Ambassador Joseph M. DeThomas' opening remarks at
The Estonian Women's Studies and Resource Centre Conference
Radisson SAS Hotel, Tallinn
Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Ladies and Gentleman, I want to thank ENUT for taking on and raising awareness about the very sensitive and timely topic of prostitution and its coverage in the media, and for the invitation to address the conference today.

I want to start off by saying what I don't know. I do not know how Estonia should regulate prostitution. This issue is fraught with legal, social, and economic complications -- along with some unintended consequences. However, I do know that my own government believes it is simply impossible to have legal prostitution without also importing dangerous and degrading practices and the criminal elements that profit from them.

Today, I would like to discuss crime, a crime that is linked to, but is separate from prostitution: that is the problem of Human Trafficking.

Several weeks ago, the New York Times graphically described the trafficking networks that supply the sex industry in the United States. It described a network of organized criminals based in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America that earns billions of dollars supplying women, boys and girls to that industry. It is a very sophisticated industry indeed.

Do you want Eastern European women for brothels in Mexico? They can supply them. Do you want young boys and girls under twelve for the California or New York market? They have produced them. Do you have a special market niche for children under the age of four who can be abused sexually then beaten? They can get them. This should not happen in my country. This activity should not be.

It should not be that up to twenty thousand people a year are trafficked into my country. It should not be that their fate is shared by perhaps 800 thousand people a year trafficked in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. It should not be that the third largest source income for organized crime (after the sale of drugs and guns) is the sale of human beings. Some number of those human beings is Estonian. I do not know how many, but I know that it should not be that any Estonian is lost to this practice.

I believe there is no more fundamental requirement for government action anywhere than to end this practice. A government cannot claim to protect its citizens if it does not act to end it. A government cannot claim it defends human rights and human dignity if it does not act to end it. While I am humiliated that this practice exists in the United States, I am proud that my government is acting. I ask your help in supporting your own government as it tries to do the same.

There is much to be done at home and abroad: First, we must have good law. We have made it a crime for any American to engage in or promote sex tourism involving children. We will not tolerate an American contribution to the market demand for sex with children. We have already made our first arrests under this law and some American sex tourists are facing prison sentences of thirty years.

We have also passed much more far-reaching legislation dealing with all aspects of this problem many of which I will discuss below. We believe all countries need to adhere to the relevant UN protocols on this topic. They also need to pass and enforce legislation criminalizing the trafficking of human beings. The penalties in this legislation must be severe, because the profits to be made in the business are large. There is much more to do to make international law enforcement cooperation on this issue as effective as it is in countering drugs and other global crime.

Second, we need to protect and rehabilitate victims. One of the great obstacles to ending this practice is that, once they are entrapped, the victims are treated as lawbreakers. This gives the traffickers a weapon of coercion. It means that law enforcement authorities tend to ignore their charges and fail to protect them so that they can testify. It means that victims feel trapped by a lack of opportunities for rehabilitation.

Each country must develop and fund mechanisms to protect trafficking victims and to offer them the chance for rehabilitation and for justice. I was pleased to see recently that the police chiefs of the Nordic-Baltic region discussed witness protection at their last meeting here in Tallinn in January. But we can still devote more to victim assistance by developing a set of protocols on how to handle and counsel victims as they come forward or as cases come under investigation.

Third, we need to prevent the crime. Criminals do not kidnap the majority of victims of trafficking in Europe, nor do friends or relatives sell them into their fate. (This does happen on a massive scale elsewhere in the world.) They are duped into participating. Many young women, boys and girls are duped into believing they are being recruited to honest work abroad. Once they accept offers from these recruiters, they are trapped. This is happening as we speak in this country. We need to warn and educate people about this practice.

We also need to give an honest portrayal of the sex industry. We need to be clear that the romanticized, Hollywood image of prostitution does not exist. Pretty Woman is a movie. It is fiction. The reality is squalid. The reality is of women, boys and girls entrapped by drug addiction and alcoholism, poverty, poor choices and fraud. It is a world of dirty basement rooms, violence and disease. It is up to organizations like this to reveal the truth, to talk sense to people who might fall victim, and to insist that government has a responsibility to protect and inform people. This is not a victimless crime.

To effectively prosecute traffickers, provide appropriate victim protection and engage in prevention programs requires political will and adequate funding. An effective street-level strategy for investigating and breaking up trafficking rings requires resources, and it requires an approach that ensures that victims are not considered as criminals. Rehabilitation into society after experiencing a trafficking ordeal is a critical part of this equation. All of this needs capable people. Police, prosecutors, teachers and youth counselors all need training. They need to hear that this is a priority from the media, civic organizations, and politicians.

Further, a much larger cross-section of the community needs to be involved in this issue. This topic should not be treated either as a so-called "women's issue" or caricatured as an effort by over-active moralists to constrain other people's life-styles. It is about human freedom and human dignity. The community at-large: businesses, church groups, community groups need to see this as their issue too. They need to support the government's efforts to stamp out trafficking and organized crime that affects all citizens.

Ladies and gentleman, it is generally the role of American Ambassadors to extol the virtues of the market, to press for deregulation and for tolerance. But, we have before us a market that we cannot tolerate. We cannot tolerate a market in human beings. We have come too far for that.

I do not have perfect answers to all the economic, sociological or ideological complications that affect the discussion about prostitution. I leave that to wiser and more sophisticated minds. Whatever decision Estonians make on that topic, I hope they put the immediate priority on doing their part to extinguish this fundamental crime against human dignity.

Thank you for your attention.