Much of Vermont was devastated by flooding after weeks of heavy rains. Many downtown areas around the state, including the state’s capital of Montpelier, were covered with water and then mud when the waters receded. The damage in Montpelier was catastrophic. Many residents were left unhoused and nearly every business was destroyed. Recovery efforts remain underway and rebuilding will take months, if not years. As the waters receded and community members began to assess the devastation, Henri Bynx, co-founder and co-director of Montpelier’s The Ishtar Collective (TIC), immediately mobilized members to meet the community’s basic needs. On the day following the flooding, as city officials declared drinking water contaminated, Bynx distributed clean drinking water and food to anyone in need.

TIC farms a plot of land to provide vegetables to the community, which they distribute from a community refrigerator located in downtown Montpelier. Though many collective members were themselves impacted by the flooding, they jumped into action to replace the refrigerator. With a direct connection to some of the community’s most marginalized members, TIC was able to distribute immediate supplies to those who might have otherwise gone without. In addition to this immediate relief work, TIC’s efforts have expanded to resource delivery, cleanup, and rental/relief assistance.

While institutionalized relief is underway, it’s important for community members to keep each other afloat however they can, facilitating support and basic human resources. Some areas of Vermont still don’t have potable water. Our farms are contaminated from the floodwaters. Buildings are being condemned while occupants are at a loss for where to go for long term housing in an already deep housing crisis. We want to make sure we show up for our neighbors across all intersections, which in this instance is plain personhood. Vermont has a long road to recovery, and we want to do what we can to move that process along for people.”

— Henri June Bynx

Governor Janet Mills signed into law a bill, sponsored by Representative Lois Reckitt, that makes it legal for adults to sell sexual services but illegal for adults to buy sexual services. Maine is now the first and only state to enact the policy model referred to as the Nordic Model, the Entrapment Model, or the End Demand Model. Lawmakers market this legislation as a means of curtailing prostitution and combating trafficking, while evidence from around the world shows it does neither. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UNAIDS, the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, the World Health Organization, and many other human rights groups have denounced the Entrapment Model because because countries that have implemented it continue to see violence and exploitation in commercial sex proliferate.

The criminalization of buying and/or selling sex makes sex workers vulnerable to predators. Due to fear of arrest, people are hesitant to provide the information sex workers need to effectively screen individuals and separate predators from actual clients. Because criminalizing clients pushes the entire industry further underground, sex workers are more dependent on potentially exploitative third parties to help clients avoid discovery in order to keep their businesses, even if this risks exploitation. Sweden and Northern Ireland implemented Entrapment Model laws in 1999 and 2015, respectively. In both places, prostitution persists. A study released in Sweden in 2019 reports the unambiguous failure of the Entrapment Model to reduce demand for prostitution, to deter people from engaging in sex work, or to provide meaningful resources to victims of human trafficking in or out of the sex industry.

Proponents of this legislation claim that consensual adult sex work is inherently exploitative, which is untrue. Enacting this legislation not only shows disregard for ample and unequivocal evidence, it also codifies the dangerous notion that adults do not have bodily autonomy and cannot consent to paid sex. Lots of supporters of Entrapment Model legislation are feminists who support bodily autonomy as it relates to abortion but do not think people should have that same right to bodily autonomy should they choose to engage in sex work. Entrapment Model laws are misguided and misinformed, driven by harmful and stigmatizing ideology and the false promise that they will abolish the sex industry. Enacting this law will cause real harm to Maine’s most marginalized individuals.

Decriminalize Sex Work (DSW) commissioned a poll in Maine, prior to passage of the law. When asked if they support or oppose this proposed law, only 12% of Mainers stated they support it while an overwhelming 55% oppose it. 33% percent were unsure. Notably, of Mainers who know someone who has been trafficked into the commercial sex industry, 48% oppose the policy model proposed by LD 1435, while only 11% would support it.

DSW staff testified against passage of the law and will monitor the effects of it in an attempt to mitigate harm.

DSW Legal Director Melissa Broudo and Community Engagement Consultant Henri Bynx were at the Rhode Island State House in April and May, as the study commission on which Bynx served held its final meetings. The commission will soon release a report with recommendations based on its findings.

The study commission was formed following the unanimous passage of House Resolution 5250, which proposed a special legislative commission to study ensuring racial equity and optimizing health and safety laws affecting marginalized individuals. The bill, as passed, delineated who should sit on the commission, which includes thirteen members, including individuals with lived experience. Other members of the commission include two legislators, a member of COYOTE RI, a representative from Amnesty International, two representatives of organizations serving populations disproportionately impacted by the criminalization of commercial sex, the director of the Department of Health, an attorney from the Rhode Island Public Defender’s Office, the Rhode Island attorney general, or designee, a representative from the Brown University Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, and the president of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association, or their designee.

The study commission has met eight times since fall of 2021 with experts from both within the commission and outside of it testifying at each meeting. In her capacity as legal director at DSW and with over twenty years of experience representing and advocating for the legal rights of consensual adult sex workers and survivors of human trafficking, Broudo testified in April 2022 about the devastating consequences of the conflation of consensual adult sex work and human trafficking. She helped to draft the legislation proposing the study commission as she believes that public policy should be informed by research and evidence. In April 2023, Broudo and Bynx testified together,  providing recommendations to the commission.  Bynx has testified on the impacts of criminalization on their life as a consensual adult sex worker. A leading advocate for sex worker rights, Bynx spoke powerfully about the critical need for decriminalization — the vital step that would allow individuals marginalized by criminalization to live with less fear and more dignity. In June 2022, Bynx provided testimony on the intersection of sex work and LGBTQIA+ rights.

DSW advocates for the creation of study commissions focused on evaluating prostitution laws, addressing trafficking concerns, and identifying better ways to create support systems for both sex workers and trafficked people.

Read our fact sheet on study commissions to review existing laws and address trafficking and exploitation.