Last week it was revealed that Eliot Spitzer (by the way, wouldn't "Spitzer Fallout" be a great name for a band?), the now former New York governor, was alleged to be a customer of a prostitution ring.
Upon hearing this, many talking heads assembled on many news channels. In a discussion on CNN about what punishment should be meted out to Mr. Spitzer, I had the misfortune, or perhaps the good fortune, to hear Harvard professor (someone who should know better) Alan Dershowitz refer to prostitution as a "victimless crime," a statement no one else on the panel of talking heads chose to contest.
"Victimless crime." Interesting.
Depending on whose numbers you may want to believe, anywhere between 400,000 and 1.7 million women and children are "trafficked" each year, meaning they are forced into labor, quite often in the sex trades, and quite often in a country other than their home.
If a person is forced into labor of any sort, I think that person could be considered a "victim." I would hope that someone as allegedly intelligent as a Harvard professor would understand that point.
I don't know what motivated the young lady implicated in the Spitzer scandal to be a prostitute, but by her own admission, she came from an abusive background. Escaping abuse but landing in a world of prostitution is a familiar story. Whatever her motivation, prostitution is hardly a "victimless crime." Just ask Eliot Spitzer's wife and children. It seems to me he victimized them, too.
I can only hope that the thinking exemplified by Dershowitz will someday come to an end. Perhaps we can use the idiocy of a statement like "victimless crime" to begin a a national discussion on the tragedy of human trafficking.
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