The city has been stepping up efforts to shame prostitution customers, including the prospect of sending them off to "john school” to teach about the horror of human trafficking.
It’s a police initiative to reduce the online sex trade in the city by 20 percent over the next year.
Lt. Donna Gavin, head of the police department’s Human Trafficking Unit said, “(The johns) are fueling a violent, violent industry where young people get harmed, and many never come back from that. It’s not OK to come into our community, exploit our young people and then go home in the suburbs where you think no one’s ever going to know.”
Police are to receive a $30,000 grant from Demand Abolition, a Cambridge-based advocacy group, to bring city and state officials together with victims’ rights groups and other local organizations to go over new strategies to fight sex trafficking, Gavin said that the effort is part of the ongoing CEASE initiative.
Jake Wark, spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s Office, said that the state’s Human Trafficking Task Force and the DA have pushed for a “john school”, a required class for men charged with solicitation where they interact with victims of sex trafficking, as a way to make men aware of the criminal world they are supporting.
Wark said, “If a first-time drunk driving offender can have an education program, I see no reason why we can’t set that up for solicitation as well”. Gavin said that program was one her group would push for, adding, “I definitely think that’s something we’re looking to do.”
She said that the groups will focus on providing resources to victims of the sex trade and go after pimps and traffickers, but they also want to target the buyers. She said that the people soliciting sex want to believe that they have been engaging in a “victimless crime,” and refuse to think of the exploitation.
Gavin said, “They don’t think and don’t want to think this could be an underaged girl, doing it out of desperation, who doesn’t have a family to go back to. They may want to believe it’s a victimless crime, but when we confront them, they are ashamed.”
By Prakriti Neogi
