BC Coalition of Experiential Communities

VANCOUVER — Moderated by Madam Scarlett Lake, this public forum sponsored by FIRST will provide the public with an opportunity to learn about the men who buy sex, the experiences of sex workers with their clients, and why neither sex workers nor their clients should be criminalized.

Date: Monday, November 23, 2009


Time: Doors open: 6:30 p.m. Forum: 7 – 9 pm


 Location: Vancouver Public Library, 350 W. Georgia, Alma Van Dusen & Peter Kay rooms Admission by donation

Video (10 mins): 
”A Swedish sex worker on the criminalization of clients” (Pye Jacobssen)

Speakers: 


§ Chris Atchison, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University. Topic: “John’s Voice”

§ Trina Ricketts, BC Coalition of Experiential Communities; Naked Truth (nakedtruth.ca). Topic: “Trade Secrets” – Results of interviews with clients and sex workers

§ Jody Salerno, BC/Yukon Society of Transition Houses. Topic: “The clients who paid me”

 § Katrina Pacey, Pivot Legal Society. Topic: “Why Decriminalize Prostitution?” 

 FIRST is a national coalition of feminists that advocates for the complete decriminalization of sex work, for both sex workers and clients.

Prostitution sting that netted 10 had different goal
POLICE: They say they were looking for people involved with child
prostitutes.
By ZAZ HOLLANDER
zhollander@adn.com

November 3rd, 2009 05:35 PM

Last Modified: November 3rd, 2009 10:36 PMWASILLA — Authorities say a
recent Internet prostitution sting called the biggest to date in the Mat-Su
revealed a previously hidden world of men seeking cyber sex.
To some the sting also represented an invasion of privacy and waste of
federal dollars meant to catch child sex traffickers. The late October bust
resulted in the arrests of 10 men, plus the seizure of more than $2,100 in
cash and 10 cell phones, police say. The sting, conducted by Palmer and
Wasilla police with help from the FBI and Anchorage’s vice squad, was
associated with a larger federal strategy called Operation Cross Country
that targets child prostitutes and people who sell children into slavery.
The Mat-Su operation turned up neither, said Palmer police Detective Sgt.
Kelly Turney. Instead, Turney said, the arrests represented the beginning of
“us being able to work the issue”– arresting low-level johns to find pimps
for adult prostitutes who may also be trafficking young girls. Police knew
prostitution happened here, but they didn’t know to what extent. The sting
was one way to figure that out. Police placed ads on Craigslist and other
places. Turney wouldn’t describe the ad, but did say it made no reference to
child prostitution.
The phone rang off the hook, police said. The 10 men arrested met an
undercover female officer at a motel and paid a pre-arranged sum.The men
range in age from 18 to 58; most live in Palmer and Wasilla, though three
drove up from Anchorage or Eagle River. Their cases are still pending,
Turney said. All were arrested for solicitation of prostitution, a
misdemeanor, received court summons and were released. In Alaska, like
cities around the country, online prostitution is becoming more prevalent
than street walking. Authorities say Internet hookers in Anchorage can make
$1,000 a day, according to prior reports. Sometimes they keep all their
earnings. Sometimes they send part to pimps in Alaska or the Lower 48.They
also say the Internet can provide a level of anonymity that makes it more
difficult to find young girls or evidence of trafficking. It’s hard to say
exactly how many women “are working” the Valley, Turney said.They operate
from various places: cars, motels, homes. This week, a scan of the
Anchorage/Mat-Su adult services category on Craigslist revealed a couple of
Valley-specific listings, both with Wasilla locations. A caller to “April in
Wasilla” — a well-endowed brunette, judging by a picture posted with the ad
– reached a woman who said she was a friend of April’s.”She forwards her
phone to me. … I don’t know what her business is. Thank you,” she said,
before hanging up. But a woman behind another ad, offering “a relaxing
revitalizing appointment with a fun and friendly tall Blondie,” was more
than happy to talk.”Blondie” — who described herself as over 21 and from
the Wasilla area — said she provides “complete energy manipulation” that
includes reiki massage techniques, guided meditation and “ancient hot stone
body work.”There’s some nudity involved, she said, but you “can’t do
complete body work” without it. She sees clients wherever she can take her
massage table. The woman called the police sting a waste of federal funding
earmarked to fight the legitimate crimes of young prostitution and sex
slavery. She suggested police crack down on massage parlors to find
traffickers, rather than placing an ad targeting johns who think they’re
meeting up with an adult.”If you advertise in the paper for whatever service
and you’ve got grownups coming to see you, you think they’ve got child
abductees in their car?” she said. “Ask the taxpayers — was it worth
it?”News of the bust elicited a lot of negative reaction, police said.
Several hundred comments were posted on newspaper Web sites last week after
stories about the sting appeared.
Many criticized the effort as a waste of money and time that could have been
spent arresting people involved in more serious crimes.”It’s a little
disheartening when you actually try to do something good and the majority of
people think you’re wasting money, wasting time, why aren’t you out doing
something bigger?” said Palmer police Commander Tom Remaley.”It’s almost
like you can’t win.”

Robyn Doolittle Crime Reporter Published On Sat Oct 24 2009

A woman works Gerrard and Jarvis Sts. Oct. 21, 2009. Roadwork in the area sent most women elsewhere. TONY BOCK/TORONTO STAR Crusading clergyman. Moralizing political regimes. Undercover police stings. Each has failed to drive prostitutes out of Toronto’s unofficial red-light district. Yet on a recent Wednesday night, only two women are working the Jarvis St. corridor. The reason is surprisingly practical – roadwork. “You aren’t going to get any customers if the sidewalk is blocked,” says Ebony, a curvy 23-year-old brunette who stands alone outside the Harvey’s – “Hooker Harvey’s” – at Gerrard and Jarvis Sts. This is a pivotal time for the country’s sex industry. In the past fours years, the dozens of women in knee-high boots and thick faux-fur coats shuffling in six-inch stilettos around these downtown streets have moved elsewhere. Some have relocated to the suburbs. Others have taken mainstream jobs. And many have moved inside, soliciting clients through the Internet and classified sections of free weekly newspapers. In July, most of the remaining women left the Gerrard-Church-Carlton-Jarvis block. Hard hats replaced miniskirts and fishnets as city crews began ripping up the sidewalks. By August, construction was tearing apart Church St. Ebony prefers working outdoors. She works alone and gets to keep all the cash she earns. “A lot of them have moved to strip clubs or their homes … they find it safer,” she says of the other women. The construction should be finished by next spring. Coincidentally, it’s also around that time that a ruling is expected in a landmark constitutional challenge, being argued in Superior Court this month. Law professor Alan Young, with three former and current prostitutes, has asked a judge to strike down three provisions in the Criminal Code. The act of selling sex for money is legal, but everything surrounding that business transaction isn’t. The three provisions Young wants dissolved are soliciting in a public place, working out of a brothel (which could be a sex worker’s own bedroom) and living off the avails of prostitution. If the judge agrees, prostitution would essentially be decriminalized. Most high-end workers are expected to then move their business inside, which may mean the end of Toronto’s red-light district. Currently, penalties associated with street-level prostitution are significantly lighter than those for indoor sex work. If successful, says Young, the Crown will almost certainly appeal. If they win again, it will be up to politicians to decide how to rewrite the laws – whether to regulate the industry or ban prostitution outright. Valerie Scott, an applicant in the case, said the current laws put the workers on Jarvis in danger. “Legally, it’s safer for us to work on the street, even though physically, it’s far more dangerous. And I have to laugh at people who say, `If they decriminalize prostitution, there’ll be a brothel on my street.’ Every block in Toronto already has a brothel on it. People just don’t know it.” Street prostitution in Toronto has generally been concentrated in the east downtown core. The “High Track,” where workers earn as much as $300 a trick, is in the Jarvis and Church area. Transgendered prostitutes work in “Trannytown,” southeast of Jarvis and Wellesley Sts. Crack-addicted sex workers can be found along River, Shuter and Sherbourne Sts., and earn as little as $20 for sex acts, said a police affidavit submitted in the constitutional challenge. Det. Christopher Higgins recently led a John sweep on the Danforth that left 70 men facing charges. Most of the women who work the streets there are addicts, he said. Jarvis is one of the few areas in the city where higher-end prostitutes work outdoors. “The others work out of condo buildings all over the city. … They put an ad in classified sections or on Craigslist.” In an affidavit submitted to the Superior Court, Insp. Howie Page warned changing the laws would increase the number of brothels, he says. “It will be a free-for-all, bawdy houses will proliferate and society will be the victim,” said Page. Julia Vanderheul, who does sex worker outreach with the Bad Date Coalition, thinks it might end the Jarvis strip. “You won’t see the girls on Jarvis any more. They do think it’s safer inside.” Even though this might be the case, Ebony has no plans to leave. Tonight, without any competition she will earn as much as $1,000. Johns will pay a few hundred for an hour with her in a local hotel room. Even Ebony doesn’t plan to work the Jarvis strip much longer. She’s saving to go to school and has plans to open her own spa.

 The story of a prisoner’s death in Arizona over the summer popped up in the national media for a single news cycle and disappeared without provoking much outrage. Marcia Powell died after being left in an outdoor holding cell in triple-digit heat for more than four hours. She had a history of mental problems and was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution—a crime for which we can assume none of her clients were prosecuted. Women are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. prison population, and sexual violence is often at the root of the events that put them behind bars. Women and girls are victimized at all income levels—one in three experiences some form of abuse by age 18—but for those who enjoy economic stability, the protective layers of good schools, safe neighborhoods, and access to mental health services tend to be a buffer from further exploitation. For women and girls at the margins, sexual violence too often starts a cycle of drug use, delinquency, and despair that eventually lands them in the criminal justice system. And along the way, many become mothers. I first encountered these most vulnerable women and children as a law student trying to think about how to bring the issue of women’s rights as human rights home to the U.S. During those years, I met young women in Washington, D.C., Ohio, and California who had been brutally trafficked, abused, molested, and raped, just like women and girls in developing nations. Yet they were not usually perceived as victims. Instead they were cast as “hos,” prostitutes, or “cracked out” mothers, and dispatched to youth detention centers and prisons. Nobody was talking about educational initiatives, micro-loans, psychiatric services, or human rights for them. I also discovered that few people were aware of the barbaric conditions the U.S. justice system inflicted on pregnant women, forcing them to be shackled during labor and delivery (even for a C-section birth) and whisking away the newborn child a few minutes after delivery, with only single Polaroid for the mother to keep. That’s why in 2003 I founded the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, a national advocacy organization working to reform the criminal and juvenile justice systems and improve the child welfare and public health services available to these fragile families. The Rebecca Project started with two full-time staff sharing one desk and a $25,000 fellowship from the Ford Foundation. Today we have a staff of seven and 11 state chapters around the country, and hundreds of low-income women and girls are part of our advocacy efforts According to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), as many as 88 percent of female inmates have experienced sexual or physical abuse before coming to prison. And by and large the mothers behind bars are not gang-bangers, murderers, or drug kingpins. They are first-time, nonviolent offenders, arrested for untreated addiction. With the drug wars and the passage of mandatory minimum sentences, the incarceration of mothers has skyrocketed. Similarly, in the juvenile justice system, 73 percent of girls have been subject to sexual abuse prior to incarceration. A recent Oregon Social Learning Center study of chronically delinquent girls found that the average age of first sexual encounter among detained girls was 6. And most of these girls are behind bars for offenses related to sexual violence. They are detained for prostitution or running away from abusive homes or foster care placements—not for being violent or joining gangs. What a senseless, and inhumane, approach to vulnerable women and girls’ lives. Mothers with a history of sexual violence and substance abuse do not belong in the criminal justice system. They need a chance to heal, and they need addiction programs they can attend with their family. It costs about $14,000 a year to put a mother and her children into a family-based treatment program, compared to $30,000 to put her behind bars—plus another $35,000 to place her child in foster care. These family programs have significantly better outcomes for family stability and child well-being than the criminal justice system, yet very few of them exist. Placing sexually victimized girls behind bars is also wrongheaded and cruel. Like girls in India, Costa Rica, and the Congo, they are victims—gang-raped, cut down by incest, physically beaten, and sex-trafficked. Underage prostitutes in this country deserve the same interventions and safe space to heal that young victims of sex trafficking abroad are deemed entitled to. Nor do very young girls belong in the juvenile justice system because they ran away from abusive homes. We advise victims of domestic violence to flee from their batterers, and that’s exactly what these girls have done. They deserve safe havens and trauma-responsive programs, not punishment, for their courage to leave. Since 2003 the Rebecca Project has worked to shine a light on women and girls at America’s margins. We have single-handedly increased federal funding for family-based substance abuse treatment 16-fold. We have helped pass major legislation in Congress on prison re-entry programs and child welfare reform. We ended the draconian practice of shackling mothers during childbirth in all federal correctional facilities. How did a small, young, and underbudgeted organization achieve so much? By training hundreds of low-income women and girls to be civic leaders and use the truth of their own experience to inform public policy. They cross the gaping divide between the privileged and the disenfranchised to tell lawmakers what it means to be sexually abused, poor, drug-addicted, in prison, and torn away from your family. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, two girls active in the Rebecca Project will testify before a House subcommittee about their experience in the juvenile justice system, just as our network of women and girls has done in state legislatures around the country. But there is still so much to be done. The pipeline that channels vulnerable young girls from cradle to sexual abuse to prison must be completely dismantled. The mass incarceration of mothers for nonviolent, drug-related offenses must be stopped—and replaced with access to family treatment programs. And we must all agree that even the most marginalized women and girls are too sacred to be left to die under a hot Arizona sun. Malika Saada Saar is the founder and executive director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, a national legal and policy organization that advocates for justice, dignity, and reform for vulnerable families. For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com