Message to Gifting Partners
At the Sexual Integrity Project, we take a unique approach to addressing the human trafficking problem: curbing demand. The simple truth is that unless and until men stop buying sex, the problem will persist. We believe that sex buyer behavior is oftentimes rooted in addiction and that is where the solution to the problem lies.
The good news is that while overcoming addiction is extremely difficult, it is not impossible. There are several Christian and secular recovery programs by Drs. Patrick Carnes, Ted Roberts, Doug Weiss and Jay Stringer, that have proven success in helping men overcome pornography addiction.
We believe these same programs are effective regardless of how a client's unwanted sexual behavior may be demonstrating, up to and including the men who are directly buying sex from trafficked persons.
So, why not introduce sex buyers to these resources?
At the Sexual Integrity Project, our mission is threefold:
-
Advertise and network through the legal community, law enforcement, churches, and other organizations to find sex buyers who want to get well.
-
Subsidize, customize, and guide their healing journeys to include faith-based advice, group therapy, individual counseling, and a variety of recovery programs as necessary to gain sobriety.
-
Finally, as a result of their strengthened relationship with Jesus Christ and the connection to and mentorship from other similarly affected men, help them achieve lifelong freedom from their sexual bondage, and in so doing, erase their future sex buying activity from the face of the earth.
We carefully track metrics of each sex buyer as they move through our programs on their journey of healing. Once sobriety is achieved, we are able to calculate the number of sex purchases that will no longer take place in the life of the recovered buyer, and with them the number of sex-trafficked persons and associated sex-traffickers that get displaced.
Please review the case study of three recovered sex buyers below. The data is real and the results are illuminating. If we divide the financial investment required to bring life-long healing to the three men by the number of sex purchases that have been erased from their collective futures, we find that the direct cost to prevent a future sex purchase from occurring is estimated at just $3.94. After correcting for the adverse selection (many men give up before finding success) and organizational overhead, we estimate the total cost of preventing a future sex purchase at less than $10.00.
This means that using the Sexual Integrity Project's demand rehabilitative approach, an investment of just $10 eliminates a future sex purchase from occurring, and by extension about $100 will bring one day of freedom to a sex-trafficked person, while an investment of $500 would put a sex trafficker out of business for one day.
It should be noted that, as a result of achieving lifelong healing, the three recovered sex buyers from the Case Study displaced 18 months of activity for a sex trafficked individual which is also the equivalent of approximately 3.6 months of activity for a sex trafficker.
At the Sexual Integrity Project, our approach of curbing demand really represents a radical shift in how we address the sex market in our community. The graphic below outlines the evolution of the historical approach to this serious problem:
