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Vancover April 17, 2007
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Toronto March 22, 2007
Canada's laws endanger prostitutes, advocates say in launching legal fight
By: ALLISON JONES
TORONTO (CP) - Canada's prostitution laws place the lives of thousands of women working in a legal trade in grave danger, amounting to a form of "urban genocide," a group of sex-trade workers and advocates said Wednesday.
The Safe Haven Initiative, led by Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young and a volunteer group of law students, is launching a constitutional challenge to strike down laws against bawdy houses, communicating for the purpose of prostitution and living on the avails of prostitution.
While there is no wording in the Criminal Code specifically outlawing prostitution, nearly all aspects of a transaction - including hiring a prostitute, scouting potential customers and making money from sex - are made illegal by those three provisions.
Young said because those laws make it illegal for prostitutes to work in their own homes or hire a bodyguard for protection, women are deprived of their right to liberty and security - a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
"There is nothing inherently dangerous about prostitution," said former prostitute Valerie Scott, who is executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada, an advocacy group for sex workers.
"What makes it so dangerous is the way it is currently set up in this country. It's the way the laws force us to operate in totally unsafe conditions."
The situation is so dire that the laws amount to an "official death penalty" for prostitutes, Scott said.
Lawmakers and the general public must remember that prostitutes are human beings who should have equal rights under Canadian law, she said.
"So what if most of these women are drug-addicted street girls?" Scott said. "They are A, human, and B, Canadian.
"We are humans. We are part of the community. We don't come in on a shuttle from Mars every night and leave before sunrise."
Young said he felt compelled to launch the challenge and stand up for those women's rights after watching media coverage of the investigation into the disappearances of more than 60 women - mostly sex-trade workers - from Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside.
"As the body count was mounting, I thought, 'Somebody has to do something to stop this urban genocide,"' Young said.
The Vancouver case is an extreme example of the brutal violence often faced by prostitutes, he said, but it highlights a problem that goes much deeper.
"The reality is threats, violence and assault define the daily existence of people who work on the street in the sex trade," Young said.
The Vancouver investigation culminated in the arrest of pig farmer Robert Pickton, who was charged with 26 counts of first-degree murder and is currently on trial for six of those counts.
An Edmonton-area man is also standing trial for the killings of two prostitutes. His charges stem from Project Kare in Alberta, which looked into the disappearances of almost 80 people, many of them women in the sex trade.
Prostitution activist Sue Davis said she believes changes to the laws could have saved the lives of many murdered prostitutes.
"They target the most vulnerable of sex workers, the visible trade," she said.
"It is driving them into more and more isolated areas and making them work in more and more dangerous conditions."
A 2006 Statistics Canada report found that 171 female prostitutes were murdered between 1991 and 2004, and that 45 per cent of those cases went unsolved.
A House of Commons sub-committee concluded in December 2006 that the number of reported homicides among sex workers is "almost certainly lower than the real figures."
But after hearing testimony from more than 300 witnesses, MPs from the various parties on the sub-committee couldn't agree on legislative changes to the prostitution laws.
© The Canadian Press, 2007
Seattle Post-Intelligencer February 11, 2007
Hawaii bill would decriminalize prostitution
By MARK NIESSE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
HONOLULU - The idea may not catch on this session already, but a bill to legalize some prostitution in the islands has the backing of at least 14 lawmakers and many women's rights advocates.
Supporters say they mainly want to start debate of the sensitive topic and explore ways to offer alternatives to decades of selling sex on Honolulu streets. The proposal has the endorsement of 13 co-sponsors in the state House, one sponsor in the Senate and the influential Hawaii Women's Coalition, whose members represent more than 200 organizations.
The prostitution decriminalization bill would permit sexual favors traded in private, and it would designate areas where prostitution is allowed.
"In general, talking about sex is scary for people," said the Rev. Pam Vessels of the United Church of Christ in Kalaupapa on Molokai. "We need to talk about it, not get excited about it and throw rocks at each other. Do we really care if consenting adults are engaging in sexual acts for money?"
Although it appears unlikely the bill will get a hearing in either the House or the Senate this legislative session, its advocates hope more lawmakers will support it as time passes. A resolution may be introduced soon asking the Legislative Reference Bureau to study the proposal.
"It's one of those bills you do it for public dialogue instead of trying to get it passed," said Rep. Bob Herkes, D-Volcano-Kainaliu, one of the bill's co-sponsors. "It helps to find out what the public thinks, and this is the way to do it."
Prostitutes have a hard time getting help if they're hounded by the police in addition to facing the dangers of their profession, said Tracy Ryan, head of the Hawaii Libertarian Party. Extensive arrest records make it difficult for them to find legitimate jobs when they want to get out of prostitution, she said. Current laws call for a $500 fine and up to 30 days jail time for soliciting prostitution.
"I've only found a handful of people who think prostitutes should go to prison, even though many people are concerned about prostitution," Ryan said. "By criminalizing them, you're only adding to their problems."
Honolulu police made 339 prostitution arrests in 2005 and 255 in 2004, accounting for less than 1 percent of total arrests, according to annual crime reports. Statistics for 2006 are not yet available.
Maj. Kevin Lima, commander of the narcotics and vice division, said he opposes the decriminalization bill because it would be more difficult for police to investigate child prostitution if paying for sex between adults were legal.
"There are some unintended consequences of that bill," Lima said. "It's probably not a good idea."
Honolulu has a long history of prostitution, from the red light districts of Chinatown during World War II to streetwalkers in neighborhoods surrounding Waikiki.
Prostitution remains a significant problem today in part because Hawaii is such a popular tourist destination, Lima said.
These women should be helped out of their situation, but legitimizing them isn't the answer, said Kelly Rosati, a spokeswoman for the Hawaii Catholic church and executive director for the Hawaii Family Forum.
"Oftentimes the point at which a woman is arrested is where help begins," Rosati said. "This is exploitation, and the woman deserves to be helped out of this industry."
But others argue that the real issue is that home and business owners don't want prostitutes in their communities, and they don't get much help in jail, said Meda Chesney-Lind, a University of Hawaii criminologist and author of "The Female Offender."
"Maybe we can start having a conversation about being smart on crime instead of just tough," she said. "We don't criminalize other forms of victimization, so I don't think we should do that for prostitution."
Vancouver Sun December 17, 2006
Sex workers to mount court challenge of Ottawa over ‘dangerous’ laws
By: SHEILA M. DABU
OTTAWA (CP) - A leading advocacy group for decriminalizing prostitution in Canada is planning to take the federal government to court over laws that it says endanger the lives of sex workers across the country.
Valerie Scott, executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada, says the legal action will go ahead in January. "The communicating and bawdy house laws are arbitrary," Scott said in an interview from Toronto. "They do more harm than good, and we'll be filing in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. We're hoping to get a judgement from them within two years. Then we'll go to the Supreme Court of Canada with it."
The common bawdy house laws can evict women from their homes, since landlords receive a notice of their alleged activities, said Wendy Babcock, spokeswoman for the Sex Professionals of Canada. Scott, who expects to be one of the plaintiffs in the court case, says the group will challenge the country's solicitation laws on constitutional grounds.
The sex trade in Canada falls into a legal grey area because, while prostitution itself is not illegal, activities related to it are. Individuals who communicate for the purpose of prostitution or who sell sexual services can be charged under the Criminal Code.
"It's really unfortunate that our profession is one of the few professions that doesn't have any legal protection to it," Babcock said. "Making it illegal is just forcing women into dangerous situations."
News of violence against sex trade workers has garnered headlines in recent weeks. The slayings of five women in Ipswich, England, triggered warnings for prostitutes there to stay off the streets.
In Canada, a seven-months-pregnant mother of three was stabbed to death in Gatineau, Que., after an alleged "bad date." And jurors have just been selected for the trial of Robert Picton, the alleged serial killer of at least 26 sex workers from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside.
A 2006 Statistics Canada report said women in the sex trade are extremely vulnerable to violence which "often goes unnoticed."
"According to police reports submitted to Statistics Canada, between 1991 and 2004, 171 female prostitutes were killed and 45 per cent of these homicides remain unsolved," the report said.
Statistics on the homicide rate of sex workers are "almost certainly lower than the real figures," according to a report issued this month by a Commons subcommittee. Three-quarters of the homicides reported to the panel took place in Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, Toronto, Winnipeg and Ottawa-Gatineau.
But after hearing testimony from over 300 witnesses, MPs from the various parties on the subcommittee couldn't agree on legislative changes to the prostitution laws.
Many advocates of sex workers' rights, such as Samantha Smyth of the Canadian National Coalition of Experiential Women, say it's time to have a national debate.
Violence is a daily threat in the lives of sex workers, said Smyth, noting that Sunday was the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. In Canada, marches and candlelight vigils were scheduled in Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa.
There are no official figures on how many people are engaged in prostitution in this country. It's estimated that only five to 20 per cent of those involved in prostitution work on the streets. A majority work in such venues as hotels, strip clubs or private homes.
Jenn Clamen, mobilization co-ordinator of Stella, a Montreal-based support and information group by and for sex workers, slammed the Commons panel for failing to recommend decriminalizing prostitution. Instead, the report urged increased education and programs to prevent people from entering the trade.
"The lack of legal protection and non-recognition of the work of sex workers is leading to violence and marginalization," Clamen said. Stella publishes a "bad date" bulletin in a city estimated to have about 5,000 to 10,000 sex workers.
Jody Paterson, executive director of the Prostitutes Empowerment Education and Resource Society in Victoria, said a solution to the problem of violence is urgently needed. "How come the only time people talk about prostitution is when a few sex workers have been murdered? I just don't get this," said Paterson.
John Lowman, criminology professor at Simon Fraser University and a leading expert on prostitution, agrees. Lowman predicts the upcoming court case will be successful because federal legislation violates the rights of sex workers to "life, liberty and safety." "It's high time these laws were struck down," says Lowman. "They make no sense."
JUSTICE INSTITUTE OF BC
CENTRE FOR LEADERSHIP & COMMUNITY LEARNING
Violence in the Lives of Sexually Exploited Youth and Adult Sex Workers in BC, Provincial Research, Final Report 2006
Violence Research Final Report
Prepared by Sarah Hunt for the Justice Institute of British Columbia, Centre for Leadership and Community Learning, Project Funding from Assistant Deputy Minister’s (ADM’s) Committee on Prostitution
PIVOT LEGAL SOCIETY REPORT
Beyond Decriminalization:
Sex Work, Human Rights and a New Framework for Law Reform
Pivot Legal Society has released its second report on sex work and law reform. Beyond Decriminalization: Sex Work, Human Rights and a New Framework for Law Reform, funded by the Law Foundation of British Columbia, the Law Commission of Canada and the Canadian Bar Association, the report presents the results of two years of research and in-depth discussions with 84 sex workers from various aspects of the sex industry in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.
John Turley-Ewart
National Post
Friday, July 07, 2006
Lessons from a German Brothel
Having been schooled by Italy in the semi-finals of the World Cup tournament it's hosting, Germany has lost any claim to soccer supremacy. But the nation has much to teach us on a more important issue: prostitution. Four years ago, the country passed legislation decriminalizing both brothels and those who engage in what our own criminal law refers to as "communicating for the purposes of prostitution" (i.e., soliciting johns in media advertisements, or on the street). Canada would do well to follow suit.
Germany's liberal approach to prostitution has been controversial. Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, claims the policy offers an open invitation to criminal gangs that exploit vulnerable women. And according to the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives panel on human rights, Republican Christopher Smith, "the clear losers [in the World Cup] will be the thousands of women and children trafficked and sold into Germany's legal sex industry to accommodate the huge influx of [potential clients]." His fears were echoed by widely circulated claims that 40,000 women from Eastern Europe were going to be smuggled into the country for just such a purpose.
Europeans are more liberal-minded about such things. But even many in Europe think Germany has gone too far. Among them is Juliette Engel, who directs the MiraMed Institute, a Moscow-based charity. The German government, she says, is acting as "an official 'pimp' for the 2006 World Cup." And Claes Borgstrom, the Equal Opportunity Ombudsman for Sweden, unsuccessfully called on his country's soccer team to boycott the World Cup over the issue. (In Sweden, buying sex is a criminal act. But selling it has been decriminalized. This reflects the ultra-progressive view that prostitution is a form of male violence against women; and so punishing the prostitute would be to victimize her twice.)
But as the World Cup draws to a close this Sunday, it is clear that Germany's critics got it wrong. According to a report released on Tuesday by the International Organization for Migration, there is no basis in the claim that thousands of women from Eastern Europe were frogmarched into the pleasure trade for the benefit of randy soccer fans. Indeed, business at many brothels has reportedly been quite flat.
The assumption underlying much of the bad press Germany has received is that decriminalization is a boon to the underworld. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. Prostitution is like any other industry. Make it illegal, and you give criminals a monopoly. Legalize it, and you give law-abiding enterprises a chance to compete.
Christel Humme, a German MP and member of the left-of-centre Social Democratic Party (SPD), was one of the German politicians who helped change the country's prostitution laws in 2002 (a move supported by the country's NDP-esque Green Party). Every day, she noted in an interview, more than a million men in Germany (a country with a male adult population of about 40-million), seek out the services of the nation's estimated 400,000 sex workers. "This is the reality," she says.
Several considerations convinced the SPD to make changes. The first was a desire to improve the safety of prostitutes by bringing their industry into the open and giving them legal rights -- so they no longer had to rely on abusive pimps for protection.
The second was the need to ensure that the benefits of Germany's welfare state -- health care and pensions, for instance -- were made available to prostitutes. Giving prostitutes access to doctors would also help improve public health, by allowing the state to identify and treat those sex-trade workers infected with sexually transmitted diseases.
Prostitution and the trafficking of women are separate issues, Ms. Humme told me. In at least one way, in fact, legalizing prostitution has helped stop trafficking: Police are now able to apply their scarce resources to closing down those unregulated brothels where women are forced into the sex trade.
According to Ms. Humme's research, recriminalizing prostitution wouldn't stop the flow of women from poor countries. That, she believes, will happen only when more governments in Eastern Europe, such as Poland, begin to take seriously the problem at cooperate more fully with other countries to stop it.
HYDRA, the German Association of Female and Male Prostitutes, lobbied hard for decriminalization and believes prostitutes that work in the legal system are much safer today than they were before 2002.
According to Katharina Zetin, a former prostitute and a spokesperson for HYDRA, johns were more likely to be violent or to refuse to pay when they knew prostitutes would be prosecuted if they took their concerns to the police. Moreover, she notes in an interview, health and safety standards are far better in today's brothels. Safe sex can no longer be negotiated away by an intimidating john who didn't feel like wearing a condom.
Moreover, regulated brothels now are operated as legitimate businesses, and so attract professional managers -- as opposed to underworld thugs. Prostitutes can choose where they want to work, and can quit when they want without fear of reprisal. Finally, prostitutes work for themselves and not the brothel. They pay a fee to the brothel owner. But it is up to them who they will have sex with, and what kind of sex act they will perform.
Earlier this year, a National Post editorial criticizing Justice Minister Vic Toews for dismissing decriminalization of the prostitution trade sparked a heated debate on our letters page. Mr. Toews argued that decriminalization would put more women and girls at risk, and strengthen the hands of organized crime. Many letter writers agreed with him.
The underlying assumption of the Minister was that no woman would choose to be a prostitute. But Ms. Zetin says that is nonsense. "No one asks a cashier if she is doing her job of free will," she notes. So why make assumptions about a prostitute? There will always be some women who choose to be prostitutes -- just as she once decided to do -- says Ms. Zetin.
Canada is currently in the same place Germany was in 2001. Brothels are illegal; so is solicitation -- though, technically, the act of having sex in exchange for money is itself not a crime. It is time Canadian politicians realized what their German counterparts did four years ago -- that there will always be men willing to pay for sex and women willing to sell it. We may not like that fact, but it is not something that can be willed away. For all concerned, the best course of action is to bring this business under the ambit of the law. When prostitutes need protection, to whom do we want them to turn -- thugs and mafiosi, or doctors and police?
- John Turley-Ewart is the National Post's Deputy Comment Editor.
© National Post 2006
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