REAL STORIES. REAL ACTION. REAL CHANGE.

(Human Rights & Social Justice)

An Artists & Poets Virtual Studio & Gallery.

Sexualized Violence Directed at Boys, International Sex Trade in Boys. HIV/AIDS-defining Infections & Diseases.

The idea of the family used to be the entity that was the fundamental keeper of the stories. The family kept them, kept them guarded, and often kept them secret. Today, families can be scattered like seeds all over the surface of the earth. Social media can now be the repository of the stories. Who lived. Who died. Who fought who. Who won. Who lost. Who disappeared. Who came to your house at night to take everyone away. Who returned. Who was never seen again. The stories now come with photographs, with video, with sound. What was real. What was traded away. What if anything is left.

Courage is contagious. When brave young artists & poets take a stand, often the spines of others are stiffened.

Survivor-Led and Peer-Mentored Safe House Art Programs Speak To Valuable Lives

Sometimes There Is A Key (after, Jonah, Pascal & Yoko Ono)

I  AM (after, Niall, Pascal & Yoko Ono & Philip Glass)

i rarely cry/ even holding the dead ones i cannot cry/ i do scream though/ loudly/ the real reason you cannot hear me is because i am invisible/

Tristan is no longer with us. He wanted very much to show us his life. But that life only had a limited run. Tristan was a sex worker. It defined him. But also killed him.

Tristan was young. The tricks (seemingly straight me most of whom had families and children Tristan's age) like their boys young. Such boys are exploited, abused, addicted, forced into sexual situations they are not equipped to handle, bought and paid for, trafficked, fucked in the mouth, fucked in the ass, torn apart, denied a childhood, frequently murdered, a high risk for HIV infection, denied access to an education, kicked out of schools, kicked out of families, incarcerated in institutions where they are raped, forced to turn to survival sex, and when they're sick, they turn to the only family they have: other sex workers, junkies, pimps, and drug dealers. Many commit suicide. For some, HIV IS suicide.

The story of how boys are bought and sold and sold out belongs to him. The story of their destruction belongs to him. Tristan was dark and disturbed. He had been twisted around by tricks and men. Tristan is dead because the world fucked him inside and out. Yet, he was a kid. Like any other kid. He had dreams and ambition and he was smart. Smart enough to survive living on his own in a very adult, abusive environment. He had scores of friends. "Just us whores," is how Tristan put it. He was always with a camera and photographed his world. Jumping onto subway tracks. Crawling out onto roofs. To get the shot he wanted.

When visiting the hospital Tristan was never without a camera. Tristan was a regular, and frequently went with his friends (as support). They were still into tricking and heavy into drugs. BIG GIRL drugs like heroin so they may better endure the violent abuse and neglect. Some of these boys were thirteen. At the very moment of being told they were infected with HIV, Tristan would take a photograph capturing the agony on each face. They WANTED him to be there. With his camera. I think basically because it was some kind of strange record. A record that said: we were here. The photographs Tristan took are still very difficult for me to look at. Whoredrama. You get it or you don't. You survive it or you don't.

Representations can take many forms. Each is merely the shadow of a life. It is not a life. Tristan wanted people to know something about the anguish he had endured. I go out of my way to one the shadows down. To make it palatable for you as I ask again and again: how many videos and photographs have to be made, before we admit there are children our culture hurts, abandons, infects and permits to live, and to die prematurely, in intolerable pain.

Tristan always volunteered his time on a variety of hospital wards. Surviving the abuse, surviving the HIV cancers, is the REAL issue. Tristan did things like read to kids whose vision had become a trainwreck. This can happen from pneumocystis. After a day of being at the hospital, Tristan would arrive home and he was just quiet. Never said a word for a few hours and then he'd explode. "I tell kids they are not alone," he'd weep." But they are alone."

Survivor-Led and Peer-Mentored Safe House Art Programs Embrace Valuable Lives

POVERTY is what competes with anything and everything that anyone may have to say to the boys... There is no funding for safe houses that are, in truth, safe for the boys to run to and to grow up in.

It is time for adult-led & governed communities to urgently revisit their cultural beliefs & political aims that seek to 'rescue' (code for rehabilitate) the boys, by forcing them into programs founded on the very middle-class trajectories that failed the boys so spectacularly in the first place. The boys will run. They have a lot to run from...

The rape of boys is such a socially explosive concept in 2013 that few people are willing to stick their necks out to facilitate for a compassionate response that serves the survivors' best interests, and permits survivors to live away from poverty and violence, so they may raise the quality of their lives and those of all their peers still left behind to endure such breathtaking social & cultural neglect.

CHILD ABUSE: SEX-TRAFFICKING & SURVIVAL-SEXWORK

TABOO, USA, 2013: Where you find the drugs, you will find the boys not far behind. Where you find the boys, you will find the tricks not far behind. Where you find the tricks, you will find the tricks' wives, girlfriends & lovers, and all their children, not far behind.

CHILD ABUSE: SEX-TRAFFICKING & SURVIVAL-SEXWORK

SMASH STREET/ SHOW ME YOUR LIFE: "I love it when we get to see the guides and peer mentors fight like a bitch for us. No one ever did fight for me. I am not worth it. New weird experience. The people who support us are not rich. So we do what we can to support ourselves. When no one will help you, then you gotta do it yourself. We built our own platform to communicate with one another. It is an outreach that says you can survive what they throw at you with the support of kids who live at risk lives just like you do" (Trig).

CONSEQUENCES FOR MALE-SURVIVORS

Physicians should be familiar with mandatory reporting requirements within the jurisdictions in which they practice… Physicians have a duty to disobey laws they believe are ethically wrong, and to follow their conscience (Geiderman, 2012). Physicians, as well-educated & articulate adults, should, at the very least, ask : "does what happens and is done to a child after i report him serve the kid's best interests."

"I wish no woman had born me. I was 8 years old. I did things in movies they made me. I been bout and sold so many times I do not know who owns me no more. I got sick. They would still fuck me. Nobody would stop fucking me till I would be dead. I still run from cops if I see one. I was in detenshun 1 time. They fucked me day and night in there. I said to them that I had the hiv but they did not care. I did wanted to die a lot... I never want no more to get fucked again. That is how I got hiv. If I had to go back to Mexico then I would have no pills like I do now cuz there was no pills for hiv there. If I had to go back then men would fuck me again and I would have to do it to earn them men who bout me money. But the drug ones will just shoot me like it was a lesson to the other boys" Chito (Show Me Your Life/ Smash Street).

May 2013, New York City, USA. Official estimate: every night there are 2,400 kids in NYC who need an emergency safe shelter bed. There are only 300 beds for kids. This is a SHAMEFUL response in one of the wealthiest cities in the world. We feel compelled to ask: What has happened to our communities humanity. Why are there no safe houses that are, in truth, safe for the boys to run to and grow up in.

Getting Fucked at the Homeless Shelter © Lucas

the bullet

          that goes through

Cort’s brain

whizzes by              overhead

missing me

                       by less than

an inch

                 I am so lucky

Now I can live long enough

                 to go get fucked in the ass

by the older men

                in the homeless shelter showers

where I shit out their cum

so no eyes could see

               the blood and cum go swirling

down the drain

I am too tired

   to care

SURVIVAL-SEXWORK

Survivor-Led and Peer-Mentored Residential Safe House Art Programs Save Valuable Lives

The Drug Runners of Byzantium Never Sleep

i left byzantium and (running) stumbled upon this world of opaque trees/ beneath the ground the sound of dragons breathing/ breathing/

The mad among us. Those who would have the balls and the audacity to define themselves.

I DREAM OF LOVE

Adrien is a 15-year-old bipolar sex worker living in Los Angeles who struggles with cyclical, clinical depression. When living on the street, Adrien is unable to maintain his medication. He has assembled for Show Me Your Life — Suicidal. A collage of sound, motion and metaphor exploring the world he endures to survive.

Jonah: I Only Want

I want to die like a dog

And be buried in a hole

Dug into the ground

I only want

One person to care

You think we are different but it is only a sickness in your head/ We know we are not any different from boys who would be your sons/ We eat, we sleep, we piss, we bleed, we play soccer/ We are no different from any other group of boys with skateboards/ We are not monsters/ We have dreams to/

HANGING WINDOWS ON OUR WALLS (after YOMYOMF & Katy Perry/Kanye West)

"No one in his right mind wants to be a victim"

Dec 2, 2012: The Trevor Project honored international super star Katy Perry with the Trevor Hero Award and Audi of America with the Trevor 2020 Award.

The kids need survivor-led stable safe housing & peer-mentored programs that embrace and alleviate their trauma. With the economy in the toilet, more and more kids are living on the street. In the USA, a community that prides itself on family values, the real statistics are staggering. Here’s the reality: 90% of every child in the system here who makes it to the age of 18 will be in prison before they are 19.  90% which is obviously almost all of them. They’re in rest areas. They’re in truck stops. They’re in whorehouses and shooting galleries and meth labs. To be in foster care means you are going to prison. How many of them are HIV by the age of sixteen. 42%. I would have guessed maybe ten percent at most. 42% of kids in foster care before the age of 16 will get HIV. They will enter prison infected. How many of that 42% will have a history of sex work. 98% of the 42% will have that history. Almost all kids in foster care go to prison and by then half will be infected and 90% infected from unsafe sex with tricks.

Skin and Hair, a poem by Ryan

By dying, I no longer have to care.

About what I look like in public.

To people who do not know me.

My skin has erupted with red bugs.

That crawl into my demented brain.

I am now bored by tragedy.

Dangling from the high windows.

Everyone falls.

Like ladybugs trying to climb.

Slick glass up.

Video created by child-survivors for UNAIDS. Hundreds of thousands of boys lives are being smashed in the heart of our communities and being placed at risk for enduring HIV/AIDS-defining infections and diseases. 

Survivors: Courage and Compassion and Intelligence.

Child abusers, & the men & women who facilitate child abuse & child rape, are not courageous people. They are always poised to run. If we do not stand up to these people on Sat. May 11, 2013, who will apologize tomorrow on our behalf to all the boys who survived such breathtaking abuse, rape & social neglect...

Learning to speak each others language, USA 2013: MALE-CHILD ABUSE & MALE-CHILD RAPE are commonly substituted by the words Sex-Trafficking, or Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. SURVIVOR is frequently substituted by the word Victim. The term HARD-TO-REACH populations/social groups, is the phrase used by survivors to refer to adults, who are charged with ensuring a survivor's best interests are served and a survivor's human rights are honoured within a UN Member State that has NOT ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Survivors of child abuse and child rape are exceptionally skilled at reading how adults speak and adult body language; what adults really mean or will do, when they say something or behave in a certain fashion. This skill is acutely honed by male-children (UN defines child as under 18 year old), who happen to find themselves surviving in communities in which the extent, and devastating consequences, of male-child sexual abuse and rape are under acknowledged due to both local and international, cultural and social perceptions and beliefs.

President Barack Obama (human trafficking speech, 2012): "We’ll strengthen training, so investigators and law enforcement are even better equipped to take action -- and treat victims as victims, not as criminals." Millions of dollars were spent: 27,000 people trained by federal agencies to recognize and fight trafficking; 29 active federal anti-trafficking task forces (USA, 2010). Artists & poets feel compelled to ask: Who trained who to do what exactly. How many survivors benefited. How many survivors took a lead role in the training programs & task forces & deciding how survivors should be treated when they are 'freed.' 

A SAFE HOUSE IS... by Trig. We are the kids people love to hate. We are the losers and the addicts. We are the untouchables. We are the criminal. The lowest of the castes in your United Nations caste system. The HIV failures at life. We are the whores. We sell our holes for money.

I had these sheets. A poem by Trig (15 yr old)

I had these sheets

I took many of the men who paid me to have sex with them to my clean new sheets

Like snow

I was making love in snow

Only really I was fooling myself we were making love

Cos’ they did not love me.

It is hard to love me.

You have to be very strong. To do it

Even I cannot do it.

I will admit it, that I wished some of them might love me.

Might take me to his home, in his arms

But it is a joke. It could never happen.

They just wanted to come in me.

I just wanted to buy food.

When they left that little motel room I lived in,

I would try and not watch them go.

Cos’ I was always looking, at how his shit messed up my sheets.

Oh, before you know it. You will be on your knees.

My sheets in the backyard wind, were avenging angels

with swords.

How do you just walk up to someone you cannot bear to be without and say I love you? Maybe Tim can do it but I cannot do it. We were homeless together. It has all been together. If we were broken up we would all fall apart. We went up north together. We all go to the same funerals. We act as one another’s medical advocate. You never go to the clinic just for you. You are going for another one of us too. We have stolen food from the same stores. We sold dick on the same streets. We got thrown into and raped in the same jails. We shit in front of one another in an attic toilet. When we go through withdrawal we puke in the same bucket (Kirk, SHOW ME YOUR LIFE).

"I hate money but u gotta have it. If you r sucking cock in cars for money u r doing it 2 survive. No one sucks cock like 1 stranger after another in cars that take you 2 some risky places unless they r doing it for money 2 eat. If I did not suck cock 4 tricks then I would starve."

SURVIVOR-LED SAFE HOUSES & PEER-MENTORED PROGRAMS: Survivors are not frozen into inaction by disbelief or overwhelmed by the debilitating vicarious trauma experienced by many professionals across disciplines charged with providing social services, legal counsel and healthcare that serves a child's best interests. Survivors are experienced and intelligent caregivers, well versed in the diverse ways trauma is manifest for survivors and strategies that permit survivors to better cope with rigorous medical regimes (they will have to take for the rest of their lives). We have much to learn from the compassion and wisdom exhibited by survivors, who have emerged from the horror with a focused desire to alleviate the suffering of all their peers still left behind and offer meaningful palliative care to their peers unable to survive AIDS-related infections and diseases.

Professor Paul Webley (Director, School of Oriental & African Studies, SOAS): Stories and narratives help define who we are, and help us understand our world and what it means to be human. And the stories on the magnificent Real Stories Gallery will do all that - but will also have an impact on the world, and help reduce the spread of HIV.

GETTING INTO CARS AT NIGHT TURNING TRICKS BY STEPHANE

I have a bag when I am turning tricks @ night


keep my phone on and run the video when

          I get  into strange cars

Sometimes I let them take me 2 their homes

I always try 2 get the numbers of the address

You better charge more if they take you home

I do not like 2B totally naked when I am

          turning tricks

Then if you R naked they want to tie you up

If they gag you it means it is going 2 hurt

Do not go down into his basement

I hate it when they cum in my mouth cuz

          it tastes very bad

You can shoot junk 2 help you do it

The tricks do not want 2 see you shooting junk

Do it in the bathroom

Try not 2 show the trick yer arms

If a trick sees tracks he will want 2

          save you

Tricks who want 2 save you are dangerous

They get mad when you relapse

Tricks think you live in a house

The trick will beat the fuck out of you

Their wives are never home

I always wonder what the

           wife looks like

A picture of the trick with his family

          will probably be on the wall somewhere

Do not let the trick see you staring

          at the picture

The tricks R always afraid of their wives

Tricks always ask 2 many questions

They are very nosey and want 2 know

          what turning tricks is like

I can only do it if I am high

If a trick throws you out of the car and

          you get hurt

Carry a first aid kit in yer bag

Like green snot cumin out of your piss hole

          is bad and it will hurt

They always want yer name @ a clinic

If you give yer real name they can find you

You might need the 2 or 3 IDs you buy

A small shoulder bag is better than a big one

You might have to run

A trick might say he is out of money

          after they fuck you

I carry a knife

The end 

ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE

The Black Polaroid

The Black Polaroid symbolizes all the boys whose lives and stories have been silenced in the public presentations and documentation of our collective contemporary histories, and by our communities lack of meaningful response to the physical, psychological and social trauma taking place on our watch.

Professor Philip Goulder (Pediatrician (HIV Infection & Immune Control), Oxford): We watch carefully the people who inspire us, and listen to the stories they tell us; what we learn from them shapes what we understand, how we feel and how we act in the world (endorsement for Real Stories Gallery).

Forced Suicide : USA

**1 in 6 boys under 16 years old is sexually violated in the USA. It is estimated that 19 million adult males in the USA today had unwanted sexual experiences as boys. It is within this context of social silence and social stigma and social violence, and in the midst of an HIV/AIDS pandemic, that boys are sexually violated in the sex trades and detention systems in U.S. Territories.

Why are prosecutors looking at increasing the number of prosecutions for HIV boy sex workers who threaten suicide? Boys who threaten to jump need peer-to-peer counseling (it is the only thing that works outside of medication) and to get off the street; to prosecute these children is to drive them more underground than they already are.

Consequences of mandatory report deters kids from seeking medical care, shelter and food. Physicians have a duty to disobey laws they believe are ethically wrong, and to follow their conscience (Geiderman, 2012).

Why is the Department of Justice not fighting to end the discrimination that is still routinely – and tragically – experienced by kids entering the delinquency and criminal justice systems because of noncriminal misbehaviors such as running away from home (a status offense; implies some wrongdoing on the part of the youth & determines the services he experiences and receives for the rest of his life).

Many homeless adolescents find that exchanging sex for food, clothing, and shelter is their only chance of survival on the streets. They can no way make me go back there and I will hang myself. If they come and say you are going to jail again I will stab my neck with a knife. I hate cops and I hate guards and I hate jail. Please, please do not let them get me or my friends. I mean it.

Many communities have eliminated the separation between juvenile and adult offenders as dictated by an economy in crisis. As juvenile codes have been reassessed and this trend continues, so has the incidence of juvenile rape. They fucked me day and night in there. I said to them that I had the HIV but they did not care.

Why are our communities and medias not expressing public outrage directed at the men who pay for sex with boys and then walk away with enough money in their pockets for stable safe shelter and access to appropriate health care and nutrition. Punishing a kid (who has had everything taken away from him including his health) makes no sense at all - economically, medically or ethically.

THE BOYS NEED STABLE SAFE HOUSING... TODAY

Hunger & Stress compromise children's immune systems in lasting ways (Psychological Science, 2010). Americans are unable to feed, house and protect all the kids in U.S. Territories. Hungry and homeless kids who want to stay alive are forced to find ways to survive and experience and witness horrible crimes. U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child urges all levels of governance to also involve civil society—including children themselves—in the process of implementing and raising awareness of child rights. NOTE: The Center for the Next Generation reports that Latinos now comprise more than 50 percent of California's children and nearly a third of those Latino children live in poverty.

My Tricks All Have Big cars by Miguel (14 yrs old in the USA)

                    My tricks all like showing off. Driving big car tricks. Big Cock Daddy for his little boy. You want to put your tongue you Big Daddy in my shit hole will cost you twenty bucks.

                    You want me to shit in your mouth will cost you a hundred. The cops said I beat one trick up pretty bad. But if you eat my shit and you do not pay me I am going to beat you up Big Car Daddy. You want to suck my titty will cost you one whole dollar.

                    I only eat shit if Daddy gets me needle high. You do not taste it then.

                    I piss on you will cost you fifty bucks. Your car will smell like pee. I gotta calculator running inside my head like the nurses have when you go the ER with like some pimp has broke your bones. Clicking off the numbers you will owe them.

                    You wanna come in my mouth will cost you seventy-five dollars upfront. You wanna cum in my hole will cost you an ounce of coke. I am supposed to be impressed by Daddy and his big old car.

                    But all dicks taste the same to me. I don’t own a car. You gotta be careful with the tricks cuz after they cum they want you out of there. They throw me out. And then they burn rubber out of there. Sometimes I wonder what kind of houses they live in.

                    All I know is that the houses must be big. You gotta big house and a big car and a heart smaller than my left tit in a deep freeze.

Why are many of these children out there having sex with American men. Most of whom appear to be married with families. Why are there no supportive structures built around safe places where these kids doing sexwork can be tested and treated. Why has PEPFAR ignored this very significant piece of the HIV/AIDS puzzle. (PEPFAR) CDC’s primary role in Global HIV/AIDS is to strengthen national responses to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and save the lives of persons living with HIV/AIDS

Trig (15 yrs old in the USA): They call me Trigger cos' men like to ride me. I started doing sex work again last night. It was hard times but I need the money. It was just old married men who wanted to suck me. I made about 40 bucks. I want to come back home. It is so cold... It is hard 4 me when you are so negative. I cannot do it if you see no hope. Will you just pretend? You could do it for me? I need you to pretend there is hope.

After you tell them how much it costs they don't say nothing

Poetry by SMASH STREET BOYS/ SHOW ME YOUR LIFE

CAMERON, TRIG, BLAIR, TRENT & RYAN

SHOW ME YOUR LIFE: In Southern Sudan, HIV and rape are now employed as weapons of war. Rape itself is today not sufficient enough to induce terror and compliance. Now, stigma and compliance are the equivalent of genocide.  

LUSALA (SHOW ME YOUR LIFE, SOUTHERN SUDAN)

Sexualized violence against men and boys – including rape, sexual torture, mutilation of the genitals, sexual humiliation, sexual enslavement, forced incest and forced rape – has been reported in 25 armed conflicts across the world. If cases of sexual exploitation of boys displaced by violent conflict are also included the list encompasses the majority of 59 armed conflicts identified in the Human Security Report. Male-directed sexual violence is a mechanism by which men and boys are placed or kept in a position subordinate to other men. Disclosure is further challenged in contexts where homosexual activity attracts SOCIAL and LEGAL penalties. Yet, the vast majority of male perpetrators live in their communities as heterosexual married men and engage in sexual activities with their wives and girlfriends, and sometimes with other men who have sex with other men who have sex with other women. The violence experienced by boys in the international sex trade is located in this international context of social neglect and cultural violence. For instance, it is estimated that 19 million adult males in the USA had unwanted sexual experiences as boys; and 1 in 6 boys is sexually violated in the USA by 16 years old.

Behind My War Paint haïtienne par Anton

Je ne suis pas simplement invisible. Je suis gravement invisible.

Régulièrement là où il appartient entre les baraques en tôle.

Rêves invisibles de mes sœurs. La boue.

Un pied fracassant dans le noir. la

nuit qui tourne au chien que les roches

aveugle. Il n’y a pas de nourriture et le sommeil gonflé

rues sont vides. Le virus est le sang

de la mort.

SHOW ME YOUR LIFE: Haitian boys with HIV. Clinton Foundation cares about HIV and promoting A Healthier Generation: Here’s one even the HIV community does not know much about. As we all have come to realize, SUGAR IS IN EVERYTHING. This requires a sugar industry that takes up hundreds of thousands of acres in South Florida. Sugar cane.Thing is, you gotta cut the cane. In order to cut the cane, the cane fields have to be burned first. Then, the cane cutters walk into this nightmare of burned char and snakes and heat, and they cut the cane by hand. All of it. Americans will not do this work. They will NOT do it. So the government allows the sugar companies to import a large number of Haitian sugar cane cutters who mainly stay in the migrant camps (out of sight, out of mind) all over places like West Palm Beach county.The idea of HIV testing does not at any point come into play here. It would cost someone something… If you think you would be a good little cane cutter, and you would willingly go back to Haiti, you have never been there. These boys are at high risk for servicing the sex trade in the USA. 

i hate sex work © Rikard (Smash Street Boys/ Show Me Your Life)

i have a mohawk

men like it

they know i have

an edge

and u can do things

to me

the other boys will

not let you do

for a price u

have to pay me

and i will suck your

shit covered cock

or you can fuck

me and whip me

cuz i do not really

care and i need the

money to buy more

drugs so i can do

more

sex work

that is why i hate

sex work

not becuz of

some punkass god

not becuz u r

a health care junkie

not becuz u will

never find no love

out there there is

no love

to find

but becuz eating shit

makes me throw up

unless i am so goddamn

high

from

bug juice i am going

to throw up anyway

the

nice people

do not give a fuck

about us

this is my life

how can people say

i can not look at this

and then say

but we can not

help nobody

joe trick please just

beat me up all u want

but if u need me

to eat shit

it will cost u

Trig: You do not know my life. I see more hate in email coming into Smash Street than I ever heard living on the street. I learned some things about life living on the street. I learned to walk away and leave people who do nothing but hate and only pass by judging on me. I have been making a video about my life. I call it Feed the Dogs. Although you have never seen me, only what Tim calls representations of me, I am showing you something of what I have seen in my life on the street in America.

According to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report titled "Sexual Behavior, Sexual Attraction and Sexual Identity in the United States," which reportedly polled thousands of people between the ages of 15 and 44 from 2006 through 2008, 44 percent of straight men and 36 percent of straight women admitted to having had anal sex at least once in their lives.

Elie Wiesel (Nobel Lecture, 1986): We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred... We tried. It was not easy. At first, because of the language; language failed us. We would have to invent a new vocabulary, for our own words were inadequate, anemic. And then too, the people around us refused to listen; and even those who listened refused to believe; and even those who believed could not comprehend...

MESSAGE FOR TRIG FROM RACHEL: I LOVE YOU. YOUR LIFE IS SO VALUABLE TO ME. YOU ARE A FABULOUS POET & ARTIST. When I read your poetry it takes my breath away. And the GIFs & Vids you create are hard for me to tear my eyes from; they are powerful and cleverly constructed. I have learnt so much from your voice and guts and compassion. We will get funding to create the documentaries and expand the online program, because they are a significant idea and the world is full of people. Someone will respond to the work you and your friends are creating with sheer determination. Trigger, you are worth fighting for. And you have fought so intelligently and creatively for your peers, so they can live away from the violence and raise the quality of their lives. Thank you. YOU ARE A FABULOUS PEER MENTOR. I NEED YOU. DO NOT LET THE MEN WHO FUCK YOU literally and metaphorically WIN. DO NOT SUBMIT. I have had four thousand "sorry can't help, wish you luck" rejection letters over the past three years. People are not used to the new idea of survivors taking the lead role in telling their story of sexualized violence, human trafficking and HIV/AIDS. Many people find it incredibly difficult to bear witness or to shoulder the burden being endured by young people. Even professionals find it difficult to stomach. Your voice solicits a visceral response. It compels an immediate response to bring an end to the horror being inflicted on young people surviving in the heart of our United Nations' communities. You are showing through your work more than your story, you are showing how survivors are a significant awareness and prevention workforce seeking to bring an end to today's Humanitarian Disaster: Human Trafficking in an HIV/AIDS epidemic. The poetry, photographic collages, video art you are creating to tell your stories and share how what is done to you makes you feel, permits your voice to be heard in an historical moment encased by Kafkaesque red-tape that seeks to punish you. What you have created, the marks that state clearly you and your peers exist, we were here, will survive and be there to guide some distant generation when they turn to ask: what were they doing, what were they thinking, how could they allow this to happen on their watch. I salute you Trig. You are a remarkable fifteen year old. p.s./.... Welcome back. We've got a ton of art to create...XXX

HIV: We Don’t Really Matter: War Zones: For Trigger Wherever You Are.

I am convinced that where you find particular instabilities, you’ll also find the virus. That instability or volatility can be bother internal or external. Either way, there’s no infrastructure. You are going to fall. It’s only a matter of how hard. The consensus is that since no one wants to pay for treatment, that status quo is to just step back, and watch them die. We are the them. The siding has come off the house. You’re standing alone in the desert wind. What is the relationship between chaos and disease.

Across the globe, hundreds and thousands of children, as young as three, four, are sold into sexual slavery. But that’s not the only purpose that human beings are sold for. They are sold in the name of adoption. They are sold in the name of organ trade. They are sold in the name of forced labor, camel jockeying, anything, everything (Sunitha Krishnan). Who buys these children. People with money.

We remember eleven year old Moise, our first Show Me Your Life student from République Démocratique du Congo. Before he died, Moise disclosed he had been raped repeatedly his entire life by soldiers from adjoining countries who continue to use HIV as a biological weapon of war. Moise was also the one forced to rape and kill his mother in front of his family, before he himself was brutally raped and left for dead by the soldiers (many of whom were boys themselves). What adults say and what adults do affects a child's quality of life. 

Doctors Without Borders Reports (Jan, 2013): Democratic Republic of Congo: Sexual Violence Rife in Goma Camps. Sexual violence at the Mugunga III displaced persons’ camp. Lack of action on the part of those responsible for protecting civilians and the poor security conditions in the Goma camps. Despite the populations’ glaring vulnerability, no one is providing adequate security for the displaced persons. 

The survivor-led online peer mentored art program SHOW ME YOUR LIFE provides significant and innovative palliative care for their peers; the opportunity for each of their peers to free himself from the burden of his story and alleviate his real physical pain through creating video art that demands intense focus and a medium that releases endorphins. The kid also dies knowing clearly that someone yearns for him to live. Does it make a difference. Yes. The kid has feelings and dreams like any other kid.

I received a message from the IT GETS BETTER campaign to take the pledge.

What pledge. A pledge where we look children in the eye and we lie to them and we say: It gets better.

Dear It Gets Better,

Tell it to the trafficked kids I teach. Tell it to the kid who is surviving on the street doing survival sex that it gets better. Go ahead, look him in the eye and tell him. Do not expect the trafficked kids to look you in the eye because mainly what they look at is the floor. None of us believe it gets better. It can get far, far worse. I wish I could take your pledge, but there is only so much hurt I can inflict on kids. They are not a theory. They are not an issue. They are human, and frequently, they are lost.

It gets better is rhetoric. It’s a slogan. It has pissed off the kids I work with because they know differently. Boys doing survival sex on the street are n-o-t stupid enough not to comprehend a slogan when they see one. It is an easy out. Adults with easy outs is what they know. Adults who lie to them is what they expect.

It can get worse.

Jose: Mi canción es un viejo piano de un pueblo mexicano que solía juga. Crecemos tu comida. Y escupió en nosotros. Recogemos las verduras. Y nos hacen vivir en chozas. Yo estoy en la carretera y sus maridos buscarme a mí chupar. Usted es tan estúpido que ni siquiera conozco. Tenemos la tuberculosis tose. Tú nos encarcelan detenidos. Cogemos los tomates, pero no se atreven a ir a la ciudad. Los hombres blancos con armas de fuego para mantenernos fuera. No me lo creo. Para proteger a sus mujeres. Qué es lo que sabes. Me inclino como el trigo.

Although the USA has not ratified the Convention on the Right's of the Child (CRC), the USA has ratified the CRC's optional protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. This commitment charges US criminal justice and healthcare systems with providing each child (including under 18 years old males) with the appropriate medical, psychological, logistical and financial support that is necessary for each child's rehabilitation and reintegration into his/her community. But what if his community is socially violent and cannot provide safe shelter or food or medical care for the child.

"The U.S. Supreme Court agreed [1.11.2013] to consider whether the government can require groups that receive federal funding for overseas HIV/AIDS programs to have explicit policies that oppose prostitution and sex trafficking," Reuters reports. The case "involves the government's effort to overturn a July 2011 lower court decision voiding the policy requirement set forth in the U.S. Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003," the news agency writes (Stempel, 1/11). "[T]he groups that do the work said the requirement would undermine their anti-AIDS efforts and is an intrusion on their free-speech rights," the Washington Post states, adding the government argued the law "is meant to ensure that its non-governmental partners comply with a 'strategy that seeks not only to treat HIV/AIDS but to reduce the behavioral risks that foster its spread'" (Barnes, 1/11). "The Supreme Court has said that Congress generally can place conditions on the receipt of federal funds," Bloomberg reports but notes the federal appeals court in July 2011 "said Congress went too far with the 2003 law by requiring organizations to 'affirmatively say something -- that they are opposed to the practice of prostitution'" (Stohr, 1/11). "The case is U.S. Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International," the Washington Post states, adding, "Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from the case, presumably because she had worked on it during her time as President Obama's solicitor general" (1/11).

Killer Shark by Petr (15).

“People only want to kill you. I am already dead. I wish I was.”

My visit to a Russian Orphanage. Sales to Traffickers Only.

Richaud: Tim dit que ce n’est pas ma vie. Mais ma vie est mon cauchemar. Il s’agit de la mauvaise chambre. C’est là, ils m’ont mis. Il y avait des voisins. Je ne sais pas comment ils pourraient ne pas entendre mes cris. Mais ils n’ont rien fait. Je déteste cette pièce. Quand ils étaient au fond de moi, je n’arrêtais pas de regarder le rideau et la fenêtre. J’ai essayé de penser que ce n’est pas le cas. Cela ne peut pas se produire. Mais cela se passait. J’essaie très fort pour faire face à mes sentiments. Le cauchemar ne va pas loin. C’était un endroit très mauvaise. C’étaient des gens très mauvais. Je tiens à les tuer. Dans mes rêves, je les tue encore et encore. Tim dit que ma vie est différente maintenant. Mais je m’entends encore crier.

Tim Barrus: Nous sommes pour tenter de soulager Richaud revenir dans ce rapproche d’une vie normale. Il fait encore des cauchemars. Ces cauchemars sont aggravés par l’un de ses médicaments VIH / SIDA, Sustiva. Richaud a fait d’énormes progrès. Il ne voit que la chambre et la fenêtre dans ses rêves. Il a utilisé à halluciner qu’il a été de voir la chambre et la fenêtre tout le temps. Il n’est plus hallucine. C’est un garçon tout à fait normal.

It is not a secret that boys sex-trafficked to-within-from the USA live underground for fear of being placed in US Immigration Holding Centers, where the kids are warehoused with no access to appropriate or consistent healthcare or social services or programs to alleviate their substantial physical and psychological trauma (HIV/AIDS/STDs/TB, stomach ulcers, self-harming behaviours, suicide ideation, clinical depression, etc). Where they have no legal representation or counsel, unless they can secure funding or a pro bono attorney. The boys fear being shipped to environments in which they will have little healthcare, no safe shelter, at high risk for being punished, re-trafficked, killed or dying slow painful HIV/AIDS-related deaths. The kids do not feel hopeful as survivors whose lives have been changed forever (fucked by American citizens, many of whom appeared to be married men with kids of their own) and as survivors who happen to find themselves in the USA; a country that speaks in hushed tones about sexualized violence directed at boys, signals to boys it is not safe to disclose, tolerates such violence in US penal systems as a form of indirect/direct punishment, and stigmatizes, ridicules or fears the survivors. Few people welcome into their homes, boys with a history of sex work and torture and HIV/AIDS. When adults present kids, especially kids who are acutely aware of what adults are really saying to them covertly, with little hope, suicide becomes a serious choice for survivors; even for survivors who have been raised to believe that suicide is sinful or illegal or frightening.

OUR SONS CANNOT WAIT ANOTHER DAY FOR STABLE SAFE SHELTER

(adults' Kafkaesque rules & red-tape are hurting the kids, hard)

U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) had 14,299 admissions into its Division of Unaccompanied Children’s Services (DUCS) for 13,945 children (Oct 1, 2008 through Sept. 30, 2010). The difference in numbers results from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) apprehending several hundred children again after their release from ORR custody, resulting in multiple admissions. 73% are male children. (VERA, 2012). ***Most recent U.S. national statistical estimates (AFCARS, 2010) show the U.S. Foster Care System takes in more than 250,000 children every year: half will stay in the system. In 2010 there were an estimated 408,425 children in foster care. There are simply not enough long-term stable safe homes for all the children living in the USA today. Funding survivor-led safe homes & programs that prevent further trauma and alleviate the devastating consequences for children infected with HIV/STDs/TB serves the children's best interests.

~ absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ~

Criminalization of HIV transmission laws need to be urgently revisited to ensure they do not undermine public health and social interventions and programs designed to serve the best interests of acutely vulnerable youth in both developed and developing countries. It is important to distinguish between an act of violent intentional HIV transmission and an act of unintentional HIV transmission. If we fail to do this we will simply reinforce the stigma already assigned to the millions of people living with HIV and deter people from seeking testing and treatment. In the United States many HIV criminalization laws put into place after the 1990 Ryan White Act articulated that states would not receive funding unless state laws criminalized knowingly exposing another to HIV. These laws best speak to acts of intentional violence such as rape (also widely used to terrorize and subjugate in conflict & transitional settings). These laws should not be used to penalize victims of rape, forced rape or forced intravenous drug use, who have inappropriate and inconsistent access to early intervention including HIV counseling, testing and treatment. These laws should not be used to penalize victims choosing to seek HIV counseling, testing and treatment.

Criminalization of HIV transmission sends a message : If you do NOT know you are HIV+ you cannot be accused of intentional HIV transmission. If you do not get tested for HIV you will not know you have HIV.

Criminalization of HIV transmission can undermine programs designed to prevent HIV transmission, because fear of prosecution deters children, who face further violence upon disclosure of HIV, from seeking care.

Antiretrovirals, if taken appropriately and consistently, can reduce a person's infectiousness. For this reason public health organizations have been keen to introduce HIV testing and treatment, particularly among high risk groups and bridge populations. In many cases antiretroviral regimes can also contribute to raising a person's quality of life and extending the length of a person's life.

High rates of sexual violence, the inability to negotiate safe sex — particularly in abusive adult controlled & determined social & cultural contexts — and socio-economic inequalities are some of the contributing factors that increase the vulnerability of children to contracting HIV. Marginalized children, including drug users, sex workers, and children engaged in transactional sex are particularly vulnerable to contracting HIV. 

Criminalization exacerbates the current stigmatization, neglect, and violence against HIV-positive ‘throwaway and abandoned’ children and creates unnecessary challenges for programs whose goal is to raise the quality of life for all HIV+ children, reduce violence and arrest HIV-related infections and diseases. Children with special needs who also happen to be infected with HIV cannot be segregated from care by punitive laws that do not discriminate wisely in contexts where sexualized violence directed at boys is not being addressed appropriately to serve the best interests of children (under 18 year old males, UN categorization).

The Department of Justice is proud to reaffirm its ongoing commitment to protect – and advance – the rights of people living with HIV and AIDS.  And – in accordance with the objectives outlined by President Obama in the landmark National HIV/AIDS Strategy, we are working harder than ever to end discrimination that is still routinely – and tragically – experienced by those with HIV/AIDS. 

Residential Census of Juvenile Facilities of 2006 reported most surveyed shelters are privately held and about half hold 10 or fewer youths at a time. Few homeless youth are housed in emergency shelters as a result of lack of shelter beds for youth and shelter admission policies. Youths who enter a shelter may be suffering from abuse, neglect, or mental health disorders or have prior involvement with the criminal justice system (Litrownik 1999). Youths in shelters are likely to have emotional and behavioral problems as well as other special needs and concerns (Volta and Manion 2003). Homeless youth benefit from programs that meet immediate needs first and then help them address other aspects of their lives. Programs that minimize institutional demands and offer a range of services have had success in helping homeless youth regain stability (Robertson, 1996). Because of their age, homeless youth have few legal means by which they can earn enough money to meet basic needs. Many homeless adolescents find that exchanging sex for food, clothing, and shelter is their only chance of survival on the streets. In turn, homeless youth are at a greater risk of contracting AIDS or HIV-related illnesses (www.nationalhomeless.org, 2012).

Liu feels as though all of his movement is slowed down and he's being pulled under the water by HIV (Show Me Your Life)

Don't be afraid to look me in the eye

It is not enough for liberals to bemoan human trafficking. If they really want to impact the issue, then they have to start building places for trafficked kids that are, in truth, safe.

Right now, there is a girl boy, somewhere trapped in a brothel an orphanage, crying herself himself to sleep again, and maybe daring to imagine that some day, just maybe, she he might be treated not like a piece of property, but as a human being (President Barack Obama, 2012 edited Speech on Human Trafficking).

we delude ourselves with a multitude of illusions/ o let our united nations do it/ o let our governments do it/ our united nations with its declarations of rights inherent to humanity fails these children/ there is little hope that governments will be offering HIV testing, treatment, trauma recovery or safe shelter, to anyone who has made it out of human trafficking/ our systems are focused on detaining, exporting and avoiding taking responsibility for these children/ it is cruel for adults to treat children fighting for their lives as hot potatoes/ or some sort of Rattenkönig/ WHY?/ surely the answer is obvious/ isn't it/

• in all actions concerning children the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration,
   
• every child has a right to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development,

a boy in this photo was trafficked/ does that mean they erected a stop sign on the corner/ no it means no one knows where he is but suddenly and mysteriously his parents moved into an actual apartment/ and how we would judge them, too/ some people would call it an orphanage some people would call it a state-run work school/ bulging at the seams/ how strange in a state where the birth rate has slowed to a trickle because no one sees much hope for the future/ yet the families who have the ones here/ cannot afford them/ you see them living in the subway tunnels and is there anyone we do not judge/ no we remain in judgement of it all/ so far above the fray/ where one has disappeared from photographs entirely/

Tim Barrus/ Торговля детьми

In Russia, it’s called a boarding school. It’s more of a prison than a boarding school.

In Russia, it’s called pornography. It’s as much of a prison as it is pornography.

The typical boarding school for orphans is an intimidating institution built in the 18th Century. You can’t escape the analogy to prison. The people who work in these places are often also working with police. Not against the traffickers. The police are the traffickers. Officially, there would typically be three hundred children living in such a place where such things as tuberculosis are epidemic. HIV is not so much as an afterthought in these horrific warehouses.

There are people who have argued  that the official numbers are bogus.

UNESCO estimates that there are over three  million homeless children in Russia. A million of them are orphaned. 

By Western standards, the porn studio outside of Pskov is prehistoric. It appears to be an old house with mud for a yard because it is an old house with mud for a yard. The videos they produce are strictly amateur, but they command a lot of money. 

There are two kinds of children in Russia who do sex work. One is the homeless urban child from (just as an example) St. Petersburg who lives on the street or in the subway system tunnels. The other is a child from a poor rural boarding school.

When the children are rounded up in the urban setting, the rural setting is where they are taken.

The American contact for the Russian mob — organized crime — is in New York.

Follow the money.

Аэропорт Великие Луки. Private airport. Private planes.

The first part of this journey begins in the Russian world of child pornography where the children are shown the ropes. This is often their introduction to prostitution and drugs.

Follow the drugs.

From Pskov, the flight to Vyborg is usually uneventful.

The children are divided into two groups (boys and girls) in Vyborg.

The two groups leave Vyborg separately in trucks. The trip across the border on the road to Helsinki is not uneventful. The truck with the boys leaves the main road for a road through the woods that is almost always through a sea of mud. There are many such roads that cross over into Finland. They will pass through Virolahti.

If there was a point at which the children could be taken from traffickers, it’s the road to the border of Finland. These are barely roads at all. There is simply no way for their vehicles to turn around.

There is a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm. From Stockholm it can be anywhere from Istanbul to Abu Dhabi.

Or New York.

There is a high-end market for blonds. They can command a king’s ransom in the sex trade.

The boys are drugged. They sleep a lot.

Trafficked girls are easier to spot because they are accompanied by too many men.

Trafficked boys are harder to spot because they are accompanied by female handlers; mostly older, maternal-looking grandmother types.

There is care and expense taken with trafficking boys. Damaging the merchandise is not good for business. This is a specialty transaction.

After a kid has been doing pornography for a while, he’s often infected with HIV. His access to sexual information is nonexistent.

By the time an HIV positive male is sold — buyer beware — it’s usually too late for returns, and such boys simply disappear into thin air.

There are weak spots in this system. One would be Pskov itself. It’s not that big a town. Faces can be remembered. Kids being trafficked are at risk for being kidnapped by rival gangs.

The route through Finland is also how drugs like heroin find their way to Western Europe. Trafficking children and drugs are often done hand-in-hand.

Officials are bribed all along the route.

If the boy’s destination is the UAE, chances are good he will never be seen in public again.

After a while, sex work will be all he knows. The rest of it will only be an echo of things he thought he knew. 

Swift horses, not a fire/ kid wakes up screaming fucking blood/ it was a night of it/ he’s rubbing his eyes like crazy, and he’s shitting his guts out in an agony/ i have seen lots of human beings in pretty dire circumstances/ this one was going to die/ i didn’t tell him that/ we get him to the ER/ he has gonorrhea of the ass/ and here’s a thing/ the eyes as well/ it’s called survival sex/ and it’s very hard to do blind/ another wild night and another fallen soldier/ the kid already has hiv but he doesn’t tell his tricks that/ he will blow you for five bucks/ you can fuck him for twenty/ he probably got the gonorrhea of the eyes when some trick came on his face/ it’s not uncommon for them to just get deeper and deeper into the thing/ they will take this kid and pump him full of antibiotics/ they’re kids working both the street and the phones/ and the sex papers where their ads are/ it’s cold out there/ i fucking do not know how they do it/ the sun is beginning to come up as i walk to the hospital with his fucking bag/ he’s in a room, now, and they have him sedated/ they’re going to shove their scopes into this one and turn turn him inside out/ i sit in this poor excuse for a chair next to machines that beep/ do you remember still the falling stars/ you smell coffee in the hall/ i think he might be a junkie, too/

"I do know about the selling of the small, dead things so you might survive the cruelty of the desert snatched from autumn’s teeth. It’s like disease. My darkness is different from the darkness of the other boys around me, and their walking shadows. All of us are strangers on an alien planet, and sometimes the only light there is comes from bouncing off the moon." 

TRISTAN'S MOON (safe-house art installation)

SAFE HOUSES SAVE VALUABLE LIVES: Early intervention saves valuable lives.

SMASH STREET BOYS FESTIVAL; a grassroots initiative bringing greater awareness to our localities and raising urgent funding to support survivor-led safe houses. 2013 event will coincide with the opening of Tristan's Moon (safe house art gallery, NY).