The carnival of hysterical hypocrisy that is the American Fundamentalist Christian/religious right-wing continues to thunder across the plains, desperate to reach high moral ground before the flood of returning Jihadists swamps the trenches. Both armies seek control of the strategic area of female sexuality.

Now that male sexuality has been granted a safe outlet in same-sex marriage, masturbation has been disproven as a cause of blindness, and the male desire for children has been answered by a plethora of accommodating adoption agencies, they see no reason why ‘vulnerable women’ should be disturbed by anything so distasteful as a penis.

The Fundamentalists are currently engaged in hand-to-hand fighting in the suburb of ‘Consent’. What exactly comprises ‘Consent’? Those, such as Sarah Pine of Oxford University Student’s Union, the women who wrote to various luminaries demanding that they refuse to share a speaking platform with a man belatedly (and now emphatically cleared – or ‘not charged’ in CPS politically correct speak) accused of attempted rape, wish to impose a ‘consent workshop‘ on students.

The Twitter hashtag #YesAllWomen sprung up as an expression of solidarity and a reminder of the ubiquity of ‘male terrorism and abuse in women’s lives’. It speaks of a world where men are seen as needing to ‘earn’ sex from women, and must retain – for 30 years or more – incontrovertible proof that the female concerned did indeed give informed consent for his dastardly penetration of her body.

A marriage certificate was once seen as such a document; no longer. Currently, the last remaining bastion of ‘offer, acceptance and consideration’ forming a contract which would illustrate that consent had been freely given – prostitution – is heavily under attack. Sex workers are not seen as free and independent women who have made a choice between living on the bread line sewing t-shirts for a pittance, or making decent money as a sex worker – or even, heaven forfend, actually enjoying sex with a number of different men. They have all, to a woman, been ‘lured’, ‘forced’ or ‘terrorised’ by abusive men into appearing to give consent; only whilst they wait for for a prurient – or profit seeking – moral guardian to hoist them up onto his/her saddle and rescue them from the Indians…to be safely delivered to the t-shirt factory.

This week, the FBI have released the latest figures from the ‘Innocence Lost’ programme for the number of ‘children’ they have rescued from ‘victimisation’. Operation Cross Country is part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative that was established in 2003 by the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, in partnership with the Department of Justice and NCMEC, to address the growing problem of child prostitution.

“Operation Cross Country reveals that children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day,” said John Ryan, President and CEO of NCMEC. “We’re proud to partner with the FBI and provide support to both law enforcement and victim specialists in the field as they help survivors take that first step toward freedom.”

“These are not faraway kids in faraway lands,” FBI Director James Comey said in announcing the annual enforcement push known as Operation Cross Country. Instead, he added, “These are America’s children.”

They don’t, of course, reveal the ages of these ‘children’, many of whom had not been reported missing – so we can assume that they were not school attenders, even if the parents were too heartily relived to report them missing.

In a curious example of the left hand not watching what the right hand is doing, the FBI also released a video of one of their ‘born again children’. Her name is Nicole.

Nicole, now 27, claims she was 17 when she was ‘lured’ into prostitution by a ‘gorgeous and charming man’ who took her shopping and showered her with attention. She might well have been 18 – but that wouldn’t fit with the ‘child profile’. This ‘gorgeous and charming’ man went by the name of Juan Vianez. The following day after the shopping expedition, Juan intimated that if Nicole wanted to go on spending money like that, she might consider becoming a sex-worker. She agreed. Such is ‘luring’.

So began a six year relationship. Undoubtedly, the relationship deteriorated. He beat her up – I have no problem with his sentence for severe physical abuse, that is unacceptable in any relationship. But was it Juan who ‘lured’ her into prostitution, or was it the ‘allure’ of the money?

For the reason Nicole gives for being unable to escape this abusive example of ‘child sexploitation’ when now aged 23, was that:

“I didn’t have money, I didn’t have a house, I didn’t have a bank account, I didn’t have my own car,” she said. “I didn’t have anything. So if I left Juan, I left everything.”

Which is the precise situations she would have been in had she wanted to leave her parents house at 17 without the ‘suggestive’ assistance of the hapless Juan. She would have had to get a job, and earn the money to pay rent or buy a car. She made a choice as to how she was going to do that – a choice that is unacceptable to the religious right.

Enter the Moral Guardian. ‘Victim Specialist’ Dani Geissinger-Rodarte from the ‘Office for Victim Assistance’. In return for testifying against Juan Vianez, who was now described as a ‘pimp’ who had ‘forced’ her into prostitution:

JUAN ALEXANDER VIANEZ, a/k/a Nauj, 26 years old, of Lakewood, Washington, and Las Vegas, Nevada, was sentenced today to 20 years in prison, five years of supervised release and was ordered to pay over $1.3 million in restitution for sex trafficking, interstate transportation of a minor in furtherance of prostitution, interstate transportation in furtherance of prostitution, and witness tampering. VIANEZ was convicted by a jury on September 23, 2009, following a six-day trial in front of U.S. District Judge Robert J. Bryan. At sentencing, Judge Bryan concluded that the defendant engaged in “the slavery of others”.

So, no sentence in respect of the vicious beating, which I would have fully supported; but 20 years effectively for having suggested that she take up prostitution – a suggestion that she willingly went along with as a means of acquiring the material possessions she desired. When she discovered that Juan had managed to keep all the material possessions under his control, she turned to the authorities, renounced her ‘agency’ and was reborn as ‘vulnerable victim’.

The Victim Assistance Agency has now ‘accessed all the relevant community providers’ and Nicole has the car and the house, and clothing that she desired. She was happy to make this video to promote the aims of her new pimps. She is studying Psychology. You don’t say.

Tagged as: ‘Innocence Lost’ initiative, #YesAllWomen, Child Sexploitation, Feminism, Sarah Pine, Sex-Workers