As long as society rejects what they do overtly, as something dirty, then it will be difficult to protect these people from predators.

Society treats these people as non-humans, and that makes them expendable, inanimate objects. If they object to this treatment they are seen as niave and unreasonable, not as a person trying to assert their human rights.

Making laws to regulate prostitution might help. There is no way to completely rid any profession of illegal activity, so the hope is to minimize it.

But that is coming from a non Expert on the outside of this profession.

People seem to think that because a woman succumbs to this life and makes the best of it, that she is somehow a willing participant. Not at all.

Where will she go? What kind of job will she seek after this? One has to ask, because you are talking about a kind of institutionalized mentality in which these women are humiliated in every way by their pimps and handlers, and JOHNS, and then rejected out of hand by *proper society, members who feel morally superior to these ladies because they tell themselves it could never happen to them.
To live in such niave certainty, is there any substitute for that? LOL.

These women do what they have to, to survive. And they should not be forced to make any apologies for making difficult choices to survive a life that is as brutal and short as a fighting dog in illegal gaming.

60 clients a day. Most people associate sex with pleasure, but women know {or should remember} that more than a couple times a day leads to physical pain and could lead to permanent damage. The women in Brothel solved this problem by putting tampons soaked in Mentholadum {sp?} in their vagina’s {a home remedy that mimicks muscle rubs but without the copious chemical burn}.

I want readers to imagine that. Being so sore on the one part of your body that was meant for pleasure and/or child birth hurting so bad, that you would shove an object coated in menthol up there to make the hurting stop.

I doubt the prostitutes being forced into this profession by sex traffickers are even offered that much.

If in a perfect world women and men could sell sex for money and make a decent and respectable living I would be all for it. But as it remains, it is exclusively the domain of organized crime.

Until that is directly addressed and these women and men are gifted with human rights like any other person {without regard to their trade} then I just dont see how it can work.

Making it legal under these circumstances only offers the gangs the opportunity to put up a legal front to hide the crime.

The dire poverty, unemployment and displacement created by globalization, war, and the flagrant oppression of girls and women (primarily) fuels trafficking. People, who under normal circumstances, would never leave their home towns, never mind their home countries, are answering blind ads promising respectable, if not exactly fulfilling, work in desperate hope of a better future. This is how so many enter the system.

This isn’t just fueling sex trafficking, either; it’s fueling domestic servitude and sweats shops, too.

Trafficking is modern day slavery.

I don’t see how they couldn’t know about this slavery, either. They know, they just don’t give a damn. Or maybe that’s part of the thrill for them.

Cretins.

I think decriminalization is also the way to go – it definitely helps the agency and protection of women who chose to go into this line of work.

Of course, even if brothels weren’t any “safer” than illegal prostitution, I would still support decriminalization. It would just reduce my reasons to only one: the way to help prostitutes is not to subject them to police harassment and imprisonment.

Are rates of violence and sexual assault lower in brothels than in “street” prostitution? I don’t know the exact rates, but brothels would generally be a safer environment than the streets – more than one woman is working in the house at a time, along with the other service staff (housekeepers, etc.) and the madam. Some brothels even hire extra security force. In street prostitution, it’s basically every woman for herself, and even when these women are assaulted, sexually or otherwise, they tend not to report it to the police because they’re afraid of being punished for prostitution.

Is drug use banned, encouraged or ignored? I actually have no idea about this.

If a “customer” is violent, do they tend to report it or look the other way? Generally, it is reported and the customer is forced to leave. As I said above, there is more security in a brothel than in street prostitution.

You say that the women aren’t usually “locals”– do they tend to come from other parts of America, come willingly from foreign countries, or come as trafficked women from foreign countries? Generally, they come from other parts of America, at least in the “official” brothels. They have to be able to legally work in the U.S., after all, or the brothel would lose its license. That is not to say, however, that there are not underground brothels where sex traffickers run the show. My project was strictly on the legal aspect of brothels, so I didn’t look too much into underground prostitution. I guess that answers the last question, too.

It’s probably also worth mentioning that several police departments are starting to change their policy on dealing with prostitution. In Pittsburgh, for example, the johns are required to attend a “johns” school, where they hear former prostitutes talk about the damage prostitution did to them, and they pay court fees, a portion of which goes to support programs designed to help former prostitutes. You can read about them here.