'Sex trafficking is slavery, plain and simple'
PORTLAND, Ore. - A plan to provide housing, clothing, and other services to women trapped in a life of prostitution was announced Thursday by Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden.
“Sex trafficking is slavery, plain and simple,” Wyden said in a news conference.
His plan is to set up special shelters for women so they can escape their pimps in parts of the country where sex trafficking is the worst including in Oregon.
His plan calls for spending $50 million over three years through the use of existing funds. He calls it a “modest sum” of money.
“My message today is we can’t afford not to,” Wyden said.
Oregon is home to many young girls and women who have been forced into prostitution.
Jeri Williams works at Portland City Hall as a program manager at the office of Neighborhood Involvement. She’s been to college and was the executive director of a nonprofit organization, but when she was 28 years old she was a prostitute for five months and said she had sex with 1,200 men. She said she was forced into that kind of life by a gang and was freed only when police arrested her pimp.
“[I] got jumped into the gang by being forced to have sex will all of them,” Williams said. “Then you belong and you’re not supposed to be able to get out.”
She said she was locked in a room during the day and only let out to use the bathroom and eat. She said every night she was sent to prostitute from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. Her goal was $300 a night, which meant she had to have sex with 15 men every evening.
“I wasn’t leaving. They were going to beat me up.”
She said Wyden has the right idea and young women need a place to go to escape the violent life of prostitution which she said in many cases amounts to slavery.
“If there’s no place for these kids to go and be safe and be deprogrammed from the messages the pimps give them, they’re not going to go anywhere. They’re not going to believe they have any other options,” Williams said.
“People are brainwashed. You get brainwashed. You get brainwashed into believing this is the only life you can ever live. You’re never going to get away from it. This is the best you can ever do,” she said.
“Just being with johns, which is sick. Those are not well people,” she said. “People who are driving around at night looking for sex with strangers are not sane people.”
After she was freed from prostitution Williams said she was helped by a social service group that worked with prostitutes. That was the first step she took becoming the person she is today.
