CaptRenault said:
Guys, go ahead and make fun of the repressive anti-male prostitution laws in Norway and Sweden but, as I have previously pointed out (
here and
here), it is a realistic posibility that we will see such laws in the U.S. someday soon.
Hello all,
Something like it has existed against child prostitution overseas.
Found this:
Red Light for Sex Tourists
Armed with new legislation and funds, the U.S. government and aid groups are ratcheting up the war against the child-sex-tourism trade and its American clients
By Murray Hiebert/WASHINGTON
Issue cover-dated April 22, 2004
VISITORS FLYING INTO Phnom Penh and Bangkok later this year will be greeted at both airports by new billboards bearing stark warnings of the penalties awaiting child-sex tourists. "Abuse a child in this country, go to jail in yours," reads one message, alongside a photograph of a man behind bars and a sign saying "sex tourist." The billboards will be another front in the mounting United States government-led war against American child-sex tourists and U.S. travel agencies that promote sex holidays overseas.
In February, the two owners of Big Apple Oriental Tours in New York were charged in the first indictment against a U.S. sex-tourism company for violating a state law prohibiting the promotion of prostitution. They face up to seven years in jail if convicted. Big Apple`s brochures had offered a 12-day trip to the Philippines for $2,495 and promised "plenty of young women to keep you occupied for the whole trip."
Last September, Michael Clark, 69, became the first American charged with child-sex-tourism offences under the Protect Act passed by Congress in 2003. Clark, who subsequently pleaded guilty, was arrested in Seattle as he stepped off a flight from Asia. He had been arrested in Cambodia and extradited for having sex with two boys, aged 10 and 13. Four other American men have since been arrested on similar charges under the new law, including an 85-year-old California man arrested at Los Angeles airport and accused of planning to fly to the Philippines to have sex with two pre-teen girls.
U.S. officials say other investigations are under way and arrests are expected. "We want to send a message loud and clear that international borders no longer shield child-sex predators from the law," Michael Garcia, the Department of Homeland Security`s assistant secretary for immigration and customs enforcement, told a congressional hearing in March.
No one knows the exact scope of the problem. The United Nations Children`s Fund (Unicef) estimates that about 2 million children are involved in the sex trade worldwide. John Miller, who heads the U.S. State Department`s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, figures that 800,000-900,000 children and adults around the world are trafficked across borders into the sex trade or forced labour each year. "We know that sex tourism is a major driver of child prostitution," Miller says.
The U.S. government`s stepped-up crackdown on child prostitution and sex tourism in the past year is due, at least in part, to mounting pressure from American human-rights and religious groups. President George W. Bush, in a speech to the UN General Assembly last September, said there is "a special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable."
The Protect Act, under which Clark and the four other alleged paedophiles were arrested, makes it a crime for a U.S. citizen to travel abroad for the purpose of having sex with children. The new law boosts the maximum penalty for having sex with minors from 15 to 30 years in jail, and prosecutors only have to prove that the defendant engaged in child-sex offences overseas, not that he left the U.S. with that intent, as was the case under earlier laws. U.S. law regards anyone aged below 18 as a minor.
Last July, the Department of Homeland Security established Operation Predator, a law-enforcement body aimed at protecting children at home and abroad. The body has set up 35 offices, including six overseas, with agents who monitor child-sex tourism and go after groups or individuals that traffic children for the purpose of engaging in sexual crime. It has also established a cyber-crime centre which investigates the exploitation of children on the Internet. Operation Predator officials have arrested more than 2,200 suspected violators of the Protect Act, including the five alleged American paedophiles.
Operation Predator head Frank Figueroa believes the crackdown in the U.S. may prompt more Americans to engage in the sexual abuse of children abroad, at least in the short term. "It will become a little more difficult to engage in those things domestically," Figueroa tells the REVIEW. "Therefore, people may travel abroad to engage in that type of activity."
The U.S. State Department early last year established Miller`s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which prepares an annual report on the global trafficking of people. Countries that aren`t doing much to tackle the problem can face U.S. sanctions, including the suspension of nonhumanitarian assistance. Miller believes his office has already achieved important results. "Shame and embarrassment all plays into it," says the former congressman. "If you look around the world, you can find more comprehensive anti-trafficking laws passed in the last year or two than were passed in the past 10 or 15 years."
Miller, who visited Asia in February, is pleased with the level of cooperation in Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia and Indonesia. But he`s disappointed with Japan, saying Japanese aid workers have told him there are some 100,000 "sex slaves" in their country. "The gap between the level of the problem . . . and the amount of resources devoted to the problem is huge," he says, adding that Japanese police attribute this to the lack of an anti-trafficking law.
Bush pledged in his September speech to the UN to spend $50 million over the next few years to combat human trafficking and sexual abuse of children. At least some of this money will be given to non-governmental organizations. The State Department has granted $500,000 to World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, to launch an aggressive deterrence campaign. The group is preparing videos that will be shown in key U.S. airports and on international flights warning travellers of laws against engaging in sex with children overseas, says Joseph Mettimano, World Vision`s child-protection-policy adviser.
In cooperation with U.S. immigration and customs enforcement, World Vision is also preparing the billboards that will go up later this year in Phnom Penh and Bangkok. World Vision also has programmes to train Cambodian police and tourist officials on how to combat sex tourism and operates shelters and rehabilitation services for sexually abused children.
The U.S. is giving human-rights group International Justice Mission $1 million to investigate human trafficking in countries like Cambodia and to share its findings with local and American law-enforcement officers. Miller credits the organization, which sometimes conducts daring raids on brothels, with rescuing "hundreds of victims" and facilitating "many arrests and convictions" of foreign tourists sexually abusing children.
Another non-governmental group, End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (Ecpat), is hosting an event with Unicef and Sweden`s Queen Silvia in New York on April 21 to press U.S. travel agencies to adopt the rigorous Code of Conduct to Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism, similar to a code adopted by many European countries. Ecpat estimates that about 25% of the sex tourists around the world are U.S. citizens. Equality Now, an international human-rights organization that targeted Big Apple for seven years before the February indictment of its owners, is now setting its sights on other U.S. sex-tour operators.
Equality Now scored another victory of sorts last November when Ultimate Asian Sex Tour, a Hawaii-based operation, shut down its Web site promoting Bangkok as the world`s "sex capital" because of "pressure from women`s rights groups." But other U.S. companies continue advertising sex tours on their Web sites, with one in Florida promoting "erotic vacation destinations" in Asia.