Written By: Matt Osborne, NFNL MAG Liaison

“No no, Señor Osborne…those are just prostitutes and table dancers!”

I was stunned to hear that sentence come out of the mouth of the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in Spain, with whom I was meeting as part of a diplomatic assignment for the U.S. Government in the capital of Madrid. For a minute I had to review in my head the Spanish vocabulary I had learned years earlier to confirm that I correctly understood him, but those were his exact words.

Preventing, Prosecuting, and Protecting

The year was 2007, and I had been tasked to write the entry on Spain for the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report that the U.S. Department of State puts out each year to grade countries on the “three P’s” of fighting human trafficking...how that country is faring in: Preventing trafficking, Prosecuting traffickers, and Protecting victims. As a junior Foreign Service Officer on my first overseas tour, I was intimidated to say the least to have to sit across from Spain’s most powerful law enforcement officer and inform him in my pure gringo Spanish that his country had a trafficking problem. He initially misunderstood me, either due to the fact that my Spanish was shaky or more likely because he was willingly turning a blind eye to the issue of commercial sexual exploitation in his country. He replied that the “traffic” in Madrid was indeed a problem due to poorly timed stoplights and pervasive potholes. He suggested that the summer months were better when many in the capital head to Spain’s numerous beaches and vehicle traffic subsides, and suggested I come back to see him then. It was only after I showed him on a map of Madrid a few locations that our intelligence had identified as hotbeds of human trafficking—a truck stop where young African girls were sold by the half hour, a table dance bar featuring women brought over from Eastern Europe on false pretenses, and an Asian massage parlor and nail salon exploiting women and girls from China and Vietnam—that he responded with the sentence that began this article, casually dismissing the human trafficking victims being forced to work in those locations as, “just prostitutes and table dancers.”

Victims, Not Volunteers

Fast forward 15 years and I am pleased to see how much progress has been made in the fight to raise awareness about the global problem of human trafficking and child exploitation, as more and more people around the world have come to realize that this is trafficking, not prostitution, and that these women are victims, not volunteers. I am also grateful to see that in recent years Spain has achieved and maintained Tier 1 status in the Trafficking in Persons Report, indicating that its government fully complies with the minimum standards of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.

Since my first exposure to this issue back in 2007, I have had the opportunity to play a small but myriad role in the fight against child exploitation and human trafficking—first as a US Government intelligence officer and diplomat, and later with an anti-trafficking NGO that empowers law enforcement in the U.S. and around the world to launch undercover sting operations to arrest suspected traffickers, free trafficking victims where appropriate, and help provide aftercare and counseling services to survivors. More recently, I have been blessed to be affiliated with New Friends New Life (NFNL) in Dallas and have come to see that one issue stands above all in its importance to truly ending this crime once and for all…and that is the issue of demand reduction among men and the shifting of societal norms around the purchasing of commercial sex.

I have become convinced that it is vital for men to take a prominent role in the fight to end child exploitation and human trafficking, because too many men in our society share the view that trafficking victims are “just prostitutes and table dancers.” I speak from experience because, much to my chagrin and embarrassment, I had those same thoughts in my adolescence and early adulthood. And, before I was exposed to this issue through the writing of the TIP Report, I had assumed that the women I saw working the streets or in strip clubs or on online escort sites were there of their own free will and choice. I made the erroneous assumption that this was just like the movie “Pretty Woman,” where it was made to seem as if the Julia Roberts character truly had the choice to decide when, where and how she performed sex acts for money. But I soon came to understand that today it is the extremely rare occurrence, if indeed it even still happens, where a woman has total control over how she runs her business and where she keeps one hundred percent of the profits without a pimp or trafficker controlling her body and earnings. The hard truth is that the vast majority of women in the commercial sex industry are not there of their own accord, and most likely are being abused and exploited in some of the worst ways possible. It is imperative for all men to understand this reality.

Addressing Demand

Though steady progress has been made in educating men about this issue, it is still an uphill battle and there is much more work that needs to be done to raise awareness. To that end…I am so grateful for the Men’s Advocacy Group (MAG)—an auxiliary of NFNL created to mobilize men to take action against sex trafficking and exploitation of women and girls by raising awareness through advocacy, education and volunteerism. The more than 100 DFW-area men who have supported our group in recent years know that we have the power to effect real change, because while men drive the demand, we can also influence fellow men and our youth.

MAG members support the mission of NFNL through various volunteer opportunities:

Teaching The manKINDness Project curriculum in high schools, churches and Young Men’s Service Leagues.

Sponsoring and leading the Sex Trafficking Awareness Excursions (bus tours) that raise awareness about sex trafficking in and around Dallas.

Serving or providing meals for NFNL members

We call on all good men to join our rallying cry to #StandForHer…we promise you will not regret the decision to join our group of uncommon men who not only refuse to be part of the problem, but who mobilize to be the solution to the epidemic of sex trafficking in the DFW area.

Join the fight!