-800-286-4184.

New Year’s Resolution #1: Let New Jersey Know How Harmful Tucker Max is!

The new year is almost upon us, and so that means that there are many people preparing to make New Year’s Resolutions. In past years, I would resolve to exercise more, sleep less or stop to smell the roses more. For 2010, I have nothing so ethereal. For 2010, my one and only resolution is to let New Jersey know what a negative message Tucker Max brings.

Who is this Tucker Max, you may ask? And how does Tucker Max have me so riled up? If you have a minute, do a quick reconnaissance mission over to Mr. Max’s blog site at http://www.tuckermax.com. If you can stand to look at it for more than 15 minutes, I give you a lot of credit. If you can’t stand his dribble for that long, here are some of the choicer quotes:

Tucker Max disparages women’s rights to sexual consent and openly speaks of acts that fit the legal definition of sexual assault, specifically, “I’m trying to get you drunk, so you can’t consent to sex anymore.”

Tucker Max wants to decide who deserves human rights. An example from his book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell: “The lowest of the low is a fat woman with a loud personality. This woman is generally just so annoying that you have to actively restrain yourself from kicking her in the crotch and stomping on her throat until she drowns on her own blood. There is no insult too mean or crude for her, and basic human rights do not apply to her.”

Tucker Max promotes the sexual objectification of women. For example, here’s a quote from the New York Times: “When a journalism student from Paramus, New Jersey asked if she could take a photograph with him, he agreed, and pressed his hand into her cleavage when the camera flash went off.”

Tucker Max spreads an epidemic of hateful ideology that denigrates women, people of color, and disabled people, and perpetrates verbal, emotional and psychological abuse and promotes sexual violence and physical abuse of vulnerable people.

Tucker Max is coming to New Jersey in January. And you’re paying for it.

Specifically, on January 20, 2010, he’s coming to The College of New Jersey, having been invited by the College Union Board, the internal college activities board. The College of New Jersey is reportedly paying him over $15,000 to come to the campus and promote his book and show his movie.

The College of New Jersey is funded in part through tax payers’ money from the Commission on Higher Education, and the College Union Board is financed in part through student fees that go to the college. The College is also funded by alumni who donate. As a community, is this where we want to be putting our money?

The irony of all of this is that The College of New Jersey also funds one of the most successful anti-violence initiatives on any college campus in New Jersey. Through the Office of Anti-Violence Initiatives, Jackie Deitch-Stackhouse has successfully begun a Green Dot campaign. Green Dot is a strategy to end power based personal violence such as sexual assault, dating violence, stalking and domestic violence. More about that program can be found at http://www.tcnj.edu/~greendot/.

1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men in New Jersey face sexual violence in their lives, and Tucker Max treats sexual violence like it’s a joke and openly blogs about having committed such acts. This event is January is supporting and contributing to a culture that promotes and encourages sexual violence against women. What if this was you? Your sister? Your girlfriend? Your friend? Tucker Max makes light of real people’s experiences, and by doing so, robs them of the voice they deserve to have.

Statistics show that nearly 95% of men on college campuses DO NOT commit rape, and 75% of college men are uncomfortable with other men’s sexist behavior. People who don’t support this event are automatically supporting thousands of women that are raped and sexually abused every year, many of which occur on college campus. If you openly oppose this event, you will be supporting thousands of people of color and people who are disabled, and you will send the message that you do not tolerate the rape or abuse of women and the disparagement of people of color and people who are disabled.

If you have even a minute to do something, and want to send a message loud and clear, below is the link to send a message to the TCNJ president and the Chair of the TCNJ Board of Trustees about the Tucker Max event in January. Please email this link to whoever you think would be interested: http://capwiz.com/njcasa/issues/alert/?alertid=14483841

And make your own New Year’s resolution to talk to people about why Tucker Max is hurtful and hateful to people in our communities. It’s certainly an easier and more important resolution than that one to sleep less.