Six Months Later, People Are Finally Realizing That FOSTA Actually Is Putting Lives At Risk

Before FOSTA became law, plenty of experts in the space tried to warn everyone that a bill that was frequently promoted as being necessary to help "save the lives" of vulnerable women involved in sex trafficking, would actually put more lives at risk. And we've already had some evidence to support that this prediction was entirely accurate. Various law enforcement officials have been complaining that it's now more difficult to catch sex traffickers.

And, now the Associated Press has a big article looking at the impact of FOSTA and it's not pretty. The closing down of various online forums for sex workers has driven more sex workers into the street, where their lives are at significantly higher risk:

Law enforcement in San Antonio arrested 296 people for prostitution between March 21, when the Sex Trafficking Act passed Congress, and Aug. 14, according to a public records request - a 58 percent increase from the same span the year before, when police made 187 arrests.

Phoenix police said they experienced a surge in street-prostitution arrests in 2018 but did not provide figures. In Houston, levels have remained constant, but more 14- to 17-year-olds have been working outdoors since May, said James Dale, a police captain.

Police in Sacramento, California, noted three street-prostitution arrests between March 21, 2017, and mid-August of that year. During the same period in 2018, they recorded 15.

The stories from women who have shifted from using the internet to the streets are pretty harrowing:

Kara Alexander, who lives in Florida, advertised her services on Backpage, Craigslist and other sites before April. When media companies closed down sections hosting adult services ads, she said, she started working on the streets.

In May, she said, a client raped her and poured alcohol in her body in an attempt to destroy evidence. Alexander, 29, said she had faced violence while working online, but never on this scale.

"It's a different kind of danger," she said.

A sex worker who goes by Quinn and didn't want her real name used because she feared arrest and other repercussions said that in the age of the trafficking act, she hasn't been able to rack up enough jobs. Near the end of April, she started selling herself outdoors in Boston for the first time since she was a teenager, she said.

"There's no backup plan for people like us," said Quinn, who said she was raped and beaten in August but could not afford treatment.

There are more stories and information in the full AP piece.

And, again, none of this should be a surprise. Before FOSTA became law, we (and many others) pointed to a recent study that showed how adult ads on Craigslist "reduced the female homicide rate by 17.4%" when it was available. And, to put some context on that number, that's the overall female homicide rate, not just "the female homicide rate of sex workers." Forcing more women into the street is, literally, leading to people dying.

And it is infuriating that this was done by Representatives like Ann Wagner and Mimi Walters who insisted they were doing it to save women's lives, when the reality is that they have only served to put more women in potentially mortal danger.

The AP article also highlights another point that we had mentioned previously: FOSTA is enabling much more trafficking by empowering pimps, while online sites allowed sex workers to avoid needing to use pimps:

Alexander said a friend of hers was attacked by pimps who were incensed she was working without them, and Quinn said pimps have become much more aggressive now that they see a market.

It would be nice if some reporters actually ask Representatives like Ann Wagner and Mimi Walters, or Senators like Rob Portman and Richard Blumenthal how they feel about the fact that the bad law that they pushed for, claiming it was necessary to save young women, has now created a situation where those women are placed in significantly more danger? In the business world, if you push for a proposal, once it's implemented, people check to see whether what you claimed would happen would -- and if it didn't, you're often asked to explain why not. It's incredible that Congress can pass a law insisting it will do one thing, and when it does the exact opposite, no one seems to care.