Three days ago a law suit was filed in California against actor Steven Seagal. The woman who filed the civil suit, Kathryn Nguyen, 23, apparently found an ad on Craigslist for an executive assistant. She was taken to New Orleans after her third interview. When she got there she found two Russian “assistants” that Seagal was apparently keeping in his home, on call 24/7 for sex. According to Nguyen, Seagal attacked her several times and forced her to take “illegal pills.” According to Seagal, she is upset because he fired her for drug abuse. However, since Nguyen came forward several other women have come out saying that he assaulted them, as well, one of them being actress and comedian Jenny McCarthy.

My concern here is less for Nguyen who has felt empowered enough to employ all appropriate resources & and take action; she will inevitably be taken care of (despite the misogynistic assumption that she is doing this for money – note the condescending dollar signs in the linked post). My concern is even less for McCarthy who left the interaction physically unharmed and untouched. My concern is for the two nameless, faceless and presumably missing  Russian immigrant women. Where are these women and why haven’t they been taken either a) into custody or b) FROM SEAGAL!? In all of the news on this story there is no mention of of these women beyond Nguyen’s assertion that there were two Russian sex slaves in Seagal’s house.

It has been estimated that sex trafficking will be the number one crime worldwide by the end of this year. This link to the Polaris Project’s compiled statistics is unbelievable. Why don’t people know that there are more slaves right now than at any other point in history and that sex trafficking is the most prolific form? Why is no one talking about it in a meaningful and urgent way? I can only hope that it is not because the overwhelming majority are mostly sex slaves, and than that, by nature, is a “woman’s issue.” We have to use this unfortunate opportunity to ask these questions.

Our most mainstream point of reference of late was a mildly catty interaction between Demi Moore and Kim Kardashian a few weeks ago, but that played out more like an episode of “Desperate Housewives” than an intelligent conversation as far as I’m concerned. Even with Seagal’s story making headlines and our nightly news there is absolutely no discussion of the sex trade in the mass media. By contrast, working in predominantly activist and academic circles, we have the work of Ben Skinner who actively & purposefully threw himself into following the global human slave trade, and became the first person in history to view the sale of human being on 4 continents. His book A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern Day Slavery is his account of what he has witnessed.

On a far smaller scale, I have also been witness to the difficulty that some of these young women have in getting out of these situations. I worked for Neighborhood Legal Services in their Domestic Violence Legal Self-help Clinic in Los Angeles. It is admittedly hard enough for American women who are victims of domestic violence to get out of these potentially life threatening situations, but immigrant women are often much more fettered. Whether it be the language barrier, confusion about the law, their immigration status, or literal bondange the odds against them are crushing.

Whatever outcome is in store for Seagal we have a much larger problem here that needs to become part of our social dialogue in way that will produce real local and global change for these women. Not just bad reality t.v.