Proclamation for International No Prostitution Day
by Ann Simonton

WHEREAS Santa Cruz joins Berkeley, CA; Portland, OR; Melbourne, Australia; Edo State, Nigeria; and Phoenix, AZ; Manila, Philippines; Iowa City, IA; Minneapolis, MN; Chicago, IL; Anchorage and Valdez, AK; and Russia in the first annual International Day of No Prostitution, October Fifth. This day of no prostitution includes no pornography, phone sex, mail order bride services, trafficking, stripping, sex tours, bestiality, and prostitution occurring in massage parlors, on the street, in hotels or anywhere else.

WHEREAS prostitution is understood as an act of violence against women which is intrinsically traumatizing. In a global study of prostitution, 62%
reported having been raped in prostitution. 73% reported having experienced physical assault in prostitution. 72% were currently or formerly homeless. 92% stated that they wanted to escape prostitution immediately. 1.

WHEREAS prostitution constitutes a human rights violation which creates the false notion that human females are "commodities" to be bought and sold. Women and children do not freely choose prostitution because the power dynamic is unequal and therefore not free. No "commodity" can ever hold equal status with a purchaser.

WHEREAS racism, poverty, previous sexual abuse and drug addiction are the four major determining factors that cause women and girls to end up in prostitution. The fact that women at the bottom of society's economic and racial strata are disproportionately represented in systems of prostitution reveal this "work" is anything but a matter of choice.

WHEREAS the average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years 2. or 14 years 3. Most of these 13 or 14 year old girls were recruited or coerced
into prostitution. Others were "traditional wives" without job skills who escaped from or were abandoned by abusive husbands and went into
prostitution to support themselves and their children. 4.

WHEREAS 78% of 55 women who sought help from Portland, Oregon's Council for Prostitution Alternatives in 1991 reported being raped an average of 16 times a year by pimps, and were raped 33 times a year by johns. 5. "Prostitutes are raped, on the average, eight to ten times per year. They are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet." 6.

WHEREAS as recently as 1991, police in southern California closed all rape reports made by prostitutes and addicts, placing them in a file stamped
"NHI." The letters stand for the words "No Human Involved." 7.

WHEREAS a Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average for females in this same age category. 8.

WHEREAS estimates of the prevalence of incest among prostitutes range from 65% to 90%. 9.

WHEREAS like combat veterans, women in prostitution suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a psychological reaction to extreme
physical and emotional trauma. Symptoms are acute anxiety, depression, insomnia, irritability, flashbacks, emotional numbing, and being in a state
of emotional and physical hyper alertness. 67% of those in prostitution from five countries met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD - a rate similar
to that of battered women, rape victims, and state-sponsored torture survivors. 10.

WHEREAS women are often 4 times as likely to be convicted of prostitution-related charges as are the men who purchase them. 11.
Decriminalizing or legalizing prostitution for the "johns" would normalize and regulate practices which are human rights violations, which in any
other context would be legally actionable (sexual harassment, physical assault, rape, captivity, economic coercion.) or emotionally damaging
(verbal abuse).12.

WHEREAS the Swedish Parliament put into effect a law which criminalizes the buying of sexual services but not the selling of sexual services; a
compassionate, social interventionist legal response to the cruelty of prostitution. 13.

WHEREAS Los Angeles has proposed an ordinance that would allow police to seize and impound the cars of motorists caught picking up prostitutes. L.A. will be joining Oakland and Sacramento who have already adopted similar laws whose constitutionality was tested successfully in California courts.

WHEREAS Santa Cruz, California has a thriving prostitution trade, known to offer 12 year old female prostitutes for $50.00 in our Beach Flats
neighborhoods and more recently prostitution has moved onto the south end of our Pacific Garden Mall.

WHEREAS prostitution must be located within the wider continuum of male violence against women and children e.g. child sexual abuse, rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, domestic violence and pornography. In doing so, the City of Santa Cruz recognizes that these various forms of male violence are not mutually exclusive but are often connected and sometimes interdependent.

WHEREAS prostitution is an integral part of the global industry of sexual abuse that promotes the abuse and degradation of all women and girls.
Prostitution is sexual slavery, occurring every minute, in every corner of the globe, be it a rural, suburban or city landscape.

WHEREAS we call on our community to fight for increased economic, social, and legal resources for those in and those who seek to escape prostitution; and to organize creative, confrontational protests, boycotts, speakers, and panels against prostitution year round, but especially on October Fifth.

Therefore I ..Christopher Krohn mayor of the City of Santa Cruz, declare this Saturday Oct. Fifth, 2002 and every Oct. Fifth hereafter as
International Day of No Prostitution in Santa Cruz, California.

REFERENCE NOTES
 

1.  In a study of 475 people in prostitution (including women, men and the transgendered) from 5 countries (South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, USA, and Zambia). Melissa Farley, Isin Baral, Merab Kiremire, Ufuk Sezgin, "Prostitution in Five Countries: Violence and Post traumatic Stress
Disorder" (1998) Feminism & Psychology 8 (4): 405-426.
 

2.  M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines, 1982, "Victimization of street prostitutes, Victimology: An International Journal, 7: 122-133.
 

3.  D.Kelly Weisberg, 1985, Children of the Night: A Study of Adolescent Prostitution, Lexington, Mass, Toronto.
 

4.  Denise Gamache and Evelina Giobbe, Prostitution: Oppression Disguised as Liberation, National Coalition against Domestic Violence, 1990. Research compiled by Melissa Farley Ph.D.
 

5.  Susan Kay Hunter, Council for Prostitution Alternatives Annual Report, 1991, Portland, Oregon.
 

6.  Susan Kay Hunter and K.C. Reed, July, 1990 "Taking the side of bought and sold rape," speech at National Coalition against Sexual Assault,
Washington, D.C.
 

7.   Linda Fairstein, Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape, 1993, New York, William Morrow.
 

8.  Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, 1985, Pornography and Prostitution in Canada 350.
 

9. The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report in 1991 stated that: 85% of prostitute/clients reported history of
sexual abuse in childhood; 70% reported incest. The higher percentages (80%-90%) of reports of incest and childhood sexual assaults of prostitutes
come from anecdotal reports and from clinicians working with prostitutes (interviews with Nevada psychologists cited by Patricia Murphy, Making the Connections: women, work, and abuse, 1993, Paul M. Deutsch Press, Orlando, Florida; see also Rita Belton, "Prostitution as Traumatic Reenactment," 1992, International Society for Traumatic Stress Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines, 1982, "Victimization of street prostitutes," Victimology: An International Journal, 7: 122-133; C. Bagley and L Young, 1987, "Juvenile Prostitution and child sexual abuse: a controlled study," Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, Vol 6: 5-26.
 

10.  92% stated that they wanted to leave prostitution, and said that what they needed was: a home or safe place (73%); job training (70%); and health care (59%). Melissa Farley, Isin Baral, Merab Kiremire, Ufuk Sezgin, "Prostitution in Five Countries: Violence and Post traumatic Stress
Disorder" (1998) Feminism & Psychology 8 (4): 405-426.
 

11.  Seattle Women's Commission, 1995, "Project to Address the Legal, Political, and Service Barriers Facing Women in the Sex Industry" Seattle,
Washington.
 

12.  Melissa Farley, Ph.D.
 

13. Sven-Axel Mansson and Ulla-Carin Hedin, 1999, "Breaking the Matthew Effect - On Women Leaving Prostitution," International Journal of Social Work. Also for a copy of the Swedish law see: http://www.prostitutionresearch.com
 

For further information please see http://www.escapeprostitution.com http://www.sageinc.org http://www.childrenofthenight.org/ c.c. DA's office, Sheriffs office, Police Dept., Superior Court  and Board of Supervisors