The news that Maine’s laws are among the worst in the nation when it comes to dealing with juvenile sex trafficking victims is a sad and startling reality.
Maine recently received a D grade for its legal treatment of its most vulnerable from the Shared Hope International in its annual Protected Innocence Challenge Report Card. Only six other states received such low marks from the Vancouver, Washington-based organization.
An estimated 200 to 300 cases of sex trafficking occur in Maine every year. Among those victims are vulnerable young teens. Yet the state is among 31 states that allow children involved in prostitution to be prosecuted as criminals.
We are encouraged that Sen. Amy Volk, R-Scarborough, intends to submit legislation prohibiting minors from being prosecuted as criminals during prostitution cases. This would be an important and necessary expansion to a bill she sponsored that became law in 2014 providing victims of sex trafficking with protections in the face of prostitution charges.
Volk should go further in her legislation and offer the same protections to not just minors but all of the state’s sex trafficking victims. Maine should join Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Canada by adopting the so-called Nordic model, making it legal for people to prostitute themselves but illegal to pimp, traffick or purchase sex.
As the Bangor Daily News revealed in its extensive reporting on sex trafficking, police are failing in their efforts to stop the underground market created by the desire of some men to buy sex. Many victims fear talking to police could land them in jail for prostitution. That fear is exploited and driven home by traffickers as a means of control.
And their traffickers in a sense are right— talking to police could land them in jail. Just last month, three women were arrested in Lewiston on charges of engaging in prostitution, the Sun Journal reported. These types of arrests do nothing to protect victims or stop sex trafficking.
Police should instead be dedicating their resources to going after the traffickers and the people that create the market in the first place: the johns.
The Portland Police Department has taken this approach, recently publicizing the arrests of 11 men seeking to purchase sex following a successful sting operation.
While the Nordic model is controversial and not perfect, the Swedish government reported during the first nine years after the law passed that the number of men reporting they purchased sex services decreased, and sex work where the first point of contact was made over the internet grew to a lesser extent than it did in its neighboring countries.
Maine has the ability to follow suit. Maine has an opportunity to help its hardworking and well-intentioned law enforcement officers protect victims instead of scare them off.
With so many young men and women being exploited around the state, it is critical lawmakers in Augusta seize the opportunity to stop their exploitation.
