Check out the latest video from ECPAT France, demonstrating how consumers of child pornography are to blame for Child Sex Trafficking. We're very excited to be launching our Stop Sex Trafficking Campaign across Australia in just a few days. Make sure you visit one of our stores to check it out!
The Body Shop Activist Blog by The Body Shop Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
Based on a work at blog.thebodyshop.com.au.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI was delighted to see the Body Shop bringing this issue to light. Modern slavery - particularly child sex trafficking - is a horrendous issue made even more so by the fact that Australians are well represented in the trade. More should be done to stop this - not just in Australia but worldwide - and I for one would like to see the Australian government pump more money into the federal police groups that work, along with other countries, to target, investigate, infiltrate and arrest these paedophiles.
Which is why I was so - disappointed to see The Body Shop providing false figures - in effect, creating a platform for scaremongering rather than disseminating accurate findings to better educate the Australian population!
The issue of child trafficking is serious! Lying and spreading false facts merely increases public confusion and provides politicians opportunities to avoid or use the issue for their own gain.
In the hope that you are unaware rather than blatantly lying in the hope that your audience has not researched this subject better than you have, allow me to point out: this statement "20,000 new child pornography images are posted on the internet every week" (page 4 of your pamphlet) is false. The figure was invented in 2003 for the UK's NSPCC (well known for scare mongering in the UK). It's a misrepresentation of the COPINE Project (http://www.copine.ie/) about the number of images (not all of which were child pornography or related to pornography) posted to a particular newsgroup site in August/September 2002. The actual figure was made up by some creative statistical playing around. If you want to see the breakdown and investigation, please check http://libertus.net/censor/resources/statistics-laundering.html#s20000
I have shopped at the Body Shop for years - trusting in its vision and its ethical values. After today I begin to think that my trust is too blind - obviously your copy writers and lawyers are, at best, unresearched and unaware (and evidently think this issue is not important enough for them to BE well researched and aware).
Hi Fiona,
ReplyDeleteChild Wise and The Body Shop are very happy that you feel passionate about stopping child sex trafficking and that you are as alarmed as us by the fact that Australians are also involved in the problem.
It is true that due to the underground, black-market nature of human trafficking and child pornography most statistics on these areas are estimates. In all areas where we have quoted numbers/statistics within our campaign materials we have provided a reference for where the data was sourced and, for example, in the quote that you refer to, we made sure that we stated that the number was an “estimate”.
The statistics are provided to appeal to analytical customers like yourself and we are extremely happy to have customers who are knowledgeable enough on the issues to be able to understand the methodological difficulties surrounding data collection in these areas. At no point is our intention to misrepresent or spread false facts.
We acknowledge the limitations to using numerical data in this field and we appreciate your input in raising awareness about these limitations. In essence, we hope to work together with customers like you to raise awareness on the problem of child sex trafficking and to continue to improve our campaigns and to collect more reliable data on these issues.
It is for that reason that Child Wise and The Body Shop conducted a survey last year with 18,000 customers to gauge community attitudes towards child sex trafficking. The results from this survey were used to inform the principles behind this year’s campaign and directly feed into the advocacy asks we have on the petition.
The Survey Report can be download from here:
http://www.thebodyshop.com.au/Content.aspx?Id=137
Thanks for posting on our blog Fiona. If you'd like to discuss this further with myself our number is 03 9565 0500 or email values@thebodyshop.com.au
Kind regards,
Adam Valvasori
The Body Shop Australia
Values Manager