Dear Friend,

The past 24 hours have been a whirlwind of some of the biggest victories in our quest for a world free from sexual abuse and exploitation.

**Don't forget June 30 is our fiscal year end! As you'll see below, we haven't had much time for fundraising so please help if you can right now!

 

Online Exploitation Industry Crumbling

Here's all that has happened in the past 24 hours!

  • After working with the Canadian government and survivors through a long and heartbreaking process, we are overjoyed to announce that the Canadian Parliamentary Committee on Information, Privacy, and Ethics just issued a report TODAY which calls for sweeping changes to the government and Canadian law enforcement that will transform the online pornography industry considerably. We are moving legislatures in the US and abroad to hold these online abuse platforms accountable!

  • Another lawsuit (7 now!) was just filed this morning representing 30 survivors of child sexual abuse and sex trafficking who had their abuse filmed and uploaded to Pornhub. You have helped set a massive movement of litigation in motion to take them—and all like them—down!
  • Instagram shut down Pornhub last night on its platform where they had 12.5 million followers—they just let them back up temporarily, but we won't stop until we shut them down for good. (Remember how we announced Comcast removed content from their parent company last week?!) We are pushing all mainstream corporations to cut ties with the pornography industry, sending a clear cultural message that exploitation is not to be normalized.
  • The online prostitution website SeekingArrangement is feeling threatened—this exploitative company sent its attorneys after us for putting them on the 2021 Dirty Dozen List.
  • Our lawsuit against Twitter continues to move forward and we are certain our arguments are very strong, despite Twitter telling the judge that even if they are party to sex trafficking they are immune under current laws. (Oh yeah, and we are close to changing the law they think protects them and other online exploiters!)
 

Major Legislative Wins to Curb Sex Trafficking

Yesterday, we had major legislative wins to help curb sex trafficking.

  • The Debt Bondage Repair Act (H.R. 2332), passed the U.S. House. This bill will help victims of human trafficking recover from the financial harm inflicted by traffickers. It prevents adverse credit reporting of incidents that occurred while victims were being trafficked, allowing survivors to put the past behind them and get a fresh start in life.
  • The innovative bill we helped to draft and push in Maine, LD 1592, correctly reframes prostitution as a problem of demand and classifies buying sex as a crime of commercial sexual exploitation with harsh fines that can then be used to help provide services to victims of prostitution/sex trafficking. The bill now goes to the ME Governor for signature.
  • The precedent-setting bill in Texas, HB 1540, signed by the Governor yesterday, makes purchasing sex a felony for a first offense. This is a major way to deter people from engaging in the sex trade and will decrease the demand, ultimately shrinking the exploitation industry!

What gives me hope especially is two very different regions of our country—one R controlled with thousands of victims (Texas), the other D controlled with hundreds of victims (Maine)—landed on the same critical need to solve the problem: male accountability. 

Sex buying is the problem. Curbing demand is the solution for our nation—and the Rs and Ds, when equipped with the facts, AGREE!

 

Encouragement, and One Request

Be so encouraged! Things are moving so fast and in the right direction!

If you have the capacity, please give a donation right now. Our fiscal year end is June 30 and we are behind in our budget because we don’t have time to fundraise amid the massive work we are engaged in. All donations this month will be matched by a foundation.

Thank you for giving what you can and thank you for fighting with me for human dignity!

 

Join a Movement that has Momentum!

A major reason for this momentum is our global CESE Summit that united 22,000 from 112 countries last year.

Make sure you register for it this year since it’s online again and FREE!  If you plan to purchase an all-access pass, the early bird rate expires 6/30.

With gratitude,

Dawn Hawkins

CEO

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