As this newsletter goes out, thousands are still rising in protest against the system of criminal justice that allowed George Floyd to die—a system that many argue is deeply, inherently, and even deliberately racist and inhumane. The disproportionate harm experienced by Black people from policing extends to the policing of sex crimes. Not only are Black people more likely to be victims of sexual crime, but they also face worse criminal justice outcomes if they ever stand accused of being perpetrators.

Black people, including those who are minors, have higher arrest rates for sex offenses and black men are represented on sex offense registries at a rate about double that of white men. In Minnesota, Black people are more than ten times more likely to be included than white people. Tellingly, the disparity is especially pronounced in states that use risk-based classifications to determine registry placement, revealing the effects of the racialized assumptions built into those classifications.

What makes this tragedy even more bitter is that the harshness of our treatment of Black people who are accused of perpetrating sexual crime does nothing other than satisfy our desire for vengeance—isn't helping to protect children from abuse. Indeed, it may make them less safe rather than more so, because the unstable housing and employment security of people on the registry in turn drives recidivism.

Experts are saying that we need a different approach. And among all the tragedy of the present moment, one silver lining that we can point to is that we have the power, and now also opportunity, to tell our government to make a significant change in its approach towards the detection, prevention, and treatment of victims of sexual crimes against children.

Since it was introduced in March, we have been fighting against the EARN IT Act, a law that purports to address online child sexual exploitation, but which has been widely recognized as a vehicle to advance the anti-encryption agenda of Attorney General William Barr. The backlash against this law from prevention groups, human rights groups, and the tech industry alike has left an opening for an alternative law that would more directly address the problem to which EARN IT is putatively targeted, without undermining privacy and security online.

That alternative is the Invest in Child Safety Act, which was introduced in May by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and four democratic colleagues. The law would create a new Office to Enforce and Protect Against Child Sexual Exploitation, and require the Director of that office to coordinate the government's work on addressing that problem through a unified and evidence-based enforcement and protection strategy. An initial key plank of that strategy will be a major study to identify risk factors of child sexual exploitation, as well as to identify and evaluate promising child sexual exploitation prevention services and programs. And the Office would have access to a $5b fund to carry out this work over ten years. 

The Act isn't perfect. Its biggest problem is that at a time when defunding the police and abolishing carceral institutions are being seriously discussed as responses to the systemic racism of the criminal justice system, on the surface, the Invest in Child Safety Act appears to do the opposite of this. For example, the law allocates $100 million per year in new funding to the Department of Justice, and makes provision for at least 100 new FBI investigators to be hired. Although it also makes provision for prevention-based interventions, there is a softer mandate for their funding, which is generally left up to the discretion of the Director of the Office.

Even before the current resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests, Prostasia Foundation had identified this imbalance in the law as a problem, and had developed a comprehensive strategy to address it. We have drafted three common-sense amendments, which we have been discussing directly with the offices of the bill's sponsors, which will help to address the law's skew towards enforcement, and help to bring prevention back into focus. The amendments will:

1. Broaden the selection criteria for the Director of the Office to ensure that a public health background, rather than just a criminal justice background, is considered in assessing their qualifications for the job.
2. Focus enforcement funding on child exploitation crimes, so that agencies can't spend their new funding on prosecuting adults over consensual sex work, or over obscenity offenses that are unrelated to real child abuse.
3. Include funding for prevention programs that are targeted at potential perpetrators, as well as those that are targeted at victims.

The public's need to exercise vengeance against sexual offenders has been used to drive and justify many of the broader harms of policing and mass incarceration that fall most heavily on Black and other minority communities. There is a growing consensus that this needs to change, and that we need to look more seriously at transformative justice approaches, that do not embed the same racist history and assumptions of the carceral approach. The way that we deal with sex crimes has to be a part of this reevaluation.

The Invest in Child Safety Act offers one concrete way to begin to shift the needle towards a more prevention-focused approach to the problem of child sexual exploitation. Aside from doing less harm to Black communities, a prevention focused approach will also benefit other minority communities, families, and children themselves. Please support our campaign to pass the Invest in Child Safety Act with three common sense amendments, by writing to your representatives. Click the button below to start.

Prostasia Foundation is proud to announce the addition of two new expert volunteers to our team: Candice Christiansen M.Ed., LCMHC, CSAT-S has joined our Board of Directors, and Professor Ira Ellman has joined our Advisory Council.

Candice is a Certified EMDR Therapist and the founder of several programs including Namasté Center for Healing, the Global Prevention Project, and the Global Prevention Podcast; read more about her background here. Candice was featured in our podcast last December with Gilian Tenbergen, who is also a member of our team, talking about their joint project to develop a new treatment program for minor attracted persons in New York State.

Ira is currently Distinguished Affiliated Scholar, Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley, and Affiliated Faculty of the Berkeley Center for Child and Youth Policy. His 2015 article, “Frightening and High”: The Supreme Court’s Crucial Mistake About Sex Crime Statistics, has been widely discussed in both legal publications and in key national media. You can read more about his background here. Ira too was recently featured on our podcast, discussing how he and a group of other experts have intervened in a number of key court cases that test the boundaries of sex offense law.

The addition of these two esteemed professionals to our team further strengthens Prostasia Foundation's unique profile as a child protection organization that is prevention-focused, sex-positive, and committed to upholding human rights for all. Welcome, Candice and Ira!

Last week, Prostasia Foundation held another in our series of free webinars, in which we invited the leaders of two new fan-led social network projects to talk with us about their approach to keeping their communities safe, inclusive, peaceful and healthy—something that major platforms struggle with.

We heard first from Claire, co-founder of Fanexus, an upcoming fandom and creator-centric social media platform meets wiki, made by fans, for fans, to support the flourishing of creative freedom and diversity.

Claire spoke about some of the history of online fandom; how fans had migrated from LiveJournal to Tumblr and then to Twitter due to the spread of online censorship. But Twitter, as she pointed out, wasn't as well suited to hosting opt-in communities of those with fringe art and fiction interests. This had led to a spate of serious harassment against fans, especially those who are fans of romantic pairings that involve power imbalances.

Fanexus addresses this through its product design, its acceptable use policies, and the community development that is already part of its alpha testing phase. For example, it is mandatory to tag sensitive material, there are simple ways to block unwanted content (even from someone you follow), and privacy settings are similarly granular and customizable.

The next panelist, Essential Randomness who is the creator of BobaBoard and who also works at a major Internet platform, explained the slightly different but complementary approach that she is taking with BobaBoard, another project that is both by and for fans.

Unlike Fanexus which will be a centralized website, BobaBoard will be a decentralized and open sourced network that seeks to replicate some of the strengths of the old (pre-Tumblr) Internet, while also introducing modern innovations that make it easier for even small niche communities to foster meaningful and respectful interactions.

The most unique point about BobaBoard is an innovative privacy model, which makes posts anonymous by default, but allows them to be selectively de-anonymized for friends. This allows people to decide who they want to reveal themselves to as they build trust with those they interact with.

The webinar concluded with a presentation from Prostasia's Jeremy Malcolm, and with a period of discussion on topics ranging from role should users have in development of platform or community policies, to how platforms can reduce toxic engagement and promote good mental health.

Reviewed by Meagan Ingerman

Jillian Keenan’s Sex With Shakespeare is a revelation. I’ve been active in kink for over a decade now and have done a lot of reading along the way. Sex with Shakespeare is the first book in a long time that actually taught me something about myself, my sexuality, and my fetishes. It is also one of very few books in which BDSM is discussed that doesn’t make me want to write to the author to tell them what they got wrong and why it’s dangerous. 

Without divulging too much, the book is about Keenan’s journey to find, understand and accept a sexuality that does not revolve around sex. I am a masochist and a spanko and I felt very seen in many parts of the book. My journey is not her journey but we have many intersections on the path.

Keenan covers many subjects, disability, fetishes, sexual assault, etc, and she covers them with care and understanding. Her rather amazing story is woven around a backdrop of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets with participation from an interesting cast of characters. 

Keenan, we learn, is a CSA survivor. She was also spanked as a child. She is clear that, given her sexuality, spanking was the more egregious intrusion for her. Keenan talks about how spanking a child is child sexual assault, “By the time I was 3 years old, I was a fetishist, and spanking, to me, was a sex act more penetrative than sex. From that point on, for me, nonconsensual spankings were unintentional sexual assaults. I experienced them as such.”   

Keenan is not the only one to experience spankings as sexual assault but even for those who don’t, it still needs to be recognized that the butt is widely regarded as a potentially sexual body part. Because spanking children is not widely recognized as a sex act, it is still promoted in certain fundamentalist Christian groups as the correct way to punish a child. This is where sadists with no education on how to ethically and consensually work out their fetish, get to exercise it on those who can’t fight back.

While I do have to be responsible and say that this book is really meant for adults, I honestly feel almost anyone can get something out of this book, especially if you are a fetishist and Shakespeare fan. If you are just beginning the journey of navigating adult sexual relationships or you’ve been doing it for years, there is something in this book for you. 

I’m not a hugger in general, but this book makes me want to hug the stuffing out of Jillian Keenan and thank her so much for writing a book I needed so badly.