When I heard Judge Paul Herbert of Columbus last week at the University of Toledo conference on human trafficking and prostitution, it changed my thinking. Like the judge himself, prior to his own education, which came from dealing with prostitutes in his court, I thought: victimless crime, consenting adults.

It’s not so simple. Most of the women who enter the sex trade have done so before a true age of consent. They are, as Judge Herbert said, compelled. Dependent on their pimps and usually on one or more narcotic substances, they have entered the sex industry as serfs and remain so until they are discarded. They age at an exponential rate of maybe 5 to 1 because they don’t sleep or eat well, they are often addicts, they are subject to physical violence, and treated as throw-away human beings.

Judge Herbert makes the point that human trafficking is not distinct from prostitution but that both are on a continuum. Fair enough. But clear thinking also requires that we make and respect distinctions. Human trafficking involves the prostitution of children. The average age is 13. Some victims are as young as 9 and 10. Horrifying. So horrifying it is hard to grasp.

If a person can go to jail for viewing child pornography, and one can, a person should surely do time for hiring a child prostitute.

Activists in this matter of human trafficking make the point again and again: We have to attack demand.

The second distinction we must make is that many of these children are either effectively, or quite literally, abducted. They are typically enticed, drugged, and taken to another place. They are held against their wills.

Most adult women engaged in prostitution may, in some real sense, be compelled, and are not totally free agents. But they have not been kidnapped and enslaved. That’s why I’d call them serfs, not slaves.

Later in the UT conference I, along with many others, saw a film called American Courtesans, about prostitution, and specifically about four women who have spent most of their lives in the “sex industry.” One of the four, Kristen DiAngelo, was executive producer of the film. The film argues that prostitutes are a part of the social fabric and that they fulfill an ancient human need. We should therefore recognize them as a part of life and afford them better legal and health protections.

This would seem to argue for the opposite of what Judge Herbert was arguing for — some sort of legalization.

All four women in the film said they chose to remain in their profession, sometimes for money, and sometimes because it suited them. In fact two had gone legit and earned degrees and worked in banking and real estate and chose, in the end, to return to the sex industry. In fairness, they were at the high end of the industry, working as escorts, rather than working the streets. They had traveled and been treated well by some kindly gentlemen. (They also had been assaulted by violent freaks.)

Can these two realities be reconciled? Can we crack down on trafficking customers and decriminalize prostitution?

I think so. First of all, the reality for most women lured into this work is much closer to what Judge Herbert describes — a lifestyle that results in a seven-year life expectancy once you enter the “life.” We need CATCH courts and other ways out for them.

Second, I think that regulating the sex work industry — granting and renewing licenses as is done in parts of Europe — would give sex workers some of the protections they want and make it possible for (primarily) federal authorities to rescue teen sex slaves. To me this is a public policy that recognizes both the reality of human behavior, as it has always been, and this new reality of exploitation of children, which violates the norms of human decency going back at least to the Middle Ages.

There is one other element here, just as disturbing as all of the above. It is cultural and spiritual. Simply said it is this: There is an explosion of pornography, especially among men, in this country. And, really, of perversion. Americans are oversexed, but unhappy and unhealthy with the results. I don’t think this is true of the French, the Italians, or of Norwegians or Finns. Something is deeply wrong in our culture and in our spiritual life. And I have to think that this is related to the sexualizing and exploitation of children, the market for such exploitation, and the tendency of many of us to greet this horror with a shrug.

Keith C. Burris is a columnist for The Blade.

Contact him at: kburris@theblade.com or 419-724-6266.

First Published September 28, 2014, 4:00 a.m.