We don’t have much in the way of alternative press here in Providence, the biggest alt paper being the Providence Phoenix. It’s mostly fluff, but each issue includes a free catbox liner –- I mean, Adult Section. This is supposed to be a convenient way for the paper to retain most of its readers while publishing pages of ads every week for the escort services and strip clubs that help pay its bills. I find little piles of discarded Adult sections wherever the Phoenix is distributed, but maybe that’s where the real news is.

You know the cliche about illegal immigrants doing the jobs Americans won’t do. Prostitution is a huge profit maker for pimps and brothel owners, but they need a supply of women who can be controlled. The supply comes from the poorest and most desperate people worldwide. They are recruited with the promise of a job, transported across borders without documents, and left without the protection of law, far from family, not speaking the language. The trafficker can demand that the person work to pay the cost of passage– indentured servitude, or just never release them. It’s slavery, it’s happening right here in Rhode Island.

It’s no coincidence that so many of the ads feature Asian women. On a page of the Phoenix headlined, ‘Spas� most of the ads include the word, ‘Oriental’ or have an Asian theme. In the past ten years there have been numerous police raids on fake massage parlors that are really brothelsand it’s always the same story– Korean women, some illegal, some married to Americans. They live on the premises, they don’t speak English, sometimes they are sick or injured and have not gotten medical care. They don’t want to testify, they don’t trust the police. If you read the Providence Journal you will get the story of the raid, but no follow-up. The women disappear, the brothel re-opens at the same, or another, location.

Prostitutes are not high-status people, despite the fantasies we are sold on tv and in the movies. Illegal immigrants have very few defenders, and someone who is a prostitute and illegal doesn’t have money, status or a vote. The women in the brothels don’t have a voice, they are afraid to talk even to a counselor through an interpreter. Were they lied to, forced, threatened? Are their families threatened? The answer is probably yes, the women have no power against their traffickers and there’s huge profit to be made.

Why should we care? We should care because this is organized crime and it’s flourishing in our state. In the past ten years the numbers of brothels has increased, and local money is flowing into a network that lures poor women into a situation where they have no options. Money is power. Do we want to let human traffickers consolidate power because we think that illegal people don’t matter? We are complacent if we think that this crime network will never take a form that endangers the average Rhode Islander.

What can we do? Our General Assembly is reviewing two bills, S745 and S0692 that are intended to prosecute the pimps, the owners, the traffickers. The bills offer protection for victims and opportunities to testify. It’s important to note that the crimes of force, fraud and coercion are what these bills address. A person forced into factory or domestic labor can also get action against their traffickers. This is important because a person doing forced domestic work today could be forced into prostitution tomorrow, it’s slavery that is the issue.

There are some people who call these efforts, ‘The New Abolitionism’. I have come to a more cautious take on this, and a lot more humility. We are not going to change human nature, or eliminate crime. We are not going to stop prostitution. What we can do, and this would be a great deal, is to have an effective law that makes it risky and unprofitable to force anyone into prostitution. We can educate the public that a pimp is a parasite, and in the case of human trafficking, a criminal who profits from the destruction of human lives. Laws are being passed in other states with similar intent, but I think that Rhode Island, with its small population and accessibility to our legislature has a good chance of being successful in stopping this intolerable human rights abuse.

If you want to know more about this, contact Polaris Project, research the net, call your representatives and talk to your community groups, police, religious or charitable organizations. There is a diverse group of people working on this issue, together we can change things for the better.