To the Editor:

“No Comfort” (editorial, March 6), about sex slavery, leaves the impression that force and rape are somehow separate from prostitution. This impression is wrong.

Few activities are as brutal and damaging to people as prostitution. A study in Journal of Trauma Practice based on research in nine countries concluded that 63 percent of women in prostitution were raped, 71 percent were physically assaulted, and 68 percent met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, which is in the same range as treatment-seeking combat veterans and victims of state torture.

Beyond this shocking abuse, the public health implications of prostitution are devastating, and lead to a myriad of serious and fatal diseases, including H.I.V.-AIDS. Prostitution fuels trafficking in people, a form of modern-day slavery.

The demand for prostitution creates sex slaves today, the very phenomenon your editorial rightly criticizes.

Paula Goode
Acting Dir., Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Department of State
Washington, March 15, 2007

Note from KBJ: The letter writer is throwing up mud, perhaps on purpose. She opposes prostitution, which is fine, but why muddy the issue? Prostitution can be (and I assume often is) consensual, i.e., devoid of force, coercion, or fraud. It is a commercial transaction between two adults. If a particular act of prostitution is coerced, then it can and should be prosecuted—as an act of coercion. Nor is there any necessary connection between prostitution and disease. Yes, careless sex can lead to disease, but this is as true of noncommercial sex as it is of commercial sex. Please don’t say that I’m defending prostitution. I’m not. I’m saying that if you oppose prostitution, you should not rest your case on features that only some acts of prostitution possess.