A Message From Rachel About Transitions at CAASE

After seven amazing years at the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, I have decided to move on from my wonderful work at CAASE to pursue a new journey in my life.

Ten years ago a friend invited me to the Chicago International Film festival to watch a new fictional film that dealt with the issue of human trafficking. Having never heard of trafficking, I accompanied my friend to “Lana’s Rain” to learn more.

I never would have imagined that walking into that theater would be the beginning of a 10-year journey of dedicating my life to ending sexual exploitation and harm.

The intersecting injustices that impact trafficking and prostituted people are many and include sexual assault, racism, economic exploitation, and struggling to meet basic survival needs. Yet with all the human rights violations experienced by this population, I found that they were a group of people frequently blamed for their life circumstances and continually re-victimized by society and the criminal justice system. And it was after spending time with victims in Thailand, India and Chicago that I knew I had to do something. It was my first sense of a true calling.

I founded the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation to focus on the root cause of sexual exploitation: the demand. It is because of the pimps, traffickers and johns that the sex trade continues to flourish and lives continue to be harmed. Any efforts to end sexual exploitation had to include a focus on this root cause, and yet seven years ago little work was being done to address demand.

CAASE’s beginnings were in an office the size of a closet, with me and a group of dedicated interns who believed that we could make a difference in reducing sexual exploitation in Chicago. Seven years later, CAASE is a fully realized nonprofit with nine staff members, an amazing group of volunteers, a dedicated board of directors, and four successful program areas. During my time with the organization we have celebrated success after success, including:

• Producing research that has become instrumental to the movement to address the demand for prostitution.
• Creating and implementing the country’s first prevention curriculum that teaches high school boys about the realities of the sex trade.
• Passing three laws in three years to hold sex traffickers accountable and create resources for survivors.
•  Creating countless resources to help people with their own activism to end sexual exploitation. 
•  Providing legal services to hundreds of survivors of sexual assault.

CAASE has become a national leader in the movement to end sexual exploitation, and our staff and supporters continue to ensure that the organization is at the forefront of this work.

The decision to step down as CAASE’s Executive Director was a challenging one. I have cherished being able to dedicate my time and energy to such important and rewarding work. But after seven years I am ready to move on from leading CAASE to focus on other types of healing work. In many religions, seven is a significant number. It is the number of completion and creation. Though my time as Executive Director at CAASE has come to an end, I know that the organization is moving into a new creation chapter of continued impact and innovative and successful work. There truly is no greater gift than transitioning from an organization one has founded, knowing that the work and organization will continue long after I have gone.

I am more proud of what I have accomplished at CAASE than anything else I have done with my life, and I will always be a supporter and ambassador for the organization. Like many others, I am excited to see how CAASE continues to grow and evolve.

Thank you to each of you for believing in CAASE and supporting our mission. It has been an honor to get to know so many of you and to work together towards a more healed world.

We also want to invite you to celebrate Rachel and all that she has accomplished since starting CAASE in 2006. Please read this special message from Rachel on our website, and join us for party in her honor:

Thursday, May 23
Flourish Studios
3020 N. Lincoln
6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Please RSVP via the Facebook event here, or email Karen Beilstein at: kbeilstein@caase.org if you plan to attend.

Young Man Tries to Buy Sex in Suburbs

This story is on the homepage of the Chicago Tribune rightnow:

We don’t know anything more about this case than what is in the story, but let’s all pause for a moment and reflect on what’s not in that headline: 14-year-old boy (presumably) uses iPad to try and buy sex.

We're not saying it's ok that he was attacked. But there are a lot of questions here that pretty serious.  Why did this young man think that was something he should do? What had he heard or been taught that led him to believe that buying sex was ok and something he should use his savings for?

The truth is that on any given day in Chicago, there are more than 16,000 women and girls involved in prostitution. And thousands and thousands of men, in our own neighborhoods, are buying sex. At some point in their lives, someone or something told them that it was ok to buy another human being. Or, even if it wasn't ok, that they wouldn't face any consequences. 

CAASE working on this problem, in classrooms in Chicagoland. Our curriculum for young men in high school is starting conversations now, so that students can learn about the realities of prostitution before they’re faced with these types of decisions. So they can talk to each other about healthy masculinity, and why buying sex has nothing to do with being a real man.

You canlearn more about our curriculum for young men here. 

Op-Ed: Eliminate Felony Prostitution in Illinois

This piece is from Lynne Johnson is policy and advocacy director for Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, which leads the End Demand Illinois campaign. This op-ed ran this morning in the Chicago Sun-Times. 

It’s time to call it off. The 13-year-old experiment of charging prostitution as a felony in Illinois has failed. People in prostitution are being cycled through the criminal justice system without access to the help they really need, and the people causing the harm are going unpunished. Recently, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Commissioner Bridget Gainer introduced a resolution calling for an end to felony prostitution charges in Cook County, in part to relieve pressure on the overcrowded jail. We are encouraged that local officials understand how wasteful and unfair felony prostitution really is, but the problem extends far beyond Cook County. To get to the root cause, the End Demand Illinois campaign is lobbying for a bill that would eliminate felony prostitution charges throughout our entire state.

Glenda Sykes is determined to help make that happen. In March, Glenda testified before members of the Illinois Senate and explained how felony charges for prostitution had trapped her in a cycle of exploitation. “I had no hope,” she told them. “I thought I would die on the streets.” While it might seem like charging prostituted people with felonies could deter them, high recidivism rates prove that the punishment isn’t the answer. Glenda’s 13 felony prostitution convictions did not help her escape the sex trade, treat her drug problem or find employment. Now, Glenda is getting support from community-based organizations, but those felonies have impeded her from pursuing her dream to become a nurse. Glenda volunteers with other survivors at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless to change things for people who are still struggling to get out of prostitution.

The intentions behind the proposed Cook County moratorium on felony prostitution are good, but it is not the most effective response. A moratorium would only affect Cook County and would depend upon the cooperation of local law enforcement who would be under no legal obligation to follow it. Cook County officials also support the End Demand Illinois bill to eliminate felony prostitution statewide, which could save the Illinois Department of Corrections more than $2 million annually. It would also bring Illinois in line with how the rest of the country responds; only seven other states charge prostitution as a felony.

Meanwhile, people who buy sex report that police ignore them and only target women and girls for arrest. The numbers reflect that reality. Under state law in 2011, there were 1,871 arrests of prostituted people but only 95 arrests for solicitation. Trying to buy sex—solicitation—is merely treated as a misdemeanor. In interviews, johns repeatedly say that facing legal consequences would make them think twice about buying sex. If you don’t want to see prostitution in your community, ask local police to go after the johns who create the demand for paid sex.

It’s time to rethink our response to prostitution and for the General Assembly to eliminate the felony charge. Most people in the sex trade face chronic homelessness and substance abuse, and many engage in prostitution for basic necessities like food and shelter. In other parts of the country, prostituted people are offered support and services without being charged with a felony, and it’s working. Survivors say their lives change when they meet people like Glenda—people who have been where they are and can show them a way out.

For more information visit www.enddemandillinois.org

Man Uses Craigslist to Target Women in the Sex Trade, Is Charged with Sexual Assault

A john in Woodstock, Illinois, is being prosecuted for sexually assaulting five women and may have attacked as many as 20. According to the Chicago Tribune, Charles Oliver responded to ads for sex on Craigslist, and he took the women from the ads back to his home where he would assault them.

Charles Oliver

This is a deeply disturbing case and, unfortunately, violence against people in prostitution is all too common. We applaud prosecutors in McHenry County for recognizing that these women are crime victims, worthy of justice against their perpetrators. It was also incredibly courageous for these women to come forward and name the attacker.

This case underscores that prostitution is not a victimless crime. People in prostitution experience tremendous levels of violence, often at the hands of johns. About 80% of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape, and 83% of people in prostitution are victims of assault with a weapon (National Coalition Against Sexual Assault). People who buy sex are most frequently identified as the perpetrators of violence against prostituted people (Jody Raphael, “Sisters Speak Out”).

CAASE has conducted research on johns, most recently “Our Great Hobby: An Analysis of Online Networks for Buyers of Sex in Illinois.” The report examines johns’ online posts about buying sex in Illinois, and they hail from urban, suburban and rural locations throughout our state. Johns themselves say that law enforcement efforts that target customers make them think twice about buying sex, while efforts that only target people in prostitution do nothing to deter them. In fact, johns will even troll mugshots of prostituted people and comment that they will simply buy sex from that person once she is released from prison. Clearly, traditional law enforcement responses to prostitution are not working. 

The End Demand Illinois campaign advocates for law enforcement to focus their attention on people like Oliver—johns and traffickers who are causing great harm in our community. We hope that this case will raise awareness among law enforcement about the harms experienced by people in prostitution and encourage police to focus their resources on holding johns accountable.

EDI is also working to lessen the criminal justice system’s impact on people in prostitution, proposing instead a community-based response to prostitution and sex trafficking. To learn more about the campaign and take action, visit www.enddemandillinois.org

Debunking the Sexual Assault Monster Myth

This post is written by Kaethe Morris Hoffer, CAASE's Legal and Deputy Executive Director. Kaethe leads CAASE's Sexual Assault Justice Project, which represents individual survivors of sexual assault, including through prostitution, advocating for them through civil litigation and within the context of the criminal system. Kaethe has spent the last twenty years doing legal and political advocacy opposing sex inequality and sexual violence.

What I call the “monster myth” is a quandary we must acknowledge: while rape is a horrific act of unspeakable cruelty, most men who rape can rarely be described—even by their victims—as horrific, unspeakably cruel men.  If rapists actually embodied the evil of the act that they engage in, rape would be incredibly rare (instead of remarkably common), because girls and women don’t choose to be alone with—let alone date or get drunk with—men who are fundamentally awful, cruel, or horrid.  Sadly, most men who commit rape are guys who seemed perfectly safe to be alone with—guys who were previously good, nice, cute, kind.  It is a painful truth we must do a better job of confronting: girls and women aren’t fools: that so many can’t distinguish ahead of time between rapists and non-rapists is a sign that rapists and non-rapists are genuinely hard to tell apart. 

Following rape, many victims certainly come to see the man who raped them as a monster whose previous (or after-the-fact) good deeds and loving conduct were/are just false fronts.  But especially for girls and women raped in typical circumstances—which is to say by trusted men who don’t use much overt violence—this point of view is rarely adopted during the rape itself or even immediately after.  Rather, there is often a period of time both during and after rape in which the victim is painfully, crushingly, achingly aware of two things simultaneously—he is a guy who did and said all the things that are signs of a man being a good man, and he is forcing sex on her against her will.  Alone, in situations of extreme vulnerability, survivors are constantly being exposed to a truth that is vehemently denied by our society, our justice system, and even our anti-rape communities: nice men rape.

The first time that most survivors come face to face with rape, they are literally face to face with a man that they—oftentimes just moments before—found attractive and trustworthy.  They are looking at a person they had specifically thought was a “nice guy.”  Their efforts to prevent sex are being thwarted by someone their peer group would never describe as a monster.  For most survivors, the monumental crisis of rape is generally accompanied by the overwhelming mind-boggler that they were raped by a man they didn’t believe was capable of rape. 

Although rape exposes most survivors to the truth that rape is a horror mostly not committed by horrible men, the popular (if unstated) rhetoric of our country, which holds that it takes an awful person to do an awful thing, has a powerful grip on the popular imagination.  Especially for those who want very clear distinctions between “good” and “evil” people (like many in the criminal justice community), there is great anxiety about taking legal action against someone who would be difficult to characterize as monstrous.  The outpourings of sympathy for those identified as engaging in sexual assault, and rage at those who accuse them (see not just Steubenville but also DSK, Julian Assange, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Kobe Bryant, William Kennedy Smith, etc) is evidence, I believe, of a primal commitment held by many to the belief that “good” guys don’t (or “can’t”) engage in sexual assault.

Because most survivors have actually lived the experience of having significant positive feelings for the men who forced sex on them, they are quick to see how other people would regard him as a “good guy.”  And because most survivors—like most members of our community—had previously bought in to the myth that only monsters are capable of rape, they are quick to see how other people will find it inconceivable that such a “good guy” would engage in rape.   Neither of these realizations, of course, is encouraging to a survivor considering going to the police—especially when the criminal justice system is guiltier than most of promoting the idea that bad things are only done by “bad” people. 

We must, of course, always promote public recognition of the horror of rape.  But we must simultaneously challenge the assumption that it takes a “horrible” man to engage in sexual assault (or even the corollary that engaging in sexual assault proves a man is “horrible.”)  I am sympathetic to the appeal of the belief that only horrible people do horrible things (or alternately, that doing horrible things proves someone is horrible), but it is, I think, a belief that is contradicted by the lives of survivors, and it is jamming up our country’s ability to hold men accountable when they force sex on women.

One of the ways we must support survivors is by refusing to imply that they were stupid or blind when they made choices that left them alone with their rapists—something we risk doing when we portray rapists as monsters.  And one of the ways we can highlight how rapists mostly aren’t monsters, is by calling attention to the fact—again and again—that men who rape are mostly just as nice and cute and attractive as the majority of men—a majority that doesn’t, ever, rape.

Perhaps the continuing failure of the criminal justice system to charge and prosecute rape is related to the fact that those of us in the anti-rape movement have been trying to promote the prosecution of rape without working to undermine the myth that it takes a horrible man to engage in sexual assault.  As anyone with even a limited appreciation for the reality of rape understands, rape as it mostly happens continues to be reported or prosecuted with incredible rarity.  As in the old days, rape mostly is prosecuted where it is socially easy to convince outsiders that the man is a monster.  Rapists who jump out of bushes or use significant violence or who have criminal records or who otherwise fit into preexisting stereotypes about what a criminal or a monster looks like: it is not difficult to convince police and prosecutors to charge these guys and try and sell a jury the idea that these men are monsters. 

We have to be upfront about the fact that most men who rape have lots of positive attributes.  Not fake good qualities—real good qualities.  A good sense of humor, gentleness with children or animals, intelligence, having the respect and affection of co-workers: these are qualities that men who engage in rape actually have—they are qualities that lead girls and women to make choices that leave them vulnerable to rape.  For as long as we deny these truths, or allow them to be denied by rhetoric that paints rapists as exceedingly unlike most men, we will be fighting an uphill battle.  The majority of men NEVER rape, but the ways in which they are specifically distinguishable from the minority who DO are difficult to discern—outside of the mostly private spaces in which rape takes place. 

The anti-rape community has long led the fight to insist that girls and women are believed when they report being raped, but perhaps we have been complicit in disbelieving them, by failing to deal with the other truth that survivors reveal: the truth that in addition to being capable of rape, perpetrators are capable of being kind, nice, cute, attentive, respectful, charming, smart.  In our brave work exposing and opposing the ugly monstrosity of rape, we must also be brave about acknowledging the reality that few rapists are ugly monsters.  Failing to tackle this hard task risks, I think, disserving the survivors we are trying to serve.

Learn more about CAASE's legal services for survivors of sexual exploitation. 




Creative Commons Photo by David Playford.

Taking Action After Steubenville

This week many of us have followed coverage of the Steubenville verdict, which found two teenage boys guilty of the rape of a 16-year-old girl. The responses from the media and public alike have invoked rape myths and rape culture once again, and we are glad to see the anti-sexual-violence movement responding. We wanted to link to some of the best responses that we’ve read recently and offer links to resources for learning more and creating change in your own community. We would also love to hear from you—what are the most powerful or motivating responses you’ve seen or read this week?

1. Jaclyn Friedman’s column on Steubenville discusses Toxic Masculinity and how our culture is reinforcing to young men that masculinity is superior, and how that leads to violence. “If we want to end the pandemic of rape, it’s going to require an entire global movement of men who are willing to do the hard work required to unpack and interrogate the ideas of masculinity they were raised with, and to create and model new masculinities that don’t enable misogyny. Masculinities built not on power over women, but on power with women.” Read the full article here.

2. CNN’s reaction to the Steubenville verdict was wildly off target--sympathizing with the defendants. “CNN decided to paint the tears of the convicted Steubenville rapists in a sympathetic light and say how their lives were ruined.” There was no mention of the young woman who survived the attack during these remarks. Sign this petition on Change.org to ask CNN to apologize for its coverage.

3. In the larger context of sexual exploitation, the media often misrepresents topics like prostitution, trafficking, and violence against women. CAASE’s Responding to the Media toolkit offers ways to respond to inaccurate editorials, reports, and TV segments that you might encounter.

4. Responses to rape are often not victim-centered, and all of us could stand to learn more about responding when someone discloses a sexual assault.  If you would like to learn more about constructive ways to help a survivor of sexual assault or rape, these tips from Rape Victim Advocates offer some best practices.

5. Learn about CAASE’s legal services for survivors of sexual assault. Our attorneys offer free legal counsel to survivors of both sexual assault and the sex trade, helping them to navigate the criminal justice system and representing them in civil court to seek justice against their perpetrators. Learn more here. 

Written by CAASE's Prevention Intern, Roxy Kozyckyj, and Kristin Claes Mathews 

Felony Prostitution Doesn't Make Sense Anywhere in Illinois: Take Action!

Yesterday, the Cook County Board heard a resolution to place a moratorium on felony sentencing for prostitution in the county, in response to overcrowding in Cook County jail. They also urged support of Senate Bill 1872, our End Demand Illinois legislation to eliminate the felony sentence statewide. Senate Bill 1872 passed unanimously in the Illinois Senate Criminal Law committee last week and will soon be called on the Senate floor.

Felony sentencing for prostitution doesn’t make anywhere else in Illinois, and Senate Bill 1872 eliminates it statewide.

“We appreciate that Cook County officials don’t want to see people charged with felonies for prostitution,” said Lynne Johnson, policy and advocacy director for the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation. “We urge lawmakers and the public to support Senate Bill 1872 to eliminate the felony upgrade for prostitution throughout Illinois. This is not just a Cook County issue, as it affects people in counties throughout our state.”

You can take action TODAY. Call your Illinois State Senator. You could say "I'm calling to ask the senator to support Senate Bill 1872 to eliminate the felony upgrade for prostitution in Illinois."

• Contact information for Illinois senators is here.
• Not sure who your State Senator is? Use this search and find your State Senator.

Want to know more?

• Felony prostitution unfairly targets women for harsher punishments. The “solicitation” offense for customers does not have a felony upgrade for subsequent offenses and is rarely enforced. In 2011, when law enforcement charged under the state criminal code, there were 1,875 arrests for prostitution and 95 arrests for solicitation. Since 2010, 370 women have been admitted to IDOC for felony prostitution. Fewer than 10 people in Illinois have ever been convicted of the felony offense of “patronizing a prostitute” since its passage in 2010.
• Felony prostitution sentencing is rare in the United States.  Only seven other states have a felony prostitution sentencing option for subsequent offenses. (Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Texas)
• Felony prostitution is an expensive waste of diminishing local and state public safety resources. Illinois’ Department of Corrections reported 127 felony prostitution admissions for 2012, costing the state $2,011,680. Pretrial detention for those facing felony prostitution charges costs Cook County Department of Corrections between $5.3 to 9.5 million annually.

End Demand Illinois envisions a statewide response to prostitution that includes community-based, specialized services for survivors. To learn more about this legislation, visit the End Demand Illinois website.