Sex trafficking via the Internet: how international agreements address the problem and fail to go far enough.

• Author: Kunze, Erin I.

Cite as 10 J. HIGH TECH. L. 241 (2010)

1. Introduction

   "Craigslist is the single largest source of prostitution in the nation ... (1) Missing children, runaways, abused women and women trafficked in from foreign countries are routinely forced to have sex with strangers because they're being pimped on Craigslist."

   --Thomas J. Dart, Sheriff, Cook County, IL. (2)

   On March 5, 2009, Illinois Sheriff Thomas J. Dart brought a federal lawsuit against the owners of Craigslist.org, an online classifieds website. (3) The suit sought to enjoin website owners from hosting an "erotic" services forum on their site. (4) Dart also sought damages exceeding $100,000 from Craigslist to pay the costs of police enforcement that the department expended in response to prostitution, juvenile pimping, and human trafficking promulgated over the site. (5)

   Craigslist is one of many online media through which pimps and human traffickers lure young women into the commercial sex industry under false pretenses. (6) Pimps and human traffickers then use these websites to sell the women they've enslaved as commercial sex workers. (7) Although Craigslist has been notorious for hosting an "erotic" services page, pimps and human traffickers increasingly solicit women via a range of Internet websites, chat rooms, and peer-to-peer file-sharing servers to which they and the women they seek have ample access.

   While sex trafficking is not a new phenomenon, the Internet is a new resource for sex traffickers to find vulnerable women, sell women for sexual exploitation, and at the same time conceal their own identities. (8) Because of the highly unregulated nature of the Internet, (9) pimps and those who purchase trafficked women and children are able to use this platform for criminal purposes with minimal risk of prosecution. (10) Further the Internet allows those who exploit enslaved women and children to share experiences with an expansive World Wide Web audience, thereby normalizing the victimization of trafficked women and children. (11) Finally, because Internet websites have global reach, this paper discusses the need for international legal cooperation to further develop human rights law by more explicitly criminalizing Internet-facilitated sex trafficking.

2. A History of Internet Facilitated Sex Trafficking

   In the most basic sense, human trafficking is a means of slavery. (12) Although slavery has been legally abolished throughout the world, (13) the practice remains robust both in the U.S. and abroad. (14) As they have done for centuries, slave trader--snow known as "traffickers"--entrap vulnerable populations including men, women and children by forcing them into involuntary servitude. (15) Today, forced laborers are commonly traded or sold nationally and internationally as agricultural and industrial workers, soldiers, sex workers and indentured sex slaves (16)-women and children recruited, harbored, transported or otherwise obtained for the "purpose of a commercial sex act." (17)

   The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children states that sex trafficking means, at a minimum, "the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation...." (18) According to the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act, human sex trafficking is considered a "severe form of trafficking," which frequently involves "a commercial sex act [] induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age." (19)

   The United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are over twelve million individuals currently working as forced laborers who have been trafficked both domestically and internationally. (20) Of those individuals trafficked as forced laborers, the ILO estimates that 1.7 million are forced into commercial sexual exploitation. (21) In 2002, the United States Department of Justice approximated that some 50,000 women were trafficked into the United States alone for the purposes of commercial sex. (22) That number does not include women trafficked domestically between or within U.S. states. (23)

   1. The Victims *

      Women and children often become victims of sex trafficking when pimps or commercial traffickers abduct them, or entice them to various locations under false pretenses. (24) The most vulnerable women and children are often those from developing or war-torn nations who have limited earning opportunities. (25) The promise of work abroad may lure these individuals into the arms of traffickers intending to exploit them in the commercial sex trade. (26) Once enslaved, women throughout the world are left to their own devices to regain their freedom. (27) In the United States, police have a difficult time finding women and children who are abducted and constantly moved from one location to another. (28) In many parts of the world, law enforcement officers turn a blind eye to the plight of enslaved women and children, or worse, are an integral part of the illegal sex trade-taking money from brothel keepers and sexually exploiting brothel slaves in exchange for allowing the brothel's business to continue. (29)

      Anita Sharma Bhattarai of Nepal, was 27 years old when she left her husband. (30) In order to support her children, she raised money by purchasing vegetables from farmers and selling them in villages. (31) While on a bus ride to buy her inventory, a fellow bus passenger offered Bhattarai a banana, and later, a pill to treat a headache. (32) After taking the pill, Bhattarai fell unconscious, and awoke in a train station in India. (33) Her bus captor sold her into a brothel where she was beaten and forced into the commercial sex industry. (34) Bhattarai attempted to buy her way out of the brothel, but discovered that her freedom was not for sale. (35) She managed to escape the brothel only when a new maid left a brothel gate ajar in the early morning. (36)

      In another case, a 33-year-old Ukrainian woman responded to a newspaper advertisement to study abroad in Israel. (37) Upon her arrival, the woman was taken to an apartment where others informed her that she was there to serve as a prostitute. (38) The man who solicited her via the study abroad advertisement raped her and sold her to a pimp. (39) She was then forced to have sex against her will until, like Bhattarai, she managed to escape captivity. (40)

      While pimps in the U.S. and abroad have preyed on the economic and emotional plight of women living in poverty or abusive homes, modern conveniences such as digital cameras, Internet connections, and social networking websites make it easy for predators to entice, torture and bribe young girls of al backgrounds. (41) Theresa Flores, a former sex slave, was manipulated, blackmailed, and mentally abused by a group of young men from her high school for two years. (42) Flores was a self-proclaimed "upper-middle-class" suburban girl from a caring family. (43) Her nightmare started when a fellow student invited her to his house after school. When Flores arrived at his house, the young man raped her while his friends photographed the incident. (44) The male student subsequently used the photographs, repeated rape, and Flores's own sense of shame to blackmail her into performing sex acts with numerous people. (45) Federal Prosecutor Erica MacDonald, who frequently works on s ex trade cases, argues that the Internet has made the manipulation and abuse, such as Flores faced, more common. (46)

      A recent prostitution bust in Illinois told a story similar to that of the young Ukrainian woman lured to Israel. In the Illinois case, a nineteen-year-old female responded to an Internet ad promoting modeling opportunities. (47) Instead of offering her a modeling job, the advertiser enticed the girl to wait in a hotel room where she was expected to have sex with an unknown person. (48) The advertiser, who would become her pimp, intended to sell the young woman for sex at an hourly rate. (49) In this case, the pimp's would-be client was an Illinois police officer who brought the young woman to safety. (50)

      In cases where women are entrapped through in-person solicitation, their captors quickly turn to the Internet to advertise their sexual services. (51) A young couple approached 17 year-old "Maya" in a shopping mall in Arizona and-like the Internet advertiser in Illinois-offered her a modeling job. (52) The couple brought Maya to have her nails and hair fashioned, took suggestive photos of her, and promptly posted those photos to an escort service website unbeknownst to Maya. (53) Maya's pimps used the website to advertise where and when she would appear to offer sexual services. (54) Because the pimps were using the Internet to advertise Maya-keeping her off the street-they made it almost impossible for police to find them. (55) Maya escaped captivity when she ran from a motel in the middle of the night and flagged down a driver on a nearby road for help. (56)

      "Debbie," a 15 year old honors student from Arizona, was abducted in front of her own house by "friends" of a girl she knew from school. (57) Debbie's captors drugged her, psychologically manipulated her (threatening harm to her family if she attempted to escape), and locked her in a dog crate. (58) Shortly after abducting her, Debbie's captors placed an ad offering her services as a prostitute on Craigslist. (59) As soon as the ad ran, men appeared at her captor's apartment where they raped Debbie at all hours of the night and day. (60) Debbie was rescued and her story told when Phoenix police officers raided the pimps' apartment and found her locked in a drawer under a bed. (61) During Debbie's captivity, over fifty men who responded to the Internet ad paid Debbie's captors to rape her. (62)

   2. The Consumers

      Those who are responsible for enticing women and the pimps who prostitute them are only one side of the sex-slave trade. The...