The voice of the citizen was heard last week at the Rhode Island General Assembly. After months of work and discussion by members of the state’s legislature last week, prostitution was finally outlawed and a thirty-year loophole in the law that did not criminalize prostitution if occurred indoors was closed.
Led by the steadfast determination of Representative Joanne Gianniani (D-Providence) and with the help and support of Senate President Theresa Pavia Weed, soon, prostitution and the solicitation of sex “regardless of the time, place or location” can now be prosecuted. The public embarrassment and moral scandal of legal prostitution in the Ocean State will now be put where it belongs, in the dustbin of history.
The citizens of Rhode Island, members of the state’s law enforcement community, religious leaders and national anti-trafficking advocates have long advocated for the end of legalized prostitution in Rhode Island. The General Assembly not only criminalized prostitution but also passed a total of three pieces of legislation that will protect victims from sex industry predators and give law enforcement the tools they need to arrest pimps, traffickers, and “johns.” Rhode Island now has laws that will ban minors from working in any “adult entertainment” business, criminalize forced labor as a form of human trafficking, enable the prosecution of sex trafficking of minors without proving that coercion was used, criminalize the soliciting of commercial sex by prostitutes and “johns” and prohibit victims of sex trafficking from being convicted of prostitution offenses.
The large amounts of money made by pimps and traffickers through the exploitation of men, women and children was not enough to stymie the needed legislation from passing last week. The voice of prosecutors, police officers, pastors, professors, and ordinary citizens calling for the shameful scourge of prostitution to end proved more powerful. However, we remain bewildered by the nine State Representatives and two State Senators, See Page , 5, who voted against criminalizing prostitution. We urge citizens of their respective districts to contact them for an explanation of their support of prostitution.
Nonetheless we rejoice that the dark cloud covering the Ocean State has been lifted and Rhode Islanders no longer have to hold their heads in shame. Legal prostitution has ended and a new day has dawned for the men, women and children subjected to the dehumanization and immorality that is prostitution.
