The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s mission is to use the lessons of history from the era when slavery divided the nation to inform contemporary audiences about the need for action to combat modern forms of slavery.

In that spirit, the Freedom Blog often links to the New York Times columns of Nicholas Kristof, who continues to write often — and with passion — about various forms of slavery that persist around the world in the 21st Century. He has focused much of his reporting on the widespread phenomenon of sex trafficking, notably in Southeast Asia nations such as Cambodia.

Sex trafficking is a controversial issue because of sharp disagreements over the definition of prostitution, the for-profit product (along with pornography) of the buying and selling of women and girls around the globe. To many, prostitution is a widespread and virulent form of contemporary exploitation and slavery. To others, it is, instead, a work choice (albeit an ugly, potentially dangerous and sometimes lethal one) available to women as a means of survival in today’s global economy. The distinction is important, because it impacts how national governments and their justice systems go about attempting to curb or contain the growth of prostitution, which many believe is controlled by organized crime gangs.

The U.S. Department of State estimates between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Millions more are enslaved within national borders.

Advocates of prostitution as slavery believe that many prostituting persons who were forced or coerced and subsequently conditioned into prostitution are frequently confused as “voluntary prostitutes.” Moreover, these critics contend that prostituting persons are victims of gross human rights abuses and their “occupation” is, for all intents and purposes, rape by another name.

On the other hand, while hardly any reasonable person takes the position that prostitution is an attractive career choice, there is a broad-scale point of view that asserts that an individual — confronted by fear of poverty or worse — ought to have the freedom to engage in sexual activity for pay. Among those holding this view, some advocate for legalizing prostitution.

From a policy standpoint, most nations — including the United States — traditionally have treated prostitutes and their handlers (i.e. “pimps) as law-breakers, paying little attention to the plight of the individuals caught up in the web of brothels, massage parlors and other suspected sex trafficking locations.

The situation is changing under the glare of increasing public awareness of the extent of global trafficking. Some nations have moved to place the criminal onus on the customers of sex, while other governments are beginning to view sex trafficking as essentially a human rights issue.

Kristof is aware of this debate and has frequently addressed it in his columns. He consistently argues that to understand sex trafficking at all, you have to distinguish between those who are coerced and those who choose prostitution as a career. In a recent blog post, Kristof addressed the issue directly: “There’s been a lot of debate in the blog about how much coercion there is, and how meaningful coercion is. After a lot of interviews, my sense is that there is a steady continuum from adolescent girls who are absolutely imprisoned in brothels at one end, to adult women who freely decide that they can make more money in prostitution than in other fields. I’ve interviewed women in each category and in every shade inbetween.”

For anti-prostitution advocates, Kristof’s distinctions miss the larger and much more important point that sex trafficking — in all its forms, including prostitution — is at its heart all about men forcing women to have sexual relations against their will through the threat of violence or deprivation, and with no ready means of escape. In other words, it is slavery.

A second criticism leveled at Kristof is that his seeming preoccupation with human trafficking in far-off corners of the world obscures the ugly reality of sex slavery in the United States. Estimates of the scope of the issue domestically vary, but one prominent study in 2001 claimed that as many as 50,000 women were trafficked into the United States as part of sex trafficking networks. ABC News in 2006, citing figures from the FBI, doubled that number to 100,000. Anti-slavery advocates in the U.S. argue that Kristof — and other news media writers — should be spending more time looking into sex trafficking in Chicago and Los Angeles,

These comments serve as background for a letter (posted below and edited for space) recently sent to Kristof by Lisa L. Thompson, who is responsible for sex trafficking issues for the Salvation Army. Ms. Thompson’s letter is a clearly articulated explanation of why, for many, the abuse of girls and women in the 21st Century world economy is a gross violation of basic human dignity and essential human rights.

Dear Mr. Kristof,

As an advocate in the field of anti-human trafficking, I have of course followed your reporting on the subject the past few years. Your articles on sex trafficking are always heart-rending. They typically focus on victims of sex trafficking in Southeast Asia, and bring into sharp relief the harrowing nature of the tragic lives lived by countless numbers of women and girls caught up in commercial sex industries. Your reporting has been invaluable in elevating the awareness about the realities of the global sex trade. So please understand, I value this and deeply appreciate your attention to this issue. Moreover, I find your most recent series of articles terribly disturbing and tragic.

That said I must raise concerns about your recent articles. First, one of your pieces details how a young girl was violently forced into the sex trade and how she ultimately accepted her role as prostitute and tried to attract buyers.

Professionals in the fields of torture, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and commercial sexual exploitation refer to this process as seasoning, grooming, and/or conditioning. Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, published by Amnesty International in 1973, describes in detail coercive techniques (besides physical torture)—methods such as isolation, induced debility and exhaustion, threats, degradation, enforcing of trivial demands, granting of occasional indulgences, to mention a few — used to gain control of political prisoners. These are the same means (as well as physical torture) routinely used to subjugate women and girls in prostitution and pornography the world over.

With an understanding of these systematic techniques of coercion and control, one’s perception of the women and girls we see prostituting on street corners or in bars changes. The supposed “voluntary prostitute,” who may give every appearance of freely choosing to be there, is in actuality frequently constrained by unseen forces that have conditioned her to be there.

Furthermore, I ask you, if a girl in Cambodia can be conditioned into prostitution (which you seem to acknowledge), why not an American woman or girl? And, if you accept that conditioning occurs, which I believe you do, how then can any casual observer (like yourself) know whether someone is a “forced prostitute” or a “voluntary” one from mere observation? I also ask you, if someone who was once forced into prostitution, becomes conditioned to the life and “accepts” their fate, are they now a “voluntary prostitute”? Why is making the distinction between who is forced and who is not so important to you?

Secondly, many of the torturous conditions in Cambodia’s brothels, which you so clearly describe for us, exist not only in the sex industry of Cambodia but in sex industries around the world— including the United States. I have documentation of cases of water torture, burnings, confinement, withholding of food and water, horrible beatings, and branding of American-born women and girls in the prostitution.

So, if an American woman is beaten, threatened, or otherwise coerced into prostitution (i.e. sexually trafficked), how is that different from the experiences of the Cambodian women you describe? Moreover, does it really matter if a woman or girl is a voluntary prostitute or a so-called forced one? Or, does it matter more that we live in a so-called civilized world that sanctions the buying and selling of women/girls for sex as if they were commodities or objects? That we live in a world which overwhelmingly legitimizes the notion that there should be a supply of females whose purpose is to be on hand to meet male demand for sex?

I share all this to say: 1) that the problem lies not only in the far away places. It lies also in the strip clubs, massage parlors, streets, and back alleys of America. 2) American victims are every bit as real as the ones in Cambodia. 3) Think again if you think you can judge who is forced into prostitution and who is not. 4) Even if you can miraculously judge who voluntarily prostitutes and who doesn’t, is that the bottom line for you? Instead, how about standing up against the injustice of the trade in any and all female flesh.