Sex Trafficking Conference at South Texas College

The Women’s Studies Committee of South Texas College in McAllen, Texas is hosting its second annual conference to address the horrifying realities of the human sex-trafficking trade. Almost one million people are trafficked across international borders a year – countless thousands more are kidnapped or sold within their own countries. Worldwide, women and children are the third most valuable black-market commodity, after weapons and drugs. Many of these women and children are forced to work as prostitutes, making sex trafficking a 12-billion-dollar-a-year business since girls and women are often sold multiple times, compelled to pay off their debt, while their owners take in tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. To control them, pimps and traffickers physically and psychologically brutalize sex workers, threatening to kill family members of the unwilling.

In addition to addressing the supply side of the sex-trafficking industry, this conference will also focus on the demand for persons trafficked into sexual slavery. Although the supply and the demand for trafficked persons are essentially “two sides of the same coin,” the social construction of demand requires deeper exploration. We will question what cultural, social, economic, and psychological conditions have led to the tragic explosion of demand for trafficked persons and the marketing of third-world sex tours to first-world nations. We will explore whether legalized prostitution and the growing social acceptance of pornography create tolerance for the sexual exploitation of women. We will also focus on the increasingly globalized and privatized economic conditions that perhaps foster the growing market in human flesh worldwide by displacing millions of people, leaving them vulnerable to the wealthy and the powerful.

Our goals are to raise awareness about the pervasiveness of the sex-trafficking business, to explore the deeper causes of sex trafficking, and ultimately to take part in the larger international conversation about how to stop this insidious crime. We hope to address these questions and to consider forms of resistance to this exploitation of millions that undermines basic respect for human rights and dignity.

Main Location:

South Texas College’s Pecan Campus Auditorium

Pecan Blvd

McAllen, Texas

Agenda

Wednesday, April 2

12:15 – 12:30 Welcoming Remarks

Juan Mejia, Vice President, Academic Affairs

12:30 – 1:00 Overview

Letty Garza, Newscaster, KRGV

1:00 – 2:00 Keynote Speaker: “Inside the Sex Trafficking Business”

Victor Malarek, Senior Reporter, Canadian Television (CTV) and author of The Natashas

2:00 – 2:10 Break

2:10 – 3:00 Featured Speaker: “Severing Prostitution from Trafficking: Who Benefits?”

Melissa Farley, Ph.D.,Clinical Psychologist, Prostitution Research and Education and author of Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections

3:00 – 3:30 Book signing

3:30 – 4:15 “A Faith-Based Response to Sex Trafficking”

Tomi Lee “T.L.” Grover, Ph.D., Director, Local Transformational Missions and Community & Restorative Justice Specialist

4:15 – 5:00 “Macro-Level Social Forces in the Demand for Sex Trafficking”

John C. Jones, Ph.D., J.D., Editor/Owner of Virtual Citizens and Independent Scholar

5:00 – 7:00 Art Exhibit – opening reception

Library, Pecan Campus

7:00 – 8:00 Featured Speaker: “What We Leave Behind”

Mimi Chakarova, Photojournalist, UC Berkeley and Stanford

Thursday, April 3

10:00 – 10:45 Featured Speaker: “‘I Believe for the Right Price You Can Buy Anyone’: Investigating the Behaviors and Beliefs of Men Who Buy Sex”

Rachel Durchslag, Director, Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation

10:45 – 11:15 “Dismantling Demand in the Military”

Suki Falconberg, Independent Scholar

11:15 – 12:00 “GI JOHNS: Militarism and the Sex Trafficking Industry”

Emelyn de la Pena, Coordinator, Gabriela Network, San Diego

12:00 – 1:00 Lunch

1:00 – 2:00 Featured Speaker: “Best Practices in Responding to Commercial Sexual Exploitation”

Norma Hotaling, Founder and Director, SAGE Project, San Francisco

2:10 – 3:10 Workshop: “Addressing Rape Culture en Español”

Laura Zárate, Founding Executive Director of Arte Sana (Art Heals)

3:10 – 3:15 Break

3:15 – 4:15 Workshop: “The My Life My Choice Project: Preventing Sexual Exploitation among Adolescent Girls”

Lisa Goldblatt Grace, LICSW, MPH, Program Director, My Life My Choice Project

Audrey Porter, Assistant Program Director and Coordinator of Survivor Services, My Life My Choice Project

4:15 – 5:30 Panel: Human Trafficking – A Presentation and Panel on State/Local Issues and Challenges

Moderator: Corinna Spencer-Scheurich (South Texas Civil Rights Project, Attorney)

Panelists: Diana Velardo (University of Houston Law Center, Clinical Supervisor, Crime Victims Coordinator; Chair of Coalition against Human Trafficking)

Erica Schommer (Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, Attorney/Human Trafficking Team Manager)

Bill Bernstein (Mosaic Family Services, Dallas, Deputy Director)

Sarah Saldaña (Assistant U.S. Attorney, Dallas/Fort Worth)

Ruben Perez (Assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District)

5:30 – 6:30 Break

6:30 – 7:30 Featured Speaker: “Sex, Pornography and Masculinity in the Twenty-First Century”

Robert Jensen, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Journalism, University of Texas, Austin

7:30 – 9:00 Film: Cargo

Introduction by Michael Cory Davis, Director/Producer

Friday, April 4

9:30 – 10:30 Workshop: “HHS Domestic Notification Pilot Program”

Maria Muller, Program Specialist, Anti-Trafficking in Persons Program, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

10:30 – 11:30 Workshop: “Prostitution, Sex Trafficking, and the Commercial Sex Trade”

Adele Nieves, Writer/Journalist

11:30 – 12:15 “Why Don't Victims Call for Help?”

Nairruti Jani, Ph.D. Scholar, University of Texas at Arlington

12:15 – 1:00 Lunch

1:15 – 1:45 Featured Speaker: “The Impact of Political Insurgency on the Trafficking of Children:

Reflection on the Sri Lankan Context”

Chandanie Watawala, Ph.D. Scholar, Human Rights and Peace, Mahidol University, Thailand.

1:45 – 2:15 “Claiming the Lost Women: Coordinating to End Sexual Slavery, Human Trafficking and Child Prostitution in Thailand”

Ryan Harvey, M.A. Scholar, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin

2:15 – 2:30 Break

2:30 – 3:00 “Feminization of Migration and Trafficking of Women in Mexico”

Arun Kumar Acharya, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León Biblioteca Universitaria “Raúl Rancel Frías”

3:00 – 3:30 “The Relationship between Latin Mail Order Brides and Sex Trafficking”

Adriana P. Torres, Graduate Scholar, Nova Southeastern University

3:30 – 4:00 Roundtable Discussion

Arun Kumar Acharya, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León Biblioteca Universitaria “Raúl Rancel Frías”

Nairruti Jani, Ph.D. Scholar, University of Texas at Arlington

Chandanie Watawala, Ph.D. Scholar, Human Rights and Peace, Mahidol University, Thailand.

Ryan Harvey, M.A. Scholar, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin

Adriana P. Torres, Graduate Scholar, Nova Southeastern University

7:00 – 9:00 Art Exhibit Reception, University of Texas Pan American, Edinburg

This agenda is tentative and subject to change.