Debbie Nathan

It’s been awhile since I hit the sex-panic button on this blog … been playing hooky from newspapers and the internet cave to hit sidewalks and neighborhoods during September’s Indian summer. As usual, though, much is happening back in Terror & Loathing land — a place densely populated with out-of-control minors, who appear mostly to have come to earth from Mexico or cyberspace…and with adults who think they can save the kids by activating X-ray vision and other phantom powers. Here’s an update:

First off: The Washington Post has debunked federal government “trafficking” hysteria, even as Hollywood (thanks to the New York Times) goes on a roll with it.

Last week the Post ran a long piece strongly suggesting that the government’s seven-year campaign against “slave” trafficking is based on statistical smoke and mirrors coupled with, recently, a public relations agency campaign. And oh yeah — on a creepy, fetishistic fascination with “sex slaves” who don’t exist.

What else is new? I wrote about this two years ago in The Nation.

Which brings us to item two of the Roundup:

This weekend marks the national premiere of Trade, a Hollywood shlockopornorama about “sex trafficking.” It’s based on yellow journalism, published in so-called Grey Lady New York Times, by Nicholas Kristof-wannabe Peter Landesman.

Landesman’s 2004 Times piece, “The Girls Next Door,” found a few teens who’d been forced or tricked into moving from Mexico to the US to do coerced prostitution. That’s a troubling, sad story, of course. But the Times justified Landesman’s mammoth, Sunday Magazine cover piece (complete with teen on bed in “school uniform”) with government statistics purporting to show that hundreds of thousands of foreign girls and women are sex slaves in this country. These are the same sketchy figures that people like Jack Shafer at Slate, Dan Radosh at his own blog (see “Bad Trade,” entry for Sept. 27), and I have been questioning for awhile.

Landesman and I had an exchange about this in The Nation, where I showed that he’d conjured a large passel of imaginary child sex slaves from thin air – and the Times hadn’t bothered to fact check his nonsense.

Landesman’s dozens of sex slaves were said to have been little 12-year-old girls imprisoned in a field in California, cowering in fear, dressed – for the pleasure of pedophile customers – in white communion dresses.

White? Communion dresses? Hello!!?? Where is Jan Harold Brunvand, of The Choking Doberman and other Urban Legends, when we need him most? Of course, as I found out by doing about two hours of phone reporting, there was never any mob of middle-school slaves, no 12 year olds, no communion dresses. But the Times never ran a correction. That’s pernicious since – as the Washington Post notes – the government has estimated the slave population by tallying “victims” reported in … news clippings.

If our foremost paper of record can’t be bothered to supply the truth, you can be sure Hollywood won’t. In fact, they’re delighted to spread the lie. Check out the promo image, above, from Trade. Landesman – what a pornographer. In the Kincaidian sense.

The what sense?? Please, be patient.

Next item: an interview with me published this week by Susie Bright’s Journal, where we bring you up to speed on the latest from those crazy guys of the cultural intergalactic, Kurt Eichenwald and Justin Berry — and why you might care (even if Kurt hasn’t threatened to sue you).

Eichenwald spent a hot July and August, trying mightily to seal documents in a federal criminal court case in Nashville. The judge nixed his efforts, and two weeks ago the papers were unsealed. They showed (see my Counterpunch coverage, here) that while Berry was an adult in the kid-porn biz, Eichenwald paid him hundreds of dollars for pictures, was a member of Berry’s illegal porn site, and even had webmaster sign-on privileges. For more on these revelations (and for what I mean by “Kincaidian” journalists), visit Susie’s Bright’s always enlightening website. Be ready to read many links, including “The Perverse Law of Child Pornography,” a brilliant work by First Amendment legal scholar Amy Adler. People keep asking me if I think Eichenwald “had a prurient interest” in child porn. See my answer here.

While reporting for Counterpunch, I asked the Times over two weeks ago for a reaction to the latest revelations about their former reporter Eichenwald. They said they were still reviewing those Tennessee court documents. No public word since. I wrote to Public Editor Clark Hoyt, telling him to look into this sordid mess and offering to send documents. His answer? Nothing but the boilerplate “we received your letter, thank you” blah blah.

Meanwhile, word on the media street is that New York Magazine will be soon running an in-depth piece on Eichenwald/Berry.

While waiting for that, you can follow the developing story of acclaimed American photographer Nan Goldin, as reported in England’s Telegraph (see an example of Goldin’s oeuvre, left). One work, depicting a girl with legs apart, is owned by Elton John. A gallery in England was preparing an exhibit of Goldin photos including Elton John’s, which he had loaned to the museum. Police showed up and seized the piece, under suspicion that is it child pornography. Investigation continues.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch just released a comprehensive report on what’s wrong with US sex offender registration laws (click here).

Finally, word is getting out that the laws and the lists they engender constitute gross violations of American’s rights – not just civil rights, but human ones as well.

The HRW report shows that huge percentages of the 600,000 (!) registered sex offenders in this country are there – for years or life — for relatively trivial crimes, such as urinating in public or “streaking.” It shows that statistically, children run far less risk of being abused by the “stranger-danger” registree down the street than they do by family members and others they already know. Further, most sex offenses are committed by people who have no record of such crimes and are not on sex offender registries. So much for the lists’ prophylactic value.

And the report reveals that a sizable proportion of people prosecuted for having sexual contact with children are, themselves, children.

Yet, in accordance with federal law combined with laws in some states, kids as young as 12 are being put on sex offender registries, complete with their photos. (HRW proposes many sensible reforms to the registry system. One is removing from it anyone who is under 18.)

If reading about US children cast as demons doesn’t makes you queasy enough, go peruse the mug shots of these frightened, humiliated boys and girls on registry websites. Last night I visited the Kansas site. Among the hundreds of names, addresses and photos that popped up were dozens of 15, 14 and 13 year olds. I downloaded some images. I wanted you to look face-on at these children who have been put in the 21st century version of the village stocks. I figured I’d preserve a modicum of anonymity by omitting their names and state. I began uploading them to this post, then started thinking: To republish these photos, even without names and with the best of intentions, is to violate the kids’ privacy and humanity one more time. So I’m not posting. But to see for yourself, spend a few minutes on a registry (here).

According to Human Rights Watch, ours is the only country in the world — save for South Korea — that tortures sex offenders (children and adults) with barbarities such as public registries.

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For the next few weeks I’ll be doing work in outer space (aka southern US border.) No blogging then: Back in late October.