What Does All This Mean? Series

Posted on by Shontell Brewer

Article Two: What Exactly Is Coercion And Why Does It Seem To Be Working?

By Shontell Brewer

It seems every time we open our internet browser we find a news article about someone new being arrested for human trafficking and abuse. Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein who was accused of hiring minors as masseuses and other roles, 308 unnamed offenders responsible for sexually abusing children online, attorney Alan Dershowitz accused of partaking in Epstein’s parties and bad mouthing victims, Gigi Mitchell who trafficked an 11-year-old in Las Vegas, and R. Kelly who is facing charges on child pornography and trafficking, to name a few in the last several weeks. We recently gave you the introduction to this series that will unveil a deeper understanding of these current cases. This week, we are working to explain some of the terminology found in the laws and used by the courts that surround these news events. 

One of the buzz words in these trafficking cases is “coercion.” I want to explain what it means and why accused parties seem to throw that word around like it’s a leg to stand on. 

Essentially, these traffickers and abusers are using the age old “I didn’t do it” defense. They don’t mean they didn’t commit the crime. There’s been a little too much evidence for them to claim that. What they mean is, “I didn’t coerce her. She wanted it.” 

There’s just one big problem with this argument.

If you pay money for sex, it’s coercion.

If you offer food to a starving person in exchange for sex, it’s coercion.

If you pay rent for or give a home to a homeless runaway in exchange for sex, it’s coercion.

If you threaten harm to someone or their family unless that person has sex with you, it’s coercion.

If you are a billionaire and you have your assistant collect some women and children and have them waiting at your house to massage you and do other things in exchange for money, it’s coercion (and sexual assault in the case of the child.)

If you are a belligerent attorney who has defended some of the worst rapist and abusers, and you hire a girl to massage you in exchange for money and her reputation, it’s coercion.

If you offer anything on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to someone who is lacking that thing in exchange for sex, it’s coercion.

These things alone are not a problem. But they become damaging when a person is told, “You can have this (fill in the blank item) if you have sex with me/him.” 

So saying, “I won’t pay you money/give you food/keep you safe unless you give me sex in return” is clearly coercion. Why does anyone seem to be falling for coercive tactics? This strategy works because traffickers focus on vulnerability in people. People like Epstein and his cronies know that they have very little to be worried about as long as they pick the right girls.

It’s easy to see why someone would agree to sell themselves for sex when we use this lens. If you’re literally starving, what you will do for food comes with the desperation of being fed. It’s even easier to understand why so many women agree to any of this when we realize saying no means going without having that need met and often threats of violence toward them or their family members.

This understanding is the cultural shift you can help bring about. As you speak about these cases at the water cooler and on back porches over dinner, take this new understanding of coercion and pass it along. Speak to the men, women, and children who are marginalized and help them move from unseen and vulnerable to seen, heard, and safe. When the opportunities present themselves, vote to increase the penalty for pedophiles when they buy a child for sex. Use your vote to bring healthy change and protection for the vulnerable.

Speak to the men, women, and children who are marginalized and help them move from unseen and vulnerable to seen, heard, and safe.

Bringing light and understanding to the idea of what coercion is and why it’s not a justification for the behaviors we are seeing in the news is the best form of partnership you can make with us right now. Teaching others in your circles gives us the reach we do not have on our own. 

Looking for more ways to get involved? Contact us at AwakenReno.org

What Does All This Mean? Series

Posted on by Shontell Brewer

Article One: A Simple Breakdown of the Jeffrey Epstein Case

By Shontell Brewer

In a recent interview with Yasmin Vafa of Rights4Girls, interviewer Lisa Desjardins of PBS NewsHour posed a thought. “I’m wondering how much of this is in plain sight, the problem of child trafficking. How much of this is a cultural kind of ignorance or a shrugging off of a serious problem?” If the recent Jeffrey Epstein case is any indicator of typical then I would say nearly all of it. Much of America is still choosing to normalize or overlook behaviors that lead to child sex trafficking and to traffickers getting away with it.

It isn’t that we don’t know child sex trafficking is happening. It’s happening right here in our America. We have survivor’s stories and statistics and specialized government task forces and non-profits popping up everywhere trying to bring about change.

The problem America is facing is they know children are being sold for sex and not enough is being done to stop it. Instead we get a former prosecutor trying to justify the lenient plea bargain he offered to alleged child rapist, Jeffrey Epstein. We get Epstein’s attorneys defending his actions saying this isn’t considered child sex trafficking because there was no coercion or violence. And we get stories breaking into the news saying Epstein wired money as a possible bribe “to influence individuals” not to testify against him if it came to a trial. These individuals are two people who have been named as co-conspirators in his trafficking scheme. And we get media and lawyers analyzing words to see if these kids were sexually trafficked or just sexually abused. What a fleece.

Everyone involved here has normalized illegality and crazy on a level that attempts to make us forget that over a dozen children (this number is growing as new evidence comes forward) were repeatedly sexually assaulted and will be forever changed from the little girls they had the right to be. They will never get that opportunity back.

As horrendous as this case is, the charges brought against billionaire Jeffrey Epstein have opened lines of dialogue between everyday Americans. We are all beginning to ask questions and seek clarifications. We hope to shed some light on reoccurring subtopics in this case and in general understanding of how child sex trafficking happens in the United States.

This blog series will cover topics such as

  • Consent—what is it and who can give it
  • Coercion—what is it and who is guilty of it
  • the culture of acceptance—how our everyday actions may be perpetuating child sex-trafficking
  • Why many guys don’t think they are “that guy”—a look at identifying who is a john, a trafficker, and a pimp
  • What it looks like when men take a stand for this cause

Our hope is that you feel better informed as you either follow Epstein’s story and/or find ways to bring small changes (which lead to big changes) in your own community. Maybe we decide to join forces as humans who share this planet and care about the future of our children. Maybe we take on Thorn’s motto “we won’t stop until every child, can just be a kid.” No matter what we do, we do something.

Ignorance Is Bliss?

Posted on by Shontell Brewer

By Shontell Brewer

Your Words Could Bring An End To Sex Trafficking, Or Perpetuate It

            One of the simplest ways we can prevent child sex trafficking is held in the power of our tongue. Every day, we can be listening deeper to the words we use and the misconceptions we perpetuate that we’ve brought with us from our own homes and backgrounds. We have the ability to shift our words to align with where we want our culture to go instead of remaining stuck in a cycle of inadvertently valuing boys over girls. We have all played a part in this.

            Before you start throwing your lettuce at me, let me clarify. I am not saying you are a woman hater. I am saying our world has subtly normalized the idea of “men over women” for centuries, and I am merely suggesting that each of us has the responsibility to do a check in. Sometimes, even small words cause a rudder to get off course.

Jim Gaffigan’s tweet, “Ignorance is bliss.”

            Recently, Jim Gaffigan posted a tweet for national hot dog day. He’s often a pretty funny guy, but once I began taking stock of the words my husband and I allowed in our house, I realized funny is subjective. Now that I know better, I am uncomfortable with so much (or any) of Gaffigan’s humor being at the expense of women in the sex industry. The meme he tweeted read, “Hot dogs are like strippers. No one wants to know the backstory.” His caption was, “Ignorance is bliss.”

            Alan Dershowitz, accused of having sex with minors, is currently using this “ignorance is bliss” strategy to distance himself from any illegalities that may or may not have happened on Jeffrey Epstein’s island. An island that has been named repeatedly as a place where Epstein was trafficking girls 14-16 of age for him and his business friends. It seems this “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy is common.

             In fact, many people (men and women) who have been caught trafficking children plead the same case. “I didn’t know she was a minor.” And maybe that’s true. Maybe none of them knew. And maybe these children were threatened not to tell their age.

            Why threaten them? The johns know enough to know these aren’t women they are sleeping with. The girls certainly know their own age. But the laws are written so the charge for raping a child is one thing. If you didn’t know she was a child, it’s a much lesser charge altogether. In Nevada, a man can sexually assault a child, and if he claims he doesn’t know she’s a child, he gets a year probation. That’s because Nevada has this crime categorized as a class E felony. That’s a year probation for your first offense, and 1-4 years  for subsequent charges. I guess ignorance is bliss.

            But, how about them hotdogs? I do love a good hotdog over a baseball game. And, I fully agree with the sentiment that whatever these hotdogs are made of is something I probably don’t want to fully know about. I’d likely never eat them again.  But, if I am reading this right, Gaffigan is comparing a woman to a hot dog. A mishmash of meat we don’t want to know closely because it’s secretly disgusting if we know more.

            What’s worse is this statement almost pleads my case more than his. According to the Human Trafficking Hotline, “Victims of sex trafficking are frequently recruited to work in strip clubs across the United States. Women, men, and minors may be recruited to work in strip clubs as hostesses, servers, or dancers, but then are required to provide commercial sex to customers,” (humantraffickinghotline.org). An article at With Two Wings’ blog further clarifies that, “Although many may think that women working in adult entertainment do it because they want to, researchers have noted that 70% of females who are trafficked are trafficked into the commercial industry, which included porn, strip clubs, and massage parlors in the United States,” (withtwowings.org).

            So, maybe some people don’t want to know all that. People want to be able to frequent strip clubs guilt-free not knowing that the “entertainment” they are watching is actually a sexual assault crime of a minor or a woman who was trafficked by her own mother while in her teens. They don’t want to know that out of the ten females on the stage, seven of them have not chosen to be there, and some only wish they could go back to being the little girls they ought to be.

             I don’t think bliss is what comes from ignorance. Ignorance comes from ignorance. Stagnancy comes from ignorance. Complacency comes from ignorance. Perpetuated abuse comes from ignorance.

And now that you are no longer ignorant of this information, what will you do with it? Will you take stock in your own vocabulary and jokes? Maybe you could schedule a family meeting and use this new information to reestablish expectations and be part of the cultural shift we need with our words. Talk to your teachers, your pastors, your boss and create grassroots initiatives to create this small but mighty cultural change. Or maybe you could find a place to volunteer to help the women and children who want out of this life? It’s all your choice. But please do something.

Let’s choose together that we don’t want ignorance to prevail because it feels easier to us. Author Belinda Bauman once said, “You can’t solve the world’s problems with sympathy.” Sympathy keeps all of this at arm’s length and requires no change on our part. Instead, choose something even as small as changing up your words and see what a difference you can make.

For more opportunities to help, find us at AwakenReno.org