Caught in the life: The business of prostitution
We're beginning this particular morning with a candid look at what is euphemistically known as THE OLDEST PROFESSION.
Although prostitution is condemned and outlawed almost everywhere in our country, some say the effectiveness of those laws may call for a second look. Lee Cowan reports our Cover Story:
It was like any Monday evening in Seattle. The Emerald city sparkled, Mt. Rainier hovered in the distance, and along Aurora Avenue, business was booming.
Every city has its underbelly, where sex is bought and sold.
Arrests are being made, but what might surprise you it's just who's being arrested. It's not those selling sex -- women and young girls, although to be clear, men are prostitutes, too.
Instead, Seattle has shifted its focus to arresting their customers -- those buying the sex.
"We're not trying to harass women who are caught up in the trade," said Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes. "We're not trying to add to their burdens. We're actually trying to help."
Six years ago Holmes adopted what's called the Nordic Model (a strategy pioneered in Sweden) that aims to reduce sex trafficking by cutting off demand.
"What we have been doing historically, and what most of the country still continues to do, is to further victimize women that are caught up in the life," said Holmes.
According to the International Labor Organization, human trafficking is a $32 billion a year industry, and many who are trafficked for sex are under the age of 18.
That's how old Marin Stewart was when she entered the trade.
"There was always something that kept me in the life," she told Cowan. "There were always reasons that I needed to stay longer. I should have been murdered many times. I should have died of an overdose many, many, many, many times."
"How did you survive it?"
"I don't know, I don't know," she replied.
Stewart considers herself an abolitionist, calling prostitution nothing short of modern-day slavery. And Seattle's focus on the buyers and not the sellers, she says, is an enlightened, modern approach. "The women are not being treated like they're bad, and that they're dirty, and that this is just who they are," she said.
She now works for a Seattle non-profit called the Organization for Prostitution Survivors, a group that not only provides services for women, but also helps counsel the men who buy sex, too.
"The men who are buying the sex are buying it from a very broken place in their heart, where they're trying to fill a void -- they're trying to numb whatever pain they have," she said. "They're trying to feel powerful. They're trying to feel in control and desirable."
"Prostitution, it's called a trick for a reason," said Peter Qualliotine, who also works at the Organization for Prostitution Survivors. "It's called a trick because he's paying for the illusion of consent. He's paying for the illusion of mutuality, when in fact what we know is that it's not a mutual sexual experience."
Qualliotine leads a 10-week class on the consequences of prostitution. Anyone caught buying sex in Seattle is now required, to attend that class by law.
"Until we take on the issue of demand, and the issue of why men feel entitled to pay for sex in the first place, we're really not going to be able to move the needle in any significant way," he said.
Seattle is unique in employing its buyer beware model. Most major cities practice a zero-tolerance approach to prostitution.
And you might be surprised to learn that includes the city of Las Vegas.
That's right: prostitution is not legal in Sin City. But Lt. Patricia Spencer, of the Vice and Sex Trafficking section of the Las Vegas Police Department, says most people seem to think otherwise. "It's everywhere," Spencer said. "It's not just on the street, it's not just in a casino, it's everywhere."
Unlike Seattle, Las Vegas cracks down on everyone -- the sellers as well as the buyers. Lt. Spencer doesn't see that as victimizing the victims. In her experience, the arrests help identify those too afraid to identify themselves.
She told Cowan that numerous survivors have told her that being arrested saved their lives. "We open the door for help. And if we don't do that, who's going to do it? If I don't offer them help, who's gonna? No one. There's no one gonna help them."
Re-thinking just how, or even whether, to crack down on prostitution has been making headlines. Last year, while acknowledging the harm that comes with the sex industry, Amnesty International called for the de-criminalization of consensual sex work, saying laws against that force women into the shadows, which can compromise their safety.
"It doesn't help people with no options to take away their source of income, but it sounds good," said Caroline McLeod, who calls herself a sex worker, not a prostitute. She's a Seattle mother of two who, despite the fact it's illegal, sees it as her right to run her body as a business.
"I choose this," she told Cowan. "I say to people when they say, No one would choose this, I say, I do. I choose this because I'm proud of what I do."
She knows she's largely the exception, and sympathizes with those who aren't doing this willingly. But she says the best way to protect them, and at the same time to preserve her rights, is to legitimize what she does. "It would bring it out of darkness and back streets, and into the light," she explained.
What might decriminalization look like?
McLeod says just the way she practices her sex work now. She has no pimp, and doesn't roam the streets. She works out of a condo she rents with two other women. And, she says, they all have strict safety guidelines.
"All of my clients need to have references from other sex workers," she said. "And if they don't have references, then a potential client would have to give me their real first name and their real workplace, and I will call them at work through the main switchboard and verify all of that."
Her point -- and this is controversial -- is that sex traffickers don't generally trade in places where buying sex is permitted. And that, she says, keeps everyone safer.
"There is a huge population of sex workers who are doing this in a healthy way," said McLeod. "And you don't see us, 'cause we're not causing problems."
Sherri's Ranch may be the halfway point in the debate over prostitution. It's one of a handful of brothels in rural Nevada were prostitution is legal, but regulated under state law.
Allissa, a single mom, left working the streets of Seattle to move and work here instead, where she says she feels someone is watching out for her.
"You come here, and you sit down and you tell me this is what I want to happen," she said. "I want this and this and this to happen, and I tell you what I'm going to charge for that, and what I'm comfortable with doing, and what the rules are, and that's what happens. There's no gray area."
"So what do you say to people who think that this is just a crazy lifestyle and no single mom should be doing this?" Cowan asked.
"I tell them it's not their life!" Allissa laughed. "And you don't walk in my shoes every day. I actually live a very clean, safe life, I go home and do my cooking, cleaning chores.
"I mean, you don't grow up thinking I want to be a prostitute when I get older, but, I mean, things happen in your life, and you make different decisions."
Dena, the brothel's madam, says state regulation gives those working in the sex industry at least some protection. "The state's watching us, and they're not going to play with any funny business, so everything is up-and-up legit," she said.
Still, critics say anything short of outlawing prostitution altogether amounts to the legal acceptance of objectifying women.
But Dena says that's not what this is about; she sees it as giving women a choice, and offering a safe place to make a new start.
"This is just a means to an end," she said. "This should be a stepping stone into something better and greater."
Allissa, Caroline, Marin … each a different face of an age-old question: Is prostitution an illicit vice or a lawful business? Is it sex work or sexual exploitation?
The divide is deep, and the battle lines are being drawn. However uncomfortable, an issue long in the shadows seems to be hiding no more.
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