When Derek Williams was a pimp, one of his favorite phrases was, “I’d rather quit you than hit you.”
Williams became a pimp at 16. Struggling to feed a heroin addiction, he convinced his girlfriend at the time to enter prostitution.
“There’s a lot of mind manipulation,” Williams says of his former ways.
Thus, he understands why three women garnered national media attention recently for testifying on behalf of their former pimps in New York City. After professing to enjoy “good” treatment at the hands of their exploiters, attorneys for the defendants, and soon members of the press, came to refer to these women as “happy hookers.” These media headlines made buzz-worthy copy, but obscured a startling truth.
The women cried when their former pimps were found guilty, but experts agree that perceiving them as willing to be used is highly inaccurate, and may even contribute to pimps getting away with their crimes.
The results of the trial reveal a deep misunderstanding of American sex trafficking, and the psychological component of this crime — an aspect that must be reflected in statutes for the successful prosecution for such acts, some say.
A father and son pimp duo
Vincent George, Sr. and Vincent George, Jr., a father-son pimp duo, were found guilty last month of money laundering and promoting prostitution, charges stemming from an enterprise that reportedly generated as much as $500,000 a year for the men.
The Georges were sentenced to three to nine years in prison, but avoided much lengthier sentences after being acquitted of more serious sex trafficking charges, likely in part because three of their former victims testified in their defense.
“I would say that I make my own choices,” said Heather Keith, one of the women involved. “I am not a dumb person. I know what I’m doing.” It was a message echoed by the other victims.
“I have been on more than one rescue mission into brothels in which women and minors who were being brutally exploited for commercial sex actually cried when their pimps were being arrested and initially refused to be taken to a shelter for care, ” explains Siddharth Kara, an expert in human trafficking and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. “It is not uncommon in the cases I have documented to find victims of sex trafficking who identify with, defend, and even develop strong feelings for their exploiters.”
This type of destructive bonding can occur in subtle ways.
A former pimp repents
Williams told TheGrio he was a pimp off and on for almost 30 years. Today, at 54, he is the founder of Back to the Streets, an organization that counsels and offers resources to victims of sex trafficking to help them heal from their exploitation. After decades as a pimp and years helping to rehabilitate victims, he says anyone seeking to understand sex trafficking must know that prostitutes are truly suffering — not “happy.”
“People in our society look at them as perpetrators, but they’re no more guilty than battered women,” Williams says. “They’ve been mentally and emotionally handcuffed. They’re manipulated greatly by professionals.”
Sex trafficking is a class B felony in the state of New York, punishable by up to 25 years in prison. However, Williams suggests that the law too narrowly defines trafficking, requiring observable proof that traffickers force or coerce their victims into the sex trade — proof that is hard to come by if the manipulation is mental.
When it comes to criminalizing the psychological measures U.S. traffickers often use to control victims, the law falls short.
“A lot of the abuse is mental and emotional, rather than physical. The main way they can convict you of trafficking is if one of your girls signs a statement on you,” Williams says. “And it’s very rare that a girl will do that. Someone that’s pimping effectively has the victim thinking they’re a partner, that they’re in it together.”
Varied tools of manipulation
According to Kara, the physical, psychological and emotional tools that pimps and traffickers use to control their victims are highly complex, perhaps more dynamic than New York state law recognizes. Victims may also feel indebted to a trafficker who took them from a very bad situation.
“Individuals who were minors when initially trafficked, or individuals who came from a history of sexual abuse may especially not understand what normal life and normal relationships are meant to be like,” says Kara.
Danielle Douglas was 17 when she was first trafficked, and remained under the control of a pimp for two years between 2000 and 2002. Her story is a common one: she was “boyfriended” in.
Originally, Douglass met a man she thought was great. They dated for a while, doing things an average couple might do. Then, almost overnight, she says he changed into who he really was — a pimp.
She didn’t see it coming.
Victimized by shrewd coercion
“You’re being manipulated from the beginning,” says Douglas. “The pimps know exactly what they’re doing. It’s part of the psychological and emotional manipulation. Right when you start feeling like you need to get out of the life and go, they do something that keeps you hooked in.”
Aside from the promise of affection, coercion tactics including sleep and food deprivation, forced drug use, and physical and mental abuse. Through various means, traffickers “brainwash” their victims.
When explaining why someone might defend or refuse to leave their pimp, Douglas says the closest phenomenon she can compare such a mental state to is the diagnosis of Stockholm Syndrome. This is a psychological condition likened to post traumatic stress disorder in which victims come to identify with their captors and abusers.
“I’ve always related the experience to that of [kidnapping victim] Elizabeth Smart,” Douglas says. Smart was abducted by a couple as a young girl, but remained with them for years, despite enduring abuse, even though she likely had opportunities to escape.
“I try to make them understand through her story. She was kidnapped, raped, [‘married’] by her captor, and basically created a family with him. She was free to move about and was not looking for help. The help found her. I think she had Stockholm Syndrome and I think that’s what happened in this New York trial,” she said of the more recent case.
Douglas, who will be featured in Tricked, a feature length documentary about sex trafficking set to be released this fall, has survived the psychological abuse of her ordeal. Yet, women who are not able to break free of the mental bondage of sex trafficking might not fare as well without the support of more supportive laws.
Do sex trafficking laws need to change?
Conservative estimates by the State Department state that between 14,500 and 17,500 victims are possibly trafficked in the U.S. every year. Globally, 7,705 sex trafficking prosecutions were pursued in 2012, resulting in 4,746 convictions.
Human trafficking is prohibited under the Thirteenth Amendment, the section of the Constitution that abolished slavery in 1865. The amendment states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
To further address sex trafficking, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) and has reauthorized it every two years. TVPA broadly defines sex trafficking as the “recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.” But, because TVPA applies only to federal cases, each state is also tasked with legislating individually against sex trafficking.
These varying laws might not address the psychological harm done to sex trafficking victims, who often come to categorize their victimization as a choice. Kara has found that only after months, or even years of recovery, do some sex trafficking victims slowly realize the nature and extent of their exploitation and ultimately rebuke their former pimps.
“For these and other reasons, every sex trafficking case needs to be considered with great attention to the details of the victim-exploiter relationship, especially where the victim entered the relationship as a minor,” Kara says. “Control comes in many forms and is rarely overt. The law on sex trafficking must therefore be designed to take into consideration the wide variance of conditions that are at play when one makes an assessment on issues like ‘coercion’ and ‘voluntariness.’”
Follow Donovan X. Ramsey at @iDXR
This article has been updated to include information about the coming documentary, Tricked.