Jacqueline S. Homan
Aug 9, 2017 · 4 min read

There’s a few things here that are important to remember regarding the very highly marginalized populations of trafficking survivors, former sex workers, and current sex workers.

  1. All those anti-trafficking NGOs are NOT helping trafficking survivors to get on our feet and rebuild our lives. In fact, based on just our community’s jobless poverty and homeless rates alone show that at least 90% (the actual figures are actually higher, closer to 98%) of poor trafficking survivors are NOT getting helped by the NGOs with anything material to their survival, never mind adequate economic and social support so they can actually rebuild their lives. Consequently, many trafficking survivors DO return to the sex trade as independent sex workers — which is why the majority of trafficking victims/survivors experiences in the sex trade are not binary. This is the anti-trafficking/abolitionist movement’s dirty little secret.
  2. The same privileged people running the anti-trafficking NGOs and controlling all of the anti-trafficking funds as well as controlling whose voices in the trafficking survivor community get elevated and heard, are also cut from the same cloth as the ones that control which sex workers (both former and current) get to present at conferences and get compensated with speaker fees: Privileged people who have no direct connection with, never had any experience in, the sex trade precisely because they have/had options that the people they claim to “speak for” and “fight for” do not.
  3. Legislation most certainly DOES directly affect trafficking survivors and former sex workers who are no longer in the industry. In the majority of states across the US, an underaged sex trafficking victim that catches a prostitution charge is criminalized for life because in most states a prostitution record confers a 99-year “sex offender” status.

There are many destitute older sex trafficking survivors that are now in their 50’s with failing eyesight and in very frail health who are homeless (or near-homeless), suffering without basic needs, whom no NGOs are helping, who were never able to escape abject poverty their entire lives because a prostitution record incurred when they were 13 and trafficked decades before there ever was any ‘official’ anti-trafficking/abolitionist movement rendered them unemployable for life.

Although some older trafficking survivors finally did get their prostitution records and sex offender statuses expunged and wiped from their record in very recent years after having reached their 40’s and 50’s with the help of a few pro bono attorneys willing to help, it was a whole lot too little a whole lot too late when you’re now “too old” for any employer to hire at an entry level job.

Many older and/or disabled trafficking survivors and former sex workers alike are aging out on the streets homeless and starving in dire poverty, and and suffering without badly needed medical and dental care. And because of having been previously shut out of the economy during our younger years, we have nothing paid into social security so we won’t even be able to get that — if we even live to see age 67 (which is what the official retirement age is now up to).

What remedy at law exists to provide for any compensation to wrongfully charged/convicted child sex trafficking survivors who were completely shut out of the economy their entire working-aged lives before their records were finally expunged after they became “too old” for any employer to hire?

Is ANYONE even acknowledging that problem?

Who should really be speaking for those affected trafficking survivors and former sex workers alike to make sure that this issue gets addressed since it is literally a matter of life and death for a population that remains deeply marginalized and poor long after their experience in the sex trade ended?

Currently, most states provide a remedy at law for ex-felons who won an overturning of their convictions and prison sentencing after losing years, even decades, of their lives that there is no way to recoup. Courts held that lost time due to unjust convictions and sentencing entails lost earnings — so exonerated felons can sue the state and get compensated for damages. One notorious case comes to mind is Ray Krone, who received over $4 million for his wrongful conviction and the 10 years he spent in prison.

But poor old and disabled trafficking survivors and former sex workers that suffered socially and economically — similarly to the wrongfully convicted felons — because their prostitution records rendered them unemployable for life, leaving the majority unable to economically provide for themselves (outside of the sex industry), costing them job opportunities, the ability to obtain housing, health care, and lost social security credits towards their own old age SS allotment, have no adequate remedy at law.

So yes, current or pending legislation and policy most certainly DOES adversely affect trafficking survivors like myself and former sex workers like Laura LeMoon and many others like us who are no longer in the sex trade. And that’s precisely why we deserve a seat at the table— this is our movement, too.

    Jacqueline S. Homan

    Written by

    F#, Haskell, Ruby/Ruby on Rails developer, human rights activist and author