WoLF Submits Testimony In support of CA Survivor Support And Demand Reduction Act

Apr 29

WoLF submitted the following testimony to the California Assembly this week in support of California AB 379, The Survivor Support And Demand Reduction Act. This bill implements key aspects of the Survivor Model (also known as Equality Model/Nordic Model).

WoLF’s testimony can be found below:

California Assembly Bill 379 -

The Survivor Support And Demand Reduction Act

Written Testimony from Women’s Liberation Front

Submitted April 24th, 2025

Our Position: SUPPORT

Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) is a national radical feminist, non-partisan, non-profit dedicated to restoring, defending and advancing the rights of women and girls.

We support Assembly Bill 379, and thank Assembly Member Krell for introducing it.

Women’s Liberation Front has long advocated for abolishing the commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls. We support the Nordic model, first adopted in Sweden in 1999, that decriminalizes sellers of sex, who are often desperate women, trafficked into it unwillingly, and strengthens penalties for buyers. It’s a proven demand-reduction strategy, and also protects survivors, nearly all of whom are female, by offering services and support, such as housing, counseling, treatment, training, and job placement. Without these critical services in place, it’s almost impossible for desperate women and girls to exit being sold for sex acts.

We presented on this model at the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women in March in New York. It has been renamed the Equality Model, and legislation to adopt it is pending in New York and Illinois, having been passed by Maine, the only state to do so. It’s also known as the Survivor model.

We encourage you to read the groundbreaking report on prostitution by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls Reem Alsalem, who declared prostitution an organized system of violence that harms women and girls. From her 2024 report:

“Prostitution results in egregious violations of human rights and multiple forms of violence against women and girls, who are often dehumanized and perceived as persons without human rights. Prostitution violates the right of women and girls to dignity, and often constitutes torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. Physical forms of violence – mainly by sex act buyers – include sexual abuse, rape and gang rape, severe beatings, including for the victim’s refusal, lack of enthusiasm or dissociation. Kidnapping, abduction and enforced disappearance are also common. Women and girls are mutilated or burned, including with cigarettes. They have foreign objects inserted into their bodies, urinated, defecated and ejaculated upon, and can be forced to have unprotected sex. In pornography, acts of gagging, brutal penetration of the vagina by one or several men are particularly common. As a result, they are often left with lasting physical disabilities. Prostitution also leads to femicide, serial killings and death threats. Victims are also subjected to physical abuse, sadism and masochism by sexual act buyers. The more brutal and violent the sex act (such as being forced to endure sex acts with animals), the more users feel that they have received their “money’s worth”. Pregnant women are not spared. Prostituted women and girls are often kept in slavery or slavery-like conditions, where women and girls are sexually enslaved or taken by armed groups as “wives”. Prostituted women and girls are regularly subjected to verbal abuse offline and online, shaming and blackmail. Victims or their families may be threatened…”

We agree with her conclusions in this report, and very much appreciate the emphasis in this bill on assisting survivors, as we believe women and girls must be free of this brutal exploitation.

We appreciate the attention this bill pays to further punishing buyers of sex acts with minors, and helping minors that have been sold for sex acts. We have supported legislation in California to increase penalties on child sex trafficking.

We’d like to encourage further legislation to cement the Survivor model into California law, and use stiffer fines to more fully fund services and support for buyers. Countries like Canada have adopted some of this model, and implemented ‘Johns schools’ to educate male buyers of sex acts why it’s dehumanizing to women. We’d draw your attention to the website rubmaps, where male buyers compare sex acts performed on them in Asian massage parlors, which look to be dens of sex trafficking and exploitation of women. They name the women, and rate her sex act. You have to pay $49 to see the reviews, and they will disgust you. “hot.com” similarly will show you ratings of sex acts at local massage parlors all over California, and name the women who had to provide them. Here’s one from Dragon Massage, a parlor in my community of Santa Barbara, California:

None of the men rating these sex acts stops to question whether these women were being trafficked or exploited. The glossary for the abbreviations you find in male reviews of sex acts they purchased can be decoded below, from Buyers unmasked. Exposing the men who buy sex and and solutions to end exploitation.

Prostitution is now so ubiquitous and mainstream, like violent porn, that it will take something like AB379 and subsequent legislation to really provide the lift needed to help women avoid being trafficked and sexually exploited. We work for that world, where women and girls are no longer commercially sexually exploited.

We learned from Sweden that since the adoption of this survivors’ model in 1999, zero women have been killed in prostitution. Germany went for legalization in the early 2000’s, and over 150 women have been murdered in prostitution there. It’s easy to see which model protects the lives of women survivors of prostitution.

Thank you for reviewing our testimony. WoLF is available to serve as a resource for you if you have questions or would like more information about the importance of single-sex sports, or any topic related to gender ideology and sex-based inequalities.

Written testimony prepared by:

Sharon Byrne

Executive Director

Women’s Liberation Front

executivedirector@womensliberationfront.org