Restoration House Has a Vision

Can you see it? Can you see a world where the demand for the buying of sex and the trafficking of persons was as culturally unacceptable as smoking on airplanes?

What if the legalized sex industry…the strip clubs, illicit massage parlors, “adult only” bookstores, escort services, personal services ads, and porn…were exposed for what they are…fronts for the exploitation and prostitution of persons and mass contributors to the trafficking of girls and boys, men and women?

What if street pimps and internet traffickers and organized trafficking gangs were no longer able to make a profit because the laws were too tough, the costs were too high, the sentences were too long, such that it simply wasn’t worth it?

What if the stigma and penalties for buyers was as great as that for other sex offenders who must be registered and legally monitored?

What if the financial and professional resources of society were reprioritized to adequately fund the restoration of those victimized by this most heinous, dehumanizing, and damaging crime?

The backwards, wrong headed criminalization of the exploited victim, combined with the casual “old boys club” treatment of the buyer needs to be dismissed with the same conviction that human slavery was banished as inhuman and morally unacceptable.

Not convinced that this is possible? Thirty years ago polio registered over 350,000 victims per year globally. Due to prioritized funding, international cooperation around immunization drives, and the determined collaborative efforts of government, NGO and private partners polio found itself on its last leg. Last year only 21 cases of polio were reported globally, confined to three war torn countries.

In one generation, we could see this scourge of trafficking elevated to public enemy number one, confined to the dustbin of history, where the purchase of persons for sex or slave labor are as societally unacceptable as not allowing women to vote.

So we fight for this vision! And we fight for the victims.