Even while hating strip clubs, I had still, in at least a limited way, bought into the polite fiction that we tell ourselves because what we suspect—intimidation, violence, rape—is just too unseemly.

And so it was at once validating and horrifying to read through An Assessment of the Adult Entertainment Industry in Texas, a report commissioned by the legislature of that state and prepared at the University of Texas for the attorney general. The report is an example of government work at its best: dry, to be sure, but measured in tone and comprehensive in scope, with an extensive, authoritative bibliography.

The report confirms even the most extravagant suspicions of adult businesses.

Read the article “ANALYSIS: Trafficking Flourishes in the Shadows of Adult Entertainment” on ethikapolitika.org.