For the uninitiated, she breaks the city down into two zones. This is not your typical Hawaiian holiday tour. Those tend to involve snorkelling adventures or biking down sooty volcanoes. But hidden behind the pristine image of this Pacific paradise is a thriving sex tourism industry.
The streets are mostly empty in the mornings, but today there is some activity in a park β a fair or festival of sorts has drawn a meagre crowd. Then she points. Right here. A female, possibly in her teens, is standing on a corner. She had been doing the same thing a few blocks earlier. She is standing alone, checking her phone. Bitanga is one of an unknown, and some say very difficult to measure, number of children and women who have been forced into sex work in Hawaii.
For each brothel, there are between three to 15 girls, mostly from Asia and some youth victims. There are also girls from Russia and parts of Eastern Europe. A large number of the women are taken to or through Honolulu, Oahu, a centre for tourism and conventions and home to a large transient military population. Clients are usually men with money, some military, some tourists, Xian says. Many come from Asia or mainland United States, but there are local clients as well. But it has been this way for almost two centuries, she adds, telling the story of the first case she knows of from , when American whalers trafficked a young girl.
In Hawaii, Sensley says, networks import victims from abroad, but the trade does not exclude locals. Instead of being treated like survivors of rape and psychological abuse, they are put in the difficult position of having to give evidence against their abusers and face grave consequences, or face criminal charges themselves, Xian explains. As a result, victims typically drop their cases.
Xian, whose organisation had drafted the new law, said she had hoped it would bring Hawaii up to speed with the rest of the US. Hawaii remains the only state in the US with no comprehensive law specifically criminalising sex trafficking while protecting victims from prosecution, she said.
