RALI: COERCION in the law

What is coercion?

It’s a slippery word, isn’t it? The word slips around in our understanding, just like coercion slips around desire and wrests it away.

At the DC DecrimNow hearing on October 17th 2019 Council Member David Grosso demonstrated his acume by reading into the record the Washington DC criminal code on coercion. This code needs to be revised to meet the superior standards set forth in the Palermo Protocol.

David Grosso is Chair of the Education Committee for the DC City Council, where chairing a committee equals a substantial fiefdom. However, he sat for eleven hours, citing code and legal theories against witnesses to childhood trafficking. Please take a moment to consider why the Chair of the Education Committee is not focused on education but rather invests his time in enacting legislation that would put DC youth at increased risk of trafficking.

Ok. Have you wrapped your head around that? Men promoting trafficking is a bad look. Council Member Grosso and Chair of the Judiciary Committee, Council Member Allen should take note of that. Before you agree to call it “just a job,” go ahead and try it for a month or two.

Coercion happens by subtle shifts, by subterfuge, trickery, constraint, enticement, and a devilish combination that removes agency from the coerced, handing over their personal power to the practicer of coercion. This is a very abbreviated description of the real life version of coercion. Olga Trujillo depicts coercion in The Sum of My Parts. Read it if you dare.

Children are frequently very easily coerced. And because children need human attachment on a very immediate level, they frequently grow to love, protect, and defend the one who holds them under sway. This creates an emotional attachment to “zombie” behavior. What’s a zombie? Somebody who falls easily into someone else’s power and control. This is the psychological reality of grooming for subjugation and enslavement.

In the DC criminal code on prostitution there is no mention of coercion, but rather of solicitation for prostitution, defined to mean, “to invite, entice, offer, persuade, or agree to engage in prostitution or address for the purpose of inviting, enticing, offering, persuading, or agreeing to engage in prostitution.” (D.C. Code § 22–2701.01(7)).

The words in solicitation that approach coercion are “entice, offer, persuade”. All of those can feature in coercion. Persuading, enticing, or forcibly abducting a child for purposes of prostitution is defined as a felony offense meriting up to 20 years imprisonment in DC Code § 22–2704(1) and (2). Two words appear in both statutory language for adults and for children: “persuade” and “entice.” It is odd that the language pertaining to the adult offense is broader and more inclusive than that for the child.

The full blown legal definition of coercion is found only in the DC anti-trafficking statute, even though coercion is arguably central to all commercial sex. Moreover, the definition of coercion with respect to trafficking does not include the words “persuade” or “entice.” This is an odd omission.

Thus, in the DC anti-trafficking statute we see that “(3) ‘Coercion’ means any one of, or a combination of, the following:
(A) Force, threats of force, physical restraint, or threats of physical restraint;
(B) Serious harm or threats of serious harm;
(C) The abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process;
(D) Fraud or deception;
(E) Any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that if that person did not perform labor or services, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint;
(F) Facilitating or controlling a person’s access to an addictive or controlled substance or restricting a person’s access to prescription medication; or
(G) Knowingly participating in conduct with the intent to cause a person to believe that he or she is the property of a person or business and that would cause a reasonable person in that person’s circumstances to believe that he or she is the property of a person or business. (DC Code § 22–1831(3)).

Coercion is central to the charge of trafficking and to the extent that coercion is present in any form of prostitution, whether of minors or adults, then the crime of trafficking is established. But as already noticed, this standard for coercion is seemingly higher than that for soliciting or for child abduction for prostitution, which can rely on “persuading” and “enticing.” These are considerably lower bars than are the “force, threats of force, physical restraint,” abuse of legal process, fraud or deception.

The Palermo Protocol sets forth the international definition of trafficking, which has a significantly broader definition than does the DC Statute.

Trafficking is defined in the Palermo Protocol as: “(a)“Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs;
(b) Consent of the victim is “irrelevant” when indicators in (a) are present
(c) The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered “trafficking in persons” even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article;
(d) “Child” shall mean any person under eighteen years of age

Abuse of power is a very useful concept in the Palermo Protocol that needs to be added into the DC Code. Abuse of a position of vulnerability also needs to feature in the DC Code. Finally, coercion needs to be defined to include, as we find in the Palermo Protocol, not only force or the threat of force but also, “other forms of coercion.” The phrase “other forms of coercion” opens up the Palermo Protocol anti-trafficking statute to include more subtle but not less insidious and dangerous forms of controlling people.