Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation

Last updated
Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation
AbbreviationC.E.A.S.E.
Formation1997 (P.A.A.F.E.)
2011 (Renamed)
Type Not-for-profit, charitable organization
Location
Website www.ceasenow.org

The Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation is a non-profit organization in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

History

The Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation (CEASE) was formerly named the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton (PAAFE). In April 2011, CEASE replaced PAAFE. Kate Quinn has been the executive director of CEASE since 2011. [4] [5] [6] [7]

In the early 1990s, the City of Edmonton formed an organization named Communities for Controlled Prostitution, which was later renamed Communities for Changing Prostitution. [8] Because of widespread prostitution in the Edmonton neighborhoods of Boyle Street and McCauley, the police chief of the City of Edmonton declared 1992 "The Year of The John." Mayor Jan Reimer and Police Chief Doug McNally subsequently launched the Action Group on Prostitution and the Mayor's Safer Cities Advisory Committee expanded to include Communities for Changing Prostitution. At this time, several Edmonton streets were converted to one-way travel in an attempt to restrict circling vehicles. [9] [10]

Programs

In 1996, the City of Edmonton launched its Prostitution Offender Program (“John School”) which is now called STOP: Sex Trade Offender Program. CEASE continues to coordinate the Sex Trade Offender Program and manage the funds generated by the program. [11]

Activity

CEASE follows three strategies: heal the harm; build for the future; and champion social equality. The organization offers trauma recovery counselling sessions, peer support, education, ensuring survivors' income stability, and testification in court against offenders. [12]

Events

Each year, the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation hosts the Men of Honour ceremony, which recognizes men in society who show exemplary leadership to end gender discrimination and violence. For example: Mark Huyser-Wierenga and Amarjeet Sohi received the award in 2014 and 2015 respectively. [13] [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sex tourism</span> Travel to engage in sexual activity

Sex tourism refers to the practice of traveling to foreign countries, often on a different continent, with the intention of engaging in sexual activity or relationships in exchange for money or lifestyle support. This practice predominantly operates in countries where sex work is legal. The World Tourism Organization of the United Nations has acknowledged about this industry is organized both within and outside the structured laws and networks created by them.

Child sex tourism (CST) is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, which is commercially facilitated child sexual abuse. The definition of child in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is "every human being below the age of 18 years". Child sex tourism results in both mental and physical consequences for the exploited children, which may include sexually transmitted infections, "drug addiction, pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and death", according to the State Department of the United States. Child sex tourism, part of the multibillion-dollar global sex tourism industry, is a form of child prostitution within the wider issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Child sex tourism victimizes approximately 2 million children around the world. The children who perform as prostitutes in the child sex tourism trade often have been lured or abducted into sexual slavery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Child prostitution</span> Prostitution involving a child

Child prostitution is prostitution involving a child, and it is a form of commercial sexual exploitation of children. The term normally refers to prostitution of a minor, or person under the legal age of consent. In most jurisdictions, child prostitution is illegal as part of general prohibition on prostitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sex trafficking</span> Trade of sexual slaves

Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. It has been called a form of modern slavery because of the way victims are forced into sexual acts non-consensually, in a form of sexual slavery. Perpetrators of the crime are called sex traffickers or pimps—people who manipulate victims to engage in various forms of commercial sex with paying customers. Sex traffickers use force, fraud, and coercion as they recruit, transport, and provide their victims as prostitutes. Sometimes victims are brought into a situation of dependency on their trafficker(s), financially or emotionally. Every aspect of sex trafficking is considered a crime, from acquisition to transportation and exploitation of victims. This includes any sexual exploitation of adults or minors, including child sex tourism (CST) and domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST).

John school is a form of educational intervention aimed at clients of prostitutes, who are colloquially known as 'johns' in North America. Societal norms deemed the behavior of clients and their engagement in sex work as atypical so John Schools worked to address this. John schools originated in San Francisco due to community frustrations about the great occurrence of street prostitution in their areas and the lack of effective policies to combat the sex industry. Schools similar to the San Francisco one were established throughout the country and in multiple nations. John schools are usually a diversion program for people - almost exclusively men - arrested for soliciting the services of a prostitute, or another related offense. This often acts as an alternative to criminal prosecutions. However, in some jurisdictions, courts may sentence men to attend a john school program as a condition of probation. John schools often last a few months and usually have weekly sessions. Their focus is often on the experiences and harms of prostitution, such as the violence associated with prostitution, the sexually transmitted disease risks of prostitution, and the effects of prostitution on families and communities. Whether the John school is a diversion program or a sentencing condition, the client will often pay a fee to enroll. The fee frequently covers the cost of the program and sometimes contributes to programs to aid prostitutes, or community projects within red light districts. Generally speaking, there is no definitive answer as to if John schools have been able to reduce the number of clients engaging in the sex industry.

Current laws passed by the Parliament of Canada in 2014 make it illegal to purchase or advertise sexual services and illegal to live on the material benefits from sex work. The law officially enacted criminal penalties for "Purchasing sexual services and communicating in any place for that purpose."

Prostitution in Nigeria is illegal in all Northern States that practice Islamic penal code. In Southern Nigeria, the activities of pimps or madams, underage prostitution and the operation or ownership of brothels are penalized under sections 223, 224, and 225 of the Nigerian Criminal Code. Even though Nigerian law does not legalize commercial sex work, it is vague if such work is performed by an independent individual who operates on his or her own accord without the use of pimps or a brothel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human trafficking</span> Trade of humans for exploitation

Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. It is distinct from people smuggling, which is characterized by the consent of the person being smuggled.

Melissa Farley is an American clinical psychologist, researcher and radical feminist anti-pornography and anti-prostitution activist. Farley is best known for her studies of the effects of prostitution, trafficking and sexual violence. She is the founder and director of the San Francisco-based organization, Prostitution Research and Education.

Human trafficking in Canada is prohibited by law, and is considered a criminal offence whether it occurs entirely within Canada or involves the "transporting of persons across Canadian borders. Public Safety Canada (PSC) defines human trafficking as "the recruitment, transportation, harbouring and/or exercising control, direction or influence over the movements of a person in order to exploit that person, typically through sexual exploitation or forced labour. It is often described as a modern form of slavery."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prostitution law</span> Legality of prostitution

Prostitution laws varies widely from country to country, and between jurisdictions within a country. At one extreme, prostitution or sex work is legal in some places and regarded as a profession, while at the other extreme, it is considered a severe crime punishable by death in some other places.

Belgium is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. Victims originate in Eastern Europe, Africa, East Asia, as well as Brazil and India. Some victims are smuggled through Belgium to other European countries, where they are subjected to forced labor and forced prostitution. Male victims are subjected to forced labor and exploitation in restaurants, bars, sweatshops, horticulture sites, fruit farms, construction sites, and retail shops. There were reportedly seven Belgian women subjected to forced prostitution in Luxembourg in 2009. According to a 2009 ECPAT Report, the majority of girls and children subjected to forced prostitution in Belgium originate from Balkan and CIS countries, Eastern Europe, Asia and West Africa ; some young foreign boys are exploited in prostitution in major cities in the country. Local observers also report that a large portion of children trafficked in Belgium are unaccompanied, vulnerable asylum seekers and refugees. Criminal organizations from Thailand use Thai massage parlors in Belgium, which are run by Belgian managers, to sexually exploit young Thai women. These networks are involved in human smuggling and trafficking to exploit victims economically and sexually. Belgium is not only a destination country, but also a transit country for children to be transported to other European country destinations.

<i>She Has a Name</i> 2009 Andrew Kooman play about human trafficking

She Has a Name is a play about human trafficking written by Andrew Kooman in 2009 as a single act and expanded to full length in 2010. It is about the trafficking of children into sexual slavery and was inspired by the deaths of 54 people in the Ranong human-trafficking incident. Kooman had previously published literature, but this was his first full-length play. The stage premiere of She Has a Name was directed by Stephen Waldschmidt in Calgary, Alberta in February 2011. From May to October 2012, She Has a Name toured across Canada. In conjunction with the tour, A Better World raised money to help women and children who had been trafficked in Thailand as part of the country's prostitution industry. The first performances of She Has a Name in the United States took place in Folsom, California in 2014 under the direction of Emma Eldridge, who was a 23-year-old college student at the time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Kooman</span>

Andrew Kooman is an author and playwright from Red Deer, Alberta, Canada.

North Preston's Finest, also known as NPF, the Scotians, or the North Preston gang, is a gang of pimps based in North Preston, a satellite of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natasha Falle</span> Canadian academic

Natasha Falle is a Canadian professor at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who was forcibly prostituted from the ages of 15 to 27 and now opposes prostitution in Canada. Falle grew up in a middle-class home and, when her parents divorced, her new single-parent home became unsafe, and Falle ran away from home. At the age of 15, Falle became involved in the sex industry in Calgary, Alberta.

Timea Nagy is a Canadian activist who has spoken on behalf of victims of human trafficking. She founded Walk With Me, a Toronto-based organization that aids survivors of trafficking. Nagy was featured in an anti-trafficking campaign by the Salvation Army in 2009. Her activism has drawn upon her own experience of forced prostitution in Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sex trafficking in the United States</span>

Sex trafficking in the United States is a form of human trafficking which involves reproductive slavery or commercial sexual exploitation as it occurs in the United States. Sex trafficking includes the transportation of persons by means of coercion, deception and/or force into exploitative and slavery-like conditions. It is commonly associated with organized crime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nordic model approach to prostitution</span> Approach to prostitution law first instituted in Sweden in 1999

The Nordic Criminal Model approach to sex work, also marketed as the end demand, equality model, neo-abolitionism, Nordic and Swedish model, is an approach to sex work that criminalises clients, third parties and many ways sex workers operate. This approach to criminalising sex work was developed in Sweden in 1999 on the debated radical feminist position that all sex work is sexual servitude and no person can consent to engage in commercial sexual services. The main objective of the model is to abolish the sex industry by punishing the purchase of sexual services. The model was also originally developed to make working in the sex industry more difficult, as Ann Martin said when asked about their role in developing the model - "I think of course the law has negative consequences for women in prostitution but that’s also some of the effect that we want to achieve with the law... It shouldn’t be as easy as it was before to go out and sell sex."

References

  1. Berlatsky, Noah (2014). "Organizations to Contact". Sexual Violence. New York City: Greenhaven Press. p. 189. ISBN   978-0737769159.
  2. Cowan, Pamela (February 13, 2012). "Breaking Cycle of Pain". The Regina Leader-Post. p. A1.
  3. "Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation | Edmonton Examiner". 2015-05-20. Archived from the original on 2015-05-20. Retrieved 2020-09-27.
  4. Kent, Gordon (September 22, 2011). "Edmonton Weighs Rules For Escorts". The Calgary Herald. p. A8.
  5. "Sex consumers fuel human trafficking | Canada | News | London Free Press". 2011-03-12. Archived from the original on 2011-03-12. Retrieved 2020-09-27.
  6. "Massage Regulations Approved by Council Committee". CBC News. September 21, 2011.
  7. "Sex offender on the loose | Canada | News | London Free Press". 2012-08-27. Archived from the original on 2012-08-27. Retrieved 2020-09-27.
  8. Cowan, Pamela (February 19, 2012). "Working Together For Positive Change". The Regina Sun. p. 21.
  9. "Our History". C.E.A.S.E. Retrieved 2020-07-14.
  10. Cook, Dustin (January 30, 2020). "Coucillors Hold Off On Adopting Task Force For Human Trafficking". The Calgary Herald. p. A14.
  11. Browne, Rachel (March 21, 2014). "Unprotected Text". The National Post. p. A3.
  12. "CEASE | Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation" . Retrieved 2023-11-18.
  13. "2014 Men of Honour Recipients". www.ceasenow.org. 2014. Archived from the original on 2020-08-03. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
  14. "2015 Cease Men of Honour".