Decriminalization increases safety, say some in business

Three sex workers launched a controversial constitutional challenge against Canada’s prostitution laws on Tuesday, arguing that decriminalizing some elements will make it safer for them to work.

The applicants — a dominatrix, a former sex trade worker and a working prostitute — say provisions under the Criminal Code endanger their safety by preventing them from taking precautions, such as working indoors or hiring security guards to protect themselves. The Government of Canada disagrees. It contends that there is no such thing as a safe place for prostitution, regardless of whether it’s legal or illegal.

“This case is not about a constitutional right to be a prostitute,” Alan Young, who is representing the women, said in his opening remarks to Justice Susan Himel of the Superior Court of Ontario on Tuesday in Toronto. It is about depriving them of security and liberty, he said.

READ FULL STORY:  http://www.canada.com

A cop in the UK is said to have invited women to have sex with him on his police motorbike.

Divorced James Appi, 43, posted pictures on a sleazy swingers’ website of himself astride his BMW, next to President Obama’s armoured limo, and also wrote that he fancied group romps and a “sexually adventurous” partner.

In his post, Appi, who is based at Chichester, West Sussex, wrote that his ideal locations for sex were “a remote wilderness spot, a swimming pool or hot tub, and on a police motorbike”.

But his suggestion of sex on his bike seems to have shocked a woman, who contacted him, as she reported him.

“Can’t get over the thought of ******* you over my bike,” the Sun quoted him as having written to the woman, adding about usage of sex toys too.

But Sussex Police could now sack Appi for appearing online in uniform to air his seedy fantasies, as one picture showed him standing outside 10 Downing Street in uniform.

“I was pretty stupid. But as far as I am concerned it was just a bit of fun,” he said.

Regarding sex on his police motorbike, he said it was just a fantasy, which has not gone through.

“I certainly haven’t done it,” he added.

Appi faces action for bringing the force into disrepute.

Original Story:  thaindian.com

The global economic collapse is increasingly taking a heavy toll on the lives of workers and the poor all over the world.
The International Monetary Fund projects the 2009 global economic growth rate at around 0.5%, which is sharply lower than even last year’s anemic rate of 3.4%. The economic crisis is in turn driving a deepening global employment crisis.
Among the harshest effects of increasing global job scarcity is an increase in people entering the global sex industry, an overwhelming majority of whom are women and girls.
Globally, less than half of the world’s working population has salaried jobs. The majority are engaged in informal labor, in which they lack a basic living wage, job security, and occupational safety. Informal labor includes very low-paying jobs in agriculture, the garment industry, and domestic service. Most of the vulnerable jobs are performed by women and children.
Precariously positioned even during the best of capitalist economic periods, women are especially susceptible to the adverse effects of recessions. For example, the waste and scrap recycling sector in India, which has mostly women and children working in hazardous conditions for bare subsistence earnings, is one of the hardest hit by plummeting prices this year.
The number of unemployed women in 2009 may increase by up to 22% relative to 2007 (International Labor Organization, “Global Employment Trends for Women”).
As the downturn deepens and as employment opportunities dwindle, women are increasingly finding themselves desperate for ways to earn a living and forced to enter into prostitution.
Rates of prostitution currently appear to be going up, with more desperately poor women entering the sex trade in order to meet their own and their families’ subsistence needs. Although limited data is available for 2009, general surveys and past recessions can be used as a guide to anticipate how the proportion of women in the sex industry will increase as the current economic free-fall continues globally.
The reasons that compel a woman to enter the sex trade can often be traced to financial vulnerability. In New Zealand, for example, 93% of the sex workers surveyed since 2003 have cited financial reasons for working in the sex industry (www.nzpc.org.nz).
Capitalism a Disaster for Women
Following the transition into free-market capitalism in the late 1980s, Eastern Europe plunged into a deep recession, with unemployment rates of 40% and higher. The sex industry exploded in the region, with Moldova and Ukraine becoming the highest and second highest traffickers of prostitutes to Western Europe.
During the 1990s, a staggering two-thirds of the 500,000 women trafficked globally each year for prostitution came from Eastern Europe (United Nations Global Report on Crime and Justice, 1999).
The collapse of the global capitalist economy is forcing women to capitulate to the sex trade in other ways as well. Women already in the sex industry are being subjected to further exploitation.
As the recession causes more people to restrict their spending, prostitution businesses are experimenting with new incentives. Some German brothel owners are offering a “flat rate” deal. Based on the idea of an all-you-can-eat buffet, it allows customers to have sex with as many prostitutes as they like for a single fee (Telegraph, 7/28/09).
Advocates for sex workers are expressing deep concern that with increasing numbers of women turning to prostitution for a living, the growing competition is compelling workers to practice unsafe sex or to make other compromising choices to keep clients happy. There are also concerns of increased violence as a form of control against prostitutes by pimps and gangs (National Catholic Reporter, 4/17/09).
Unemployment and job crises are constants under capitalism, which only intensify dramatically in recessions. Thus, many women are forced to participate in the sex industry under capitalism.
Women and men have to fight together for a fundamental shift away from this system, towards one that can harness the capabilities of technology and society to allow every person to earn a living and live a fruitful life in dignity.

Original Story:  socialistalternative.org

A jury was told that Marion Burton, 50, lured him into the act after repeatedly pestering him to give her syringes, vitamin B12 and the horse tranquilliser Ketamine.
Burton’s husband later demanded £20,000 from the doctor, who cannot be named for legal reasons, threatening that if he did not pay up he would pass the video to the media and the medical authorities.

However, the doctor told the police what was happening and the Burtons were arrested.
He told a jury at Reading Crown Court: “I felt intimidated and threatened and I still do.
“I am so frightened to be in my own home that I get in my car and drive away from my house and sleep in the car.”
He told how Burton arrived at the clinic on October 18 2008 dressed like a “prostitute” in a strappy cleavage-revealing short dress.
He said she exposed herself and he felt pressured to perform an intimate sexual act on her.
The court heard that he then carried out a sexual act on himself before continuing to administer the Botox treatment at the clinic in Maidenhead, Berks.
He told the jury: “I did nothing she did not consent to or want to do. At no time did she try to stop me. She encouraged it.”
He added: “I never instigated any sexual contact with Marion Burton.”
The court heard that at a previous appointment Burton had performed a sex act on the doctor that was not caught on camera.
When asked about the incident, he said: “I was trying to inject her face while she did it.
“I had the syringe in one hand and the swab in the other.”
The doctor described how Terry Burton, 51, approached him after the clinic had finished on October 18 and showed an intimate photograph , demanding £20,000 pounds to keep it out of the hands of newspapers and the General Medical Council.
The doctor said: “It was clear to me that he was going to attempt to do something with those pictures.
“He wanted to show them to my business partners, my wife, the medical council and the News of the World. He was aggressive.”
The doctor said he felt “threatened and intimidated” by Burton’s actions.
After the incident the doctor drove home to the West Midlands and contacted the police.
The jury was told that Terry Burton has already admitted blackmail but his wife, from Slough, Berks., denies a single charge of blackmail.
The trial continues.

Original Story:  telegraph.co.uk

A sex trade ring in which young girls were allegedly pistol-whipped and forced from their homes into sexual slavery was broken up in Houston this week and several suspects are in custody.

Five people, including a former Houston police officer, were arrested in the largest sex trafficking case in Texas’ southern district, MyFOXHouston.com reported. A sixth remains on the run.

John Butler, 47, William Hornbeak, 34, Jamine Lake, 27, Andre McDaniels, 39, and Kristen Land, 28, all of Houston, as well as Tulsa, Okla., resident Ronnie Presley, 35, are named as suspects in the case.

All are charged with conspiracy to traffic women and children for the purposes of commercialized sex; sex trafficking of children; sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion; and other offenses, according to the station.

The five Houston residents were arrested Monday and Tuesday; Presley is still at large, MyFOXHouston.com reported.

Butler was a Houston police officer for a brief period in the 1980s, sources told the station.

The sting was the result of a joint investigation by local and federal authorities.

“It is a horrible reflection on our society when adults prey on the vulnerabilities of children and reduce them to indentured sex slaves,” U.S. Attorney Tim Johnson said in a prepared statement.

The suspects allegedly used businesses like massage parlors, modeling studios and health spas to disguise their sex trade business, according to the 16-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday.

Women and teens as young as 16 were among the victims allegedly coerced into prostitution and regularly beaten and threatened, according to the U.S. attorney’s statement.

Original Story:   foxnews.com

Two dozen hostesses at two Suffolk bars raided Monday as part of a federal crackdown on a reputed large sexual-slavery ring were being questioned late Monday by federal agents to determine the extent of the operation, law enforcement officials said.

The agents were also trying to determine which of the women, most of whom were undocumented immigrants from Central America, would be eligible for expedited citizenship as victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking, according to officials and sources.

More than 100 federal agents and police fanned out in Suffolk County early Monday morning to raid the bars, also known as cantinas, which were patronized mainly by undocumented immigrants, according to federal prosecutors Demetri Jones and James Miskiewicz.

The federal agents and Suffolk police arrested three people who they said ran the cantinas, describing them as leaders of the ring, on charges of slavery, trafficking in sexual workers and harboring illegal immigrants, according to the prosecutors and court papers. The three “forced and conspired to force the victims to engage in various sex acts in exchange for money,” according to the papers filed by the prosecutors.

Some of the women were raped numerous times by one of the operators and they were kept in line by beatings, and threats of death or being reported to immigration officials for deportation, according to court papers.

The two bars were La Hija del Mariachi in Farmingville and Sonidos de la Frontera in Ronkonkoma.

Those arrested were identified as: Antonio Rivera, 34, of Patchogue; his sister, Jasmin Rivera, 31, of Medford; and John Whaley, 29, of Bellport.

The three were arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Michael Orenstein at U.S. District Court in Central Islip. They were held without bail as dangers to the community. They were not required to plead to the charges, for which they could face up to life in prison if convicted.

Federal public defender Tracey Gaffey, representing the three for the arraignment, declined to comment afterward, as did the prosecutors.

While dozens of women have been working in the bars, the raids are based on evidence provided by four of them who have been cooperating with investigators, according to court papers and sources.

One of the women told investigators that she entered the country illegally and was recruited by the operators of the ring as a waitress when she was 17, the court papers said.

She said she was repeatedly raped by one of the operators, according to court papers. To stop the rapes, she said she created an imaginary boyfriend. But her attacker told her “Boyfriend! Watch what I’m going to do to you. Your boyfriend will never want to touch you again.”

Shortly after, a security guard at the club bashed “her head into the pavement of the parking lot” breaking several teeth and causing black eyes, bruises and lacerations, the papers said.

Several of the women said that they had been recruited to work as waitresses through ads on Spanish-language Internet sites and newspapers, promising pay of $40 a day plus tips, and half of the price of the $20 shots of tequila they sold to the undocumented clientele, according to papers.

Brookhaven Town Supervisor Mark Lesko said the town had been cooperating with the police and federal investigation.

Lesko said the women’s situation was legally similar to that of two Indonesian women, Enung and Samirah, who were enslaved by an Muttontown couple. Lesko, then the federal prosecutor on that case, said the two Indonesians were also offered expedited citizenship as victims of slavery.

Original Story:  newsday.com