"From the Streets to the World's Best Mom" by Nicholas Kristof/ Sex Trade, Again Women Get the Raw Deal/Shut Down the Johns

http://paradigmsshifting.org/from-the-streets-to-the-worlds-best-mom-nytimes-com/
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NASHVILLE — "WHEN men paid Shelia Faye Simpkins for sex, they presumably thought she was just a happy hooker engaging in a transaction among consenting adults.  Shelia Simpkins said that when she was in her 20s and working in the sex industry, she was arrested dozens of times. But her pimps never were..."

..."Simpkins figures she was arrested about 200 times — and her pimps, never. As for johns, by my back-of-envelope calculations, a john in Nashville has less than a 0.5 percent chance of being arrested. If there were more risk, fewer men would buy sex, and falling demand would force some pimps to find a new line of work.

In short, there are steps we can take that begin to chip away at the problem, but a starting point is greater empathy for women like Simpkins who were propelled into the vortex of the sex trade — and a recognition that the problem isn’t hopeless. To me, Simpkins encapsulates not hopelessness but the remarkable human capacity for resilience.

She has married and has two children, ages 4 and 6. The older one has just been accepted in a gifted program at school, and Simpkins couldn’t be more proud.

“I haven’t done a lot of things right in my life, but this is one thing I’m going to do right,” she said. “I’m going to be the world’s best mom.”

Bridget Mary's Response:

Excellent article by Nicholas Kristof in NY Times! The issue again is a human rights violation of women working in the sex industry and little or no prosecution of the pimps. Let's get real here and shut down the pimps! The blame does not go to the prostitutes. How about the clients and the pimps! Bridget Mary Meehan, www.arcwp.org, sofiabmm@aol.com