--:-- [Upbeat music fades out, followed by the sound of a news anchor]
--:-- John Bickley: Good morning, I'm John Bickley, editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Joining me today is Georgia Howe. It's June 4th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Good morning, John.
--:-- John Bickley: Today, we're discussing the movement to decriminalize prostitution across the country. Joining us to discuss this issue is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo. Amanda, thanks for being here.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Thanks for having me, John.
--:-- John Bickley: So, Amanda, give us some background on this effort to effectively legalize prostitution and how that intersects with sex trafficking.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, a lot has changed in the framing of this issue over the past decade or two. Back in 2002, then-President George W. Bush signed a national security presidential directive outlining the U.S. government's strong position against legalizing prostitution. Now, that was based on evidence that prostitution is inherently harmful and dehumanizing, that it fuels sex trafficking, which the government classified as a form of modern-day slavery.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right. And in 2004, the State Department said that prostitution fuels the growth of this modern-day slavery by providing a facade for pimps and sex traffickers.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: That's right. Stating, quote, "where prostitution is legalized or tolerated, there is a greater demand for human trafficking victims and nearly always an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into commercial sex slavery." To that point of child sex trafficking, some studies have estimated that the average age a child is first exploited through prostitution ranges from 12 to 14 years old.
--:-- John Bickley: That's horrific. And moving on, in 2015, the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons echoed that same anti-prostitution language, tying prostitution to sex trafficking and advocating for the promotion of policies and cultural norms that disallow paying for sex.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: But now we're seeing the atmosphere really change, politically speaking. Fast forward to today, and activists and prominent politicians are promoting the decriminalization of what they call sex work. They argue that prostitution is not inherently dehumanizing, and this can be done without exploitation, and as such, it's no different than any other work.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And by decriminalizing that, you're helping, generally speaking, women. They also make a distinction between decriminalizing prostitution and legalizing it. If prostitution is decriminalized, it would technically remain illegal, they say, but the legal system would not prosecute people for engaging in the act.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: That's right. There could be no penalties tied to the act or a civil fine, for example. Whereas legalization would remove all legal prohibitions against prostitution.
--:-- John Bickley: And just how mainstream is this push to decriminalize prostitution today?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, this certainly is not a fringe movement anymore. Let's start at the top. Our current vice president Kamala Harris has gone on record saying she believes prostitution should be decriminalized. That really is a flip for Harris that seemed to come from public pressure from the far left.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Remember Harris was a prosecutor who once bragged that she and this is a quote, "led the fight against Backpage and other sex trafficking platforms."
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Other mainstream politicians, mostly all Democrats, are on board with this movement too. At the least, they're saying that decriminalization of prostitution should be considered, or they're parodying that sex work is work mantra. This includes the likes of New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the last three of whom are former presidential candidates.
--:-- John Bickley: And we can add Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom to this list. Last summer, Newsom signed a highly controversial bill into law, SB 357. And this has effectively become a case study on decriminalizing prostitution.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: The law, backed by Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener and the ACLU, decriminalized loitering with the intent to commit prostitution. Wiener claims the law is a protection for trans and Black and brown women, whom he claims are harassed by police for merely their identity.
--:-- [Audio clip of Senator Scott Wiener]
--:-- Senator Scott Wiener: Why would we have a criminal law allowing a police officer to arrest you based exclusively on how you look, not on what you do? That's wrong. We shouldn't have that kind of law on the books. And the police have plenty of tools to deal with trafficking. And they should be doing more work to address human trafficking and less complaining.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Now, those on the other side of this issue just flat out disagree with that premise. And by the way, these aren't all people of one political persuasion. There were even some California Democrats who warned against SB 357 before it was signed into law.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Vanessa Russell, founder of an anti-sex trafficking nonprofit called Love Never Fails, pushed back on Senator Weiner's narrative during an appearance on Easttown Church's YouTube channel.
--:-- Vanessa Russell: The reason why black women and LGBTQ plus people are disproportionately represented in prostitution, stayings, in arrests is because they are disproportionately trafficked. And so to me, that is the greater issue. Why are we not providing necessary services to provide exit for trafficked victims, for people who do not want to be sold for sex?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: And I also spoke to San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit. He and his officers are on the ground seeing firsthand the effects from this law.
--:-- David Nisleit: This is primarily a complaint-driven issue. Law enforcement, we deal with behavior. We deal with criminal behavior. So if we constantly get a complaint every single day about the behavior out there, we go out there to who is doing the activity. And so is there a disparity about who is being contacted out there as far as people of color? Yes, but that's in my area, and I'm only going to specifically talk about San Diego. That who we contact That who involved in this criminal behavior There other ways to look at what is causing this disparity Why is it that these people are out here involved in sex trapping Are they there because they want to be, or are they there because they're being forced into this business?
--:-- John Bickley: And Chief Nisleit told me the law has really hamstrung officers in San Diego from cracking down on sex trafficking, which he said was completely predictable.
--:-- David Nisleit: It's made it extremely difficult. I mean, so in the past, when we were able to contact women or those involved in sex trafficking, we could use the loitering with intent after we watched them. Once they decriminalize that, we really don't have an entryway into making that contact anymore.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: What we're seeing now is we've had these open sex markets 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year. These open sex markets, as Chief Nislight put it, of course, are affecting the surrounding communities.
--:-- Georgia Howe: There have been dozens of local news reports in California revealing rampant prostitution happening outside schools and in neighborhoods where mothers are pushing their babies in strollers and so on.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Here are some residents in a San Francisco neighborhood describing such prostitution issues to a local Fox affiliate.
--:-- Resident 1: Violence of the pimps, that they not only intimidate the women and men handle them aggressively, they also sometimes intimidate the neighbors.
--:-- Resident 2: Noise it brings at night. I mean, I wake up multiple times a week at night. My kids have missed school. I've missed work. And it's the Johns driving by in their car, racing back and forth, turning their music on, having sideshows with their cars.
--:-- David Nisleit: Chief Nisleit emphasized that this hurts sex trafficking victims the most, an echo of this view our government used to hold. It's also making it for those that will traffic women, specifically younger women, for them to put them out there with now to reduce their chance of being caught. than those that are put out there involuntary. It's made it much harder for us to rescue those victims.
--:-- John Bickley: And just because you decriminalize something doesn't mean the impact on the victim, those that are being trafficked, or on the community goes away. In fact, sometimes like this, it increases.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Now, advocates for decriminalizing prostitution often complain that so-called sex workers are not part of these conversations when it comes to laws against selling sex. They claim these women, men too, but they typically talk in terms of women, are happy and unharmed selling sex and therefore law enforcement should not be involved.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I wanted to kind of go down this avenue, so I spoke to former prostitute Brittany De La Mora about her time as a prostitute for over four years, starting when she was just 21 years old.
--:-- Brittany De La Mora: Even before that, I was selling sex. At 18 years of age, I was working in the porn industry. I was in a relationship with a guy right before the pimp, and he was stabbed to death in front of me, and I was living with him. So after that, I basically had nowhere to live. Honestly, at first, I didn't want to have a relationship with a pimp, but I literally had nowhere to go. And he gave me a place to stay.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: About five months into that relationship, this man encouraged Brittany to sell her body. I didn't really want to do it, but I just kind of was in this place where I felt like these are the choices that I've made with my life. And I didn't really see a way out.
--:-- Brittany De La Mora: I didn't really see how I could come out of that. So I just, I kind of accepted his guidance and I went back to porn and prostitution. Brittany, who is now a devout Christian, told me it was an encounter with God that gave her the push to get out of the industry.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: After she left with the help of her mother, her home was robbed. She believes it was her pimp.
--:-- Brittany De La Mora: I have my deepest suspicion to believe it was him because it was like, you know, the safe with the code and everything that he knew was opened. And so, yeah, I think he did that to scare me because he wanted me to feel like I couldn't do life without him.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: But I just pushed through and I did not go back to him. I asked Brittany about the others she encountered who were also selling sex. She acknowledged this theme of vulnerable and broken women, even for those whom she said were not forced into prostitution.
--:-- Brittany De La Mora: I didn't personally meet anybody that was pressured. I mean, there's definitely some manipulation that goes on with the pimps. They prey on vulnerable young girls. We know that they prey on teenagers, but the women that I met were all adults that were vulnerable. They came from broken childhoods. And so they were kind of inclined to this way of life because when you've been abused as a child and you haven't healed from that, you often choose a life of abuse. You just subconsciously attract what you think you deserve.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Now coming out of that line of work, I've met women that say that they were forced, they were pressured, maybe there were runaways, and this was kind of the life that they fell into, not by choice.
--:-- Brittany De La Mora: Brittany told me she wasn't sure how to best handle prostitution in the legal sense and thought the issue should be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Women who are forced into the industry should not be criminalized, she said. But decriminalizing the whole industry is probably not the best solution.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: If I had gotten arrested when I was doing what I was doing, I think that it absolutely would have changed me. I know that it would have changed the course of my life. I mean, maybe I would have continued with porn, but I would have stopped prostituting.
--:-- John Bickley: And Brittany is a mother. She's married to a Christian pastor, and a lot of her life's work is dedicated to helping people transition out of prostitution and porn, which I think speaks to her own experience.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: The couple does this through their nonprofit called Love Always Ministries. So her past experience really inspired her to be an activist on this issue.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Final question, what are the latest statistics on prostitution in the U.S.? Just how many people What were you talking about here?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, as you'd expect, we don't know for sure, but the estimates range between one and two million. That's in the U.S. Worldwide estimates are more than 40 million people. And we should note that a significant percentage of trafficked children are boys. So again, this isn't just a female issue. This industry can victimize anyone.
--:-- John Bickley: In the end, this all really comes back to this one question. Is sex work inherently dehumanizing and inseparable from breeding exploitation, or is it merely work? And if there is non-exploitative sex work, how is that separated out from abuse and trafficking? Would victims be a sacrifice of this movement as they seem to be in California?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Yeah, well, all crucial questions that have to play into policy decisions on this issue.
--:-- John Bickley: Amanda, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Thanks for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: That was Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
