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To whom it
may Concern:
My name is
Anne Bissell. (www.annebissell.com,
www.sexindustrysurvivors.com).
Since 1997, I have helped women who are survivors of the sex industry
make the necessary changes so that they can be a productive participant
in their lives post-sexual exploitation, post-sex industry.
I have heard many heart-breaking stories. Wendy Barnes is one
of them. Wendy Barnes was victimized, terrorized by a notorious
Pimp. He forced her and other women into years of what we are
now calling "Modern Day Slavery."
Recently,
Wendy told her story for the first time on the April 26th KCET
(PBS) Life and Times program about former prostitutes. But the
term that more aptly applies is "prostituted," or "trafficked."
Unfortunately,
because of the way the system is now set up, Wendy is being forced
to register as a sex offender. She is NOT a sex offender. For
years, she had a gun held to her head, and her pimp threatened
to kill their mutual son if she didn't either turn tricks, or
do whatever else he commanded. He is getting out of prison in
2007 and Wendy is scared...very scared.
Wendy is a
loving, honest, hardworking woman, who is now a member of Sex
Industry Survivors in Orange County. Every Tuesday she drives
two hours each way in rush hour traffic to lead on of SISA's survivor
programs in a house for disadvantaged women in Pasadena.
We must begin
to realize that women are being trafficked right here in the United
States. We must fight for women like Wendy. I intend to. Please
support me in helping Wendy change these laws that re-victimize
women forced into prostitution. Keep in touch with us...the more
SISA meetings we can launch around the United States, and worldwide,
the stronger we will all be to fight against the insidious aspects
of commercialized sexual exploitation.
There are
now meetings in 25 cities, and we have a national hotline. Why
not call us, or email us...we can send you meeting formats and
other info....
Contact me
at:
sisasurvive@yahoo.com
www.sexindustrysurvivors.com
or info@sexindustrysurvivors.com
Together we can make a difference.
Sincerely,
Anne Bissell
Executive Director
Voices for Justice/SISA
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Subject:[DIGNITY] USA: Pornography's link to rape
Pornography's link to rape
Saturday, July 29, 2006
By Judith Reisman
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Would you try to put out a fire with gasoline?
No? Then you might disagree with an MSNBC online article, "Porn: Good for America!" by Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor. Reynolds suggests that pornography reduces rape!
As proof, Reynolds quotes a U.S. Department of Justice claim that in 2004 rape of "people" over age 12 radically decreased with an "85 percent decline in the per-capita rape rate since 1979" (DOJ's National Crime Victimization Survey of "thousands of respondents 12 and older").
But the FBI also estimates that "34 percent of female sex assault victims" are "under age 12" (National Incident-Based Reporting System, July 2000).
Since the DOJ data excludes rape of children under age 12, child rape may be up 85 percent, for all we know.
Although the FBI and local police departments are now swamped with teachers, police, professors, doctors, legislators, clergy, federal and state bureaucrats, dentists, judges, etc., arrested for child pornography and for abusing children under age 12, the Department of Justice excludes those small victims from its "rape" rates. Why?
Do DOJ, FBI harbor pedophiles?
You have to wonder: Are there pedophiles and other sexual predators in the governmental woodpiles?
When I worked for DOJ's Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the 1980s, someone high up killed the order to collect crime-scene pornography as evidence in prosecutions. No Democrat or Republican administration has yet mandated such on-site pornography collections. Whom is DOJ protecting?
Reynolds, writes less like an objective scholar than a pornography defender:
Since 1970 … porn has exploded. … But rape has gone down 85 percent. So much for the notion that pornography causes rape. … [I]t would be hard to explain how rape rates could have declined so dramatically while porn expanded so explosively.
He opines that pornography possibly prevents rape (the old discredited "safe-outlet" theory).
The DOJ's preposterous "85 percent" decrease in rape ignores the obvious. The U.S. FBI Index of Crime reported a 418 percent increase in "forcible rape" from 1960 to 1999. That fear means we now keep our doors, windows and cars locked. Women seldom walk alone at night. Parents rarely let children go anywhere unaccompanied. Many states let people carry guns for self-defense. Rape Crisis Centers do not report rapes to police. More women perform as sexually required. A conflicting DOJ 2002 report says "almost 25 percent of college women have been victims of rape or attempted rape since the age of 14."
Why don't the feds call child-rape 'rape'?
In 1950, 18 states authorized the death penalty for rape; most others could impose a life sentence. Following Alfred Kinsey's "scientific" advice in 1948, many states redefined "rape" so the crime could be plea-bargained down to a misdemeanor like "sexual misconduct."
Missouri redefined rape to mean 11 different crimes for 11 different sentences, magically lowering "rape" rates. Like all states that have trivialized rape, Missouri relied on the Kinsey-based 1955 American Law Institute Model Penal Code.
"Rape" was eliminated from New Jersey's laws and replaced with a variety of terms during a 1978 penal law revision.
For example, Dr. Linda Jeffrey notes that the charge to which child-molesting teacher Pamela Diehl-Moore pleaded guilty was reduced to a second-tier crime, "sexual assault" i.e., sexual contact with a victim under 13, or penetration where the "actor" uses physical force or coercion, but the victim doesn't suffer severe personal injury, or the victim is 16 or 17, with aggravating circumstances, or the victim is 13 to 15 and the "actor" is at least four years older. (Whew!)
Sex criminals copy what porn depicts
DOJ experts should read reports such as "Sex-Related Homicide and Death Investigation" (2003). Former Lt. Comdr. Vernon Geberth says today's "sex-related cases … are more frequent, vicious and despicable" than anything he experienced in decades as a homicide cop.
In "Journey Into Darkness" (1997), the FBI's premier serial-rape profiler, John Douglas wrote, "[Serial-rape murders are commonly found] with a large pornography collection, either store-bought or homemade. … our [FBI] research does show that certain types of sadomasochistic and bondage-oriented material can fuel the fantasies of those already leaning in that direction."
In "The Evil That Men Do" (1998), FBI serial-rape-murderer-mutilator profiler Roy Hazelwood quotes one sex killer who tied his victims in "a variety of positions" based on pictures he saw in sex magazines.
"Thrill Killers, a Study of America's Most Vicious Murders," by Charles Linedecker, reports that 81 percent of these killers rated pornography as their primary sexual interest. Dr. W.L. Marshall, in "Criminal Neglect, Why Sex Offenders Go Free" (1990), says based on the evidence, pornography "feeds and legitimizes their deviant sexual tendencies."
In one study of rapists, Gene Abel of the New York Psychiatric Institute cited, "One-third reported that they had used pornography immediately prior to at least one of their crimes." In 1984, the U.S. Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence reported, "Testimony indicates that an alarming number of rape and sexual assault offenders report that they were acting out behavior they had viewed in pornographic materials."
More pornography equals more rape of children and women. We need to ask whether Big Government is now selling out to Big Pornography as it did to Big Tobacco for half a century.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related special offer:
"Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences"
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Dr. Judith Reisman is president of the Institute for Media Education and is the author of "Kinsey, Crimes & Consequences."
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Subject:[DIGNITY] USA: Operation SilverBraid Launched in 25 US cities
Juliette Chandler, the national outreach coordinator for the charitable organization Voices for Justice Network, wants to help you launch a survivors program in your city. There are now Programs running in 25 US cities, and internationally. Underneath the Voices for Justice Network umbrella:
www.thesilverbraid.org
,www.sexindustrysurvivors.com
,www.sexualabusesurvivors.com
silverbraidca@yahoo.com
NATIONAL TOLLFREE HOTLINE 888 702 7273
Operation Silver Braid, Anne Bissell, and the Survivors of Sexual Exploitation Network can be viewed by copying this link into your web browser:
http://www.wsaw.com/home/headlines/2855381.html
Anne Bissell can remember her stepfather sexually abusing her when she was a young child. She ran away from home to escape the abuse but was trafficked as a prostitute.
Bissell was able to escape the clutches of the industry at age 22 and started organizations to help victims. "Sex Industry Survivors Anonymous," which holds meetings in 20 states including Wisconsin and "The Silver Braid Survivors of Sexual Exploitation Network." If you or someone you know is a victim of trafficking call the number below.
National Rescue and Restore Coalition
1-888-373-7888
To get connected to Anne Bissell, "Sex Industry Survivors Anonymous" or "The Silver Braid Survivors of Sexual Exploitation Network" visit the link below.
http://www.annebissell.com/index.html
In the Atlanta Area, please contact:
Marie Waldrep
Online Outreach
Silver Braid - Survivors of Sexual Exploitation
Metro Atlanta Area www.thesilverbraid.org
Email: thesilverbraidatl@yahoo.com
http://www.vfjnw.org
www.sexindustrysurvivors.com
www.sexualabusesurvivors.com/
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Subject:[DIGNITY] USA-Toledo: Feminist fight over prostitution
As someone who has had to deal with the Robyn Few's of the world from the beginning of my entrance into this Movement (anti-porn, anti-prostitution), with the publication of "Memoirs of A Sex Industry Survivor," in 2004, as the founder of Sex Industry Survivors www.sexindustrysurvivors.com
I have grimaced, flinched, cringed when listening to the arguments of the "sex workers," who only need to be liberated, vindicated...The confusion created by the pro-prostitution, "sex work as empowerment" camp is VERY DANGEROUS...
Here's the realities. Any job that leaves you with PTSD, nightmares, flashbacks, etc., is not a job worth having. Freedom of choice implies a broad range of choices. The slippery slope into prostitution is paved by the Robyn Few's of the world. Our tollfree helpline never stops ringing.
I am the one who has to deal with the frantic calls of parents who have lost their children to prostitution, or women who work in "legal brothels" and desperately want out, or those who have been tortured by pimps. Robyn Few needs to quit smoking pot, and get a real job.
Anne Bissell (anne@vfjnw.org)
Executive Director
Voices for Justice Network
www.vfjnw.org
www.sexindustrysurvivors.com
888 702 7273
"Donna M. Hughes" wrote:
[Below, Robyn Few identifies herself as an exotic dancer and prostitute. Let's be clear, Few is a convicted felon, guilty of conspiracy to organize an interstate prostitution ring. That makes her a pimp, and possibly a trafficker. It is dishonest for her to present herself as a woman fighting for the rights of "sex workers," when in fact, she has been a pimp. Most conference organizers know she has a felony conviction, but still let her present herself as a sex worker - Donna]
Feminists fight over prostitution
The Toledo Blade
Sunday, September 24, 2006
For the third year, people from across the country will gather this week for the University of Toledo's national conference on prostitution.
Presentations range from the scholarly ("From preprostitution to postprostitution eras: An anthropological and psychosocial approach") to the personal ("My life as a dancer").
But a tense undercurrent will course through the meetings on Thursday and Friday, just as it did during both previous UT annual conferences:
Not everyone agrees on something as seemingly basic as the definition of prostitution.
"It's a feminist debate, and its two feminist camps believe very differently," said Celia Williamson, the UT social work professor whose longtime research into the lives of prostitutes led her to organize these conferences.
In this corner, she explained, are "the folks who believe prostitution equals exploitation - period, any way you cut it."
In the opposite corner of the ring, "the second camp [believes] women don't sell their souls, they sell sexual services. Much like a woman sells her hands for typing, a woman will sell her vagina for sex."
Both camps, Ms. Williamson said, are unyielding. They often refuse to appear together for panel discussions, and she's even heard women from both sides of the debate speak of showing up for conferences under police escort.
"Over the last decade, this side [tries] to push legislation through or something. Then the other side shows up and they try to knock it down."
At the first UT gathering, Ms. Williamson said, a round-table session seeking common ground turned into mediation: "People sat in a room and hated each other."
By now, she said, conference planning requires diplomacy to "make sure we never have a keynote speaker from one side or the other."
Robyn Few, a former exotic dancer and prostitute, is the founder of the California-based Sex Workers Outreach Project. She has spoken at each UT conference and is coming again this year, presenting the prostitution-as-empowerment outlook.
"We have women who don't believe women deserve choice over our bodies. Believe me, that puts sex-worker rights back 100 years," she argued.
And to those who insist prostitution is exploitation, Ms. Few said: "I made my choice, and it was my choice. And I know hundreds of women and men in our society who've made the same choice. We are normal, living, community-service assets to this society, and we live next door to you."
Melissa Farley is one of the nation's best-known prostitution abolitionists. While not on the UT agenda this week, her counter argument is widely embraced by those who agree that sex discrimination, poverty, and racism push women into prostitution. As Ms. Farley wrote on the Web site of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women:
"Women who 'choose' prostitution are sexually abused as kids at much higher rates than other women. … Other ways that they 'choose prostitution' include poor or no education and no job that pays the rent. Prostitution is a choice based on lack of survival options."
Celia Williamson, meanwhile, still tries to bring both schools of thought together. "Our conference is an academic one, so we invite all the voices to be heard. At the beginning, I always have to say, 'You're going to hear different points of view. Be respectful.' "
Roberta de Boer's column appears in Second News on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Sundays in Behind The News.
E-mail her at roberta@theblade.com or call (419) 724-6086
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