CNS STORY: Fight sex work by stemming demand, say speakers at Vatican conference

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CNS Story:

VATICAN-PROSTITUTION Jun-21-2005 (670 words) xxxi

Fight sex work by stemming demand, say speakers at Vatican conference

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Combating the problem of the trafficking of women and girls for prostitution also requires stemming the demand for prostitutes, said participants of a Vatican-sponsored conference.

The Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers hosted its first international meeting June 20-21 on "The Pastoral Care for the Liberation of Street Women." Fifty women and men who are active in offering care and assistance to prostitutes attended the conference to offer their reflections and ideas.

"Everyone says being a woman on the street is bad, but when I see six cars all lined up for a 14-year-old girl, why don't we hear that it's the man on the street that is worse?" said Italian Consolata Sister Eugenia Bonetti, head of anti-trafficking initiatives for the Italian Union of Major Superiors.

"We need to change the mentality of young people to make them understand that nobody can buy the dignity of a human person, not even with all the money in the world," she told Catholic News Service June 20.

The council's president, Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao, called the buying and selling of women an "unscrupulous trade."

He said in his opening remarks June 20 that the exploitation of women is a result of "an unjust system as the basis of our society."

The injustices of poverty, underdevelopment and "the unjust distribution of wealth in the world" are some of the conditions that push women into the world of prostitution, said Mariette Grange, advocacy officer for the International Catholic Migration Commission in Geneva.

"People very rarely enter into prostitution willingly," she told CNS. Women are either tricked or forced into prostitution and in every case, it represents a last resort for their survival, she said.

Many participants said more must be done to reverse the notion that women and sex are commodities that can be bought and sold.

Sister Bonetti said sometimes men tell her they feel they are doing the prostitute a favor by offering the money she needs to live or to pay off her huge debt to traffickers.

"But they are wrong. They are feeding the problem. We would not have so many young women on the streets if we didn't have a demand because it is like in any business: if there is no demand, there is no offer," she said.

Father Oreste Benzi, founder and head of the Pope John XXIII Community, a support center for prostitutes in Italy, said clients are not always motivated by sexual pleasure.

Many "are seeking power" and an "experience of absolute domination," he said in his June 20 address.

Often clients are men who have "weak personalities" or whose career or social relationships are "greatly frustrated," Father Benzi said.

Good Shepherd Sister Michelle Lopez, founder and director of the Fountain of Life Center for women prostitutes and their children in southern Thailand, said the center also tries to help men who frequent prostitutes.

"We try to help (the men) see that they are dehumanizing and degrading themselves" by purchasing sex, she told CNS.

Often their desire to dominate is due to coming from a family "where there is no gender equality," she said.

"The family is the first place where children are taught civil rights and freedoms, values and healthy relationships. If this is missing in the family or if male members have license to do whatever they want, then this (behavior) is carried out" into the community, Sister Lopez said.

The church, too, should be helping men and women build healthy relationships with one another, said some participants.

Cardinal Hamao said the church "feels strongly called upon to take up the defense of the rights and the image of women through a correct understanding of their role in society and a greater appreciation of the female dimension in every human activity."

Sister Bonetti said the church must focus on young people and "teach them what it means to respect another person."

END

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