NY can lead in protecting sex workers under the law

Replace their exploitation with education and employment

It is welcome news that New York is now considering the Sex Trade Survivors Justice and Equality Act, a bill to decriminalize people in prostitution. Sponsored by Sen. Liz Kreuger and Assemblywoman Pamela Hunter, this law reform is long overdue.

For too long around the world, those bought and sold in the sex trade — mostly women — have been the target of law enforcement, while those who buy and sell them — the so-called “johns” and pimps — enjoy impunity. In Sweden, we were the first to adopt a law — in 1999 — that became the blueprint for what is now known as the Equality Model, or the Nordic Model. We recognize that prostitution is an expression of inequality — the inequality between buyers of prostitution and those who are sold or sell themselves for what we recognize to be sexual exploitation. Our Swedish model has proven to be an effective exit strategy for those who are exploited by the commercial sex industry, as well as an effective strategy to address the scourge of sex trafficking.

The Swedish Equality Model decriminalizes all those who are exploited in prostitution, providing services for them rather than penalties, while penalizing those who would buy sex as if it were a product. Our law holds buyers accountable, as well as the pimps, rather than those who have ended up in prostitution through debt, manipulation or coercion.

While the tremendously lucrative sex trade is always looking for new ways to commercialize women — on the internet if not on the street — progress continues, and most importantly, women in prostitution have access to services and need not fear criminal sanctions. Our hope was that the law would have a normative effect and change the way in which men thought about women and sex equality. And over time, our model has had a significant impact in changing norms and culture. Prostitution has decreased, and support for the law has grown.

Beyond our borders as well, the model has been adopted in Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Canada, France, Ireland, and, most recently, Israel.

For decades, Germany and the Netherlands have supported the legalization of prostitution, presumably in the belief that this approach is beneficial to those who are sold in the commercial sex industry, as well as those who profit from the industry such as pimps and brothel owners. Now that the brothels have been closed due to the COVID -19 pandemic, the debate over whether this approach has been successful is taking on a new visibility and it is a good time to look seriously at the questions raised.

Since 2002 when the German law was enacted, the sex trade is said to have increased at least threefold

— now an estimated 400,000 people. Most of them are women and most come from other countries, driven by desperation and some of them trafficked by third-party profiteers. Now Germany and the Netherlands are reconsidering, as their approach to the legalization of prostitution has not had its intended effect.

The link between legalized prostitution and sex trafficking is self-evident. Our Ministry of Justice told us that they had intercepted calls from traffickers saying that it wasn’t worth doing business in Sweden and would be better to go to neighboring countries where selling trafficked girls and women would be much easier. And in fact, sex trafficking has significantly decreased in Sweden since our adoption of the law. Sweden is not a friendly market for sex traffickers, who depend heavily on prostitution to create the demand and a retail outlet for their supply chain of girls and women.

We need to recognize that a large number of people in prostitution are victims of trafficking, and we must not legitimize an industry that feeds on the exploitation and abuse of women, girls and LGTBQI people. Under the UN Protocol on human trafficking, ratified by the United States as well as Sweden, we have an international legal obligation to target the demand for prostitution.

Following the closure of brothels across Europe, recently 16 members of the German Parliament endorsed our Equality Model and expressed the hope that brothels would remain permanently closed as the country reopens. The marketing of prostitution in Germany illustrates the harm of prostitution — the “package deals” of mega-brothels advertising beer, hot dogs and women commodify and dehumanize women. They are degrading not empowering.

According to German psychologist and trauma expert Dr. Ingeborg Kraus, “Prostitution leaves deep scars on the body and soul.”

Rachel Moran, a survivor of the sex trade, has written compellingly in her book, “Paid For,” about the trauma of prostitution caused by dissociation, which she calls “necessary but dangerous.”

As she explains, “Dissociation is essential here; the prostituted cannot maintain her identity or sanity without it.”

New York would be the first state in

America to move beyond the antiquated conception of women in prostitution as drivers of the industry, culpable for luring innocent men into sinful acts. Responsibility for the sex trade lies with the buyers who create the demand for commercialization of women, and the surrounding multibillion-dollar industry that thrives on their exploitation. Those who are commodified by a supply chain to meet this demand — mostly women, and mostly women of color — should be protected rather than prosecuted by the law.

Recognition of the sex trade as inherently harmful to those whom it exploits and to society at large, as a force that perpetuates inequality, preying particularly on disadvantaged women, should lead to effective exit strategies that replace exploitation with education and employment. This will be an effective way to promote sex and gender equality, and hopefully New York will set a progressive example for other states to follow.