by Alison Bass | Sep 14, 2015 | prostitution, public health, sex work, Uncategorized
I read Mary Mitchell’s column in the Chicago Sun Times this weekend with mounting disbelief and disgust. It’s hard to believe that in 2015 a news columnist, an African-American woman no less, was arguing that a sex worker raped at gunpoint by a client was...
by Alison Bass | Aug 30, 2015 | Uncategorized
I was interviewed on HuffPost Live about the recent Rentboy raid and its implications for sex workers. You can view the video below or use the direct link provided: http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/homeland-security-rentboy-raid/55d7f4be78c90a7f88000522 Click...
by Alison Bass | Aug 26, 2015 | prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, trafficking, Uncategorized, underage prostitution
This week, federal and state law enforcement officials shut down the well-known website, Rentboy.com, which provided a venue for thousands of gay escorts to post ads and screen potential clients. In a raid on the site’s headquarters in New York City, the officers...
by Alison Bass | Aug 2, 2015 | human trafficking, media coverage, prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, trafficking, Uncategorized, underage prostitution
Now that Amnesty International seems to be getting behind the movement to decriminalize sex work, the issue is finally getting some attention in the mainstream press. But as usual the media, or at least this article in the New York Times, has got some of its facts...
by Alison Bass | Jul 28, 2015 | human trafficking, prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, trafficking, Uncategorized
Sex workers like to work together because it’s safer for them. A co-worker who knows where they’re going and who they’re with can intervene if necessary. Now, a new Canadian study has found that working together or what the researchers call...
by Alison Bass | Jul 8, 2015 | prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, Uncategorized
Law enforcement officials have been unable to shut down Backpage, a website for personals and sex work ads, by legal means. So they have resorted to a more indirect approach: asking credit card companies to deny transactions by sex workers seeking to pay for ads on...
by Alison Bass | Jun 16, 2015 | pimps, prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, Uncategorized
At the beginning of June, northern Ireland became the only part of the United Kingdom to outlaw the purchase of sex, adopting what is known as the “Nordic model” because Sweden was the first country to criminalize the buyers of sex. The Nordic model has...
by Alison Bass | Jun 3, 2015 | pimps, prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, underage prostitution, websites
Two weeks ago, Eric Omuro, a California man who operated myRedbook.com, a website for personal ads, was convicted of facilitating prostitution and sentenced to 13 months in prison. Omuro and a coworker had been arrested last June and myRedbook shut down, much to the...
by Alison Bass | May 7, 2015 | prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work
Even some of the most respected news outlets in the United States are getting it wrong. In a recent Talk of the Town in The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch referred to the men who are smuggling migrants from Africa to Europe as traffickers instead of what they really...
by Alison Bass | Nov 8, 2014 | prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, Uncategorized
Nick Kristof is at it again. On Sunday, the New York Times columnist wrote yet another column about sex trafficking that was filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements. He was writing about a new lawsuit filed by two young women who say they were trafficked as...
