Prostitutes’ customers to be sent off to school

Diversion class aims to change behavior of johns

By Jennifer Anderson

The Portland Tribune, Jul 29, 2010 (2 Reader comments)

CHRISTOPHER ONSTOTT / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Portland Police officers question and detain a known prostitute at a gas station at the corner of Northeast Glisan and 82nd Avenue this week. County leaders hope to curb the cycle of prostitution by educating the first-time offenders caught soliciting sex at a daylong "john school" to begin later this year. 

It used to be a joke, a perverse bragging right: Portland has the highest per-capita number of porn shops of any U.S. city.

Now, Portland has been called a major hub for child sex trafficking, as Dan Rather highlighted in his recent TV special: “Pornland, Oregon: Child Prostitution in Portland.”

While Las Vegas, Hawaii, California and Washington are hit hard by the epidemic as well, Portland is a particular hot spot because it’s situated along the Interstate 5 corridor, a perfect place for pimps in their 30s to recruit girls as young as 12 to disconnect from their friends and families and start selling their bodies for sex, police say.

A recent federal sting at a downtown Portland hotel revealed as much.

But now, Multnomah County leaders, Portland police and neighborhood activists are trying to put a dent in the problem by holding the johns accountable for their part in the cycle.

County leaders hope by the end of the year to open a “john school” of sorts: a daylong voluntary diversion class designed to be a wake-up call for the first-time (typically male) offender who picks up adult prostitutes.

Modeled after the nation’s oldest john school in San Francisco, the county will refer offenders to treatment when necessary and teach them about the crime’s impact on both the women involved and the community.

“The kids who get out of school around 82nd (Avenue) are propositioned” by the johns, says JR Ujifusa, the deputy district attorney who has prosecuted neighborhood prostitution crimes for the past two and a half years. The johns’ activities damage community livability, he says.

“They have sex in parking lots; we find condoms and needles; pimps fight against each other. When you think of how 82nd Avenue’s been associated with these crimes, we want to get away from that.”

Upon completion of the john school, the convicted offender will get the charge erased from his record after six months, if he does not re-offend.

The catch is that to participate, the offender will have to pony up $1,000 to take the class. The fee will go directly toward paying the courts, police and victim services so that the program can fund itself.

Brian Wong, chairman of the Montavilla Neighborhood Association, thinks that price is steep, but not high enough.

“The cost to society is extreme,” he says. “The pimp’s job is to inflict violence to the woman so she’ll do a $40 transaction with anybody. She has no choice when she’s out there.”

Wong says he and other neighbors are hopeful the john school will put a dent in a crime that saw a dramatic spike two summers ago, just after the city allowed its long-running “prostitution-free zones” to sunset due to constitutional concerns.

After the zones ended, neighbors held town hall meetings and police hit hot spots, mostly on 82nd Avenue near Stark and Sandy, but also on West Burnside, around the entertainment district.

The magnitude of the problem has decreased, but prostitution still persists, Ujifusa says. He sees 80 to 100 arrests per year for solicitation, the majority of them involving first-time offenders.

LifeWorks Northwest, the nonprofit mental health, addiction and treatment provider that serves survivors of the sex trade, would host the john school at its Gresham site and be the lead social service partner.

Jeri Williams, a former street worker who is now a program coordinator for the city’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement, is glad to hear work is under way to start the john school.

1 | 2 Next Page >>

Facebook	Digg	Del.icio.us
Newsvine	Stumbleupon	Reddit