Melissa Gira Grant

Andrew Mitchell, a former officer in Ohio who was recently indicted on charges he kidnapped women and forced them to have sex for their freedom, will soon face a grand jury for killing Donna Dalton during a prostitution arrest.

A new coalition of people in the sex trades wants New York to become the first state to fully decriminalize their work.

Advocates say the case hasn’t been handled fairly and there’s little hope for justice.

In a wide-ranging interview, Boudin, a progressive reform candidate, told The Appeal he wants to redefine ‘public safety’ to encompass the rights of both victims and defendants.

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam just granted clemency to Brown, who was forced to trade sex for money, but Ohio’s governor declined this week to do the same for Martin.

The president is drawing on two decades of bipartisan support for crackdowns on traffickers to secure support for his agenda at the border.

A ban on dancers under 21 raises questions on the growing role of the state’s Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control in policing clubs.

Everyone agrees the jail at 850 Bryant should close, but it’s not yet clear what would happen to those locked inside.

The landmark decision could help other transgender people in jails and prisons who have been denied access to hormone treatment, a violation of their constitutional rights.

The departing governor has chosen to pardon immigrants whose past criminal offenses put them in danger of deportation.

In 2016, the office said it dismissed such cases, but Legal Aid says that’s not what’s happening.

Supporters hope the passage of Prop C may herald a more compassionate—and effective—approach.

Victims’ rights campaign spent more than $70 million nationwide, with more than half of that spent in Florida.

Advocates say these charges endanger sex workers and urge the police to stop using them.

Experts say playing up the risk of sex trafficking fuels anxiety and criminalization.

The women, who were arrested alongside Stormy Daniels in July, allege that they were smeared by arresting officers, but they’re just the latest to raise concerns.

Two new reports challenge the efficacy and ethics of prostitution diversion programs in New York City and nationwide.

Rep. John Becker doubles down on his recent comments about the tasing of an 11-year-old for allegedly shoplifting.

State Senate candidate Julia Salazar explains how sex workers’ rights is a key part of reforming criminal justice in New York.

Community outrage mounts over Officer Andrew Mitchell’s killing of Dalton during an attempted prostitution arrest.

Local advocates are struggling with a new immigration memo that makes it more difficult to support these survivors.

Human rights groups, sex worker rights activists, a digital archive and others say they are already facing censorship.

As anticipated, district attorney finds no misconduct in raid that led to Yang Song’s fatal fall.

Surveillance video sheds some light on the police raid that killed Yang Song last year while, advocates say, the raids continue.

As part of International Whores’ Day, hundreds gathered in New York City to protest new anti-sex work laws.

From local charities, to the editorial pages, to city politicians, New Orleans strip clubs were blamed for human trafficking, leading to abusive police raids – harming the dancers they claimed they were protecting, and pushing the dancers to fight back.

When veteran San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis announced her resignation during the spring of 2017 to run for a spot on the county’s Board of Supervisors, she was clear about who she wanted to finish her term and ultimately serve as San Diego’s next DA: her Chief Deputy Summer Stephan. Indeed, another former deputy […]

On April 11, President Trump signed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), legislation that would make it possible to hold the operators of websites criminally and civilly liable if third parties were found to have posted advertisements for prostitution. Days before the legislation was enacted, however, federal authorities seized Backpage.com, essentially locking sex […]

On Friday, April 6, the same day that Congress sent FOSTA — the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act — to President Donald Trump for his signature, the Department of Justice seized Backpage.com, the website FOSTA was meant to take down. After weeks of arguments about why this legislation was necessary […]

In February 2017, Mweze Kyungu was pulled over by Houston police officers in Harris County, Texas for a defective brake light and then arrested. “You kill people like me,” Kyungu told the arresting officers, “all you do is kill black people.” Thus began a nearly year-long ordeal for Kyungu in Harris County’s criminal justice system, […]

This week, the Senate is expected to vote on a bill that could shutter websites that host sex-for-sale ads. The bill, known as SESTA — the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act — has been described by its supporters as a way to provide justice to victims of human trafficking by making it easier for them to file civil suits against the sites. However, a growing coalition of survivors of trafficking, sex workers, and women’s and LGBT rights groups oppose SESTA, saying it will endanger those it is meant to help.

Polaris, a Washington, D.C.-based non-governmental organization best known for operating the National Human Trafficking Hotline, says it has located a new front in the fight against human trafficking: what it describes as “illicit massage businesses,” or IMBs. The nonprofit, which brought in $10 million in 2016 (of which $2.1 million is government funding, according to IRS […]

Last week, days after dancers took to the streets of New Orleans to protest recent police raids on the city’s strip clubs, the state agency that led them was in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals fending off a challenge to a Louisiana law barring 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds from working as strip club dancers. In 2016, long before the raids, […]

The New Orleans Police Department, the Louisiana State Police, and the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) have raided eight French Quarter strip clubs in the past 10 days. At a Monday press conference, both NOPD and ATC claimed the raids were the result of a multi-month, ongoing “human trafficking” operation, yet they also admitted they made no trafficking arrests, nor did they identify any victims of trafficking.

Congress is marking “National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month” by considering major anti-sex trafficking legislation in both houses. The bills use different approaches but would both target websites, such as Backpage, where sexual services are advertised. Yet neither bill will result in justice for victims of human trafficking, anti-trafficking advocates and service providers told The […]

It looked like a flyer promoting Bourbon Street strip clubs: purple, magenta and black, with neon light-styled letters spelling out the name of then-New Orleans mayoral candidate, Desiree Charbonnet. But it wasn’t a flyer. It was an opposition mailer, sent just before the hotly-contested November election. Under a photograph of Charbonnet, the mailer stated, “In December […]

Yang Song fell four stories onto a sidewalk in Flushing, Queens on the night of November 25th. An officer with the New York City Police Department accompanied her, unconscious, to New York Presbyterian Hospital where doctors placed her on a respirator. They worked for hours: the 35 units of blood they transfused did not take, given the severity of her injuries from the thirty foot fall.

A 38-year-old woman, Yang Song of Queens, New York, died at New York Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday, one day after falling three stories from an apartment window in nearby Flushing. Little has been reported about Song beyond the New York Police Department’s assertion that she was a sex worker, and fell while officers from the Queens […]

The Memphis Police Department failed to discipline detectives who routinely left rape kits untested, former Memphis Police Lieutenant Cody Wilkerson testified on November 8. Memphis police detectives closed rape cases without testing rape kits, he said, “hundreds, hundreds of them”, and without any consequences to their careers. Detectives also closed other rape cases only after minimal […]

A proposal to curb strip clubs on Bourbon Street was introduced last Thursday by a New Orleans city council member, “citing recent reports from NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune on unfettered sex trafficking at the adult venues.” Just a few days after the paper’s first story appeared, Mayor Mitch Landrieu had already hired an attorney to investigate the clubs. It’s not surprising that a […]