Worcester anti-prostitution nonprofit to launch initiative focused on businesses
Photo | Erika Sidor
Nicole Bell, founder of Living in Freedom Together
The Worcester nonprofit Living In Freedom Together, which seeks to help women exit the prostitution industry, will launch a new multi-sector initiative at its annual breakfast on March 6 aimed at ending sex-buying in the city.
A core effort will be engaging businesses, and asking them to write specific language in their human resources policies banning employees from buying sex, said Nicole Bell, LIFT CEO.
"Traffickers won't be selling women if no one was buying them. It is a simple business model," said Bell, who struggled for 10 years to exit a life of substance abuse and prostitition, and is a WBJ 40 Under Forty winner from 2019.
Societal thinking around how to end prostitution has been slowly shifting away from focusing on arresting prostitutes and instead going after buyers of sex, said Peter Qualliotine, coordinator of the Equality Model Initiative at the Eva Center in Boston, who is assisting LIFT in its new iniatitive.
Prostitutes are rarely in the industry voluntarily and being exploited by traffickers and pimps when they are young, vulnerable and/or in need of help with substance abuse, Qualliotine said.
"We need to shift from going after the person who is being exploited to the person who is creating the demand," he said.
About 10% of men will buy sex in the lifetimes, starting at the age of 21, Qualliotine said, and buyers are typically white men with disposable income and tend to come from male-dominated industries like construction, technology and military.
"Most men don't buy sex ever, but most people who buy sex are men," he said.
Bell said LIFT has found most men who buy sex typically don't mind if their friends and family members know, but they try to keep their employers from finding out.
If employers are more specific about their anti-prostitution policies, that would discourage sex buying, Bell said. Such a policy would say if an employee was convicted of buying sex, he or she would face disciplinary action, up to and including termination.
Qualliotine had worked with employers in the Seattle area to create anti-prostitution policies, particularly with Microsoft, which was willing to offer technology help to fight the problem but also had a number of employees buying sex, he said.
LIFT has already developed partnerships with organizations likely to encounter prostitutes, like hospitals such as those from UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, nonprofits like the YWCA of Central Massachusetts, and the Worcester County District Attorney's Office.
And LIFT already has partnerships with a number of businesses who have offered jobs to LIFT clients looking to exit the prostitution industry.
Since large venues attracting a lot of men typically are breeding grounds for sex-buying, Bell said, LIFT is sitting down with the key players around the Polar Park stadium development to develop policies around identifying the issue and helping women exit the industry.
LIFT doesn't plan to raise any additional funds for this initiative yet, Bell said. For now, it can be done with its existing staff, although eventually the nonprofit will have to add a coordinator for the initiative.
"This is free," said Karen Riley McNary, LIFT vice president of programs and development. "It is just asking people to think differently."
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