Harlots Parlour

A seminar has been held at State Parliament as part of a campaign to decriminalise prostitution as once again the debate rages in South Australia. Lets hope that this time sex workers succeed in persuading the government to decriminalise sex work. ABC net work news have the story and video “HERE

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I came across this post on the Matt Greenall blog reporting on a recent meeting of the westminster skeptics
. I thought some interesting points were discussed that harlots readers may perhaps like to comment on.

Picture on the left is Dr Belinda Brook Gordon and picture on the rigth is Dr Brooke Magnanti who was revealed to be the real Belle De Jeur a character later played by Billie Piper(inset) in the popular television series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl”.

The sorts of things that are said about sex work

Westminster skeptics recently hosted a discussion on sex work and the law, featuring Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon and Dr Brooke Magnanti. It is well worth a listen : Dr Brooks-Gordon provides an overview of the legal context for sex work in the UK, recent legal changes, and most importantly, the effects that laws have that are often quite different from their stated intention. Dr. Magnanti discusses the principles that it is important to adopt when researching or discussing sex work: starting with listening to how sex workers themselves describe their experience rather than making assumptions, such as the assumption that all foreign sex workers in the UK are trafficked, or that sex work is inherently exploitative or coercive. In a follow up blog post the convenor, David Allen Green, talks about how important it is to have open conversations about sex work. READ REST OF POST HERE:

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Shelly Stoops very kindly forwarded this lecture given by Baroness Vivien Stern: to the Crown Prosecution Service Annual Lecture on 21st October 2010. Baroness Stern has been a long time advocate for sex workers rights and for justice to sex workers especially those who suffer assault and especailly rape. She speaks very eloquantly of the work done with sex workers, especially street workers to establish trust and confidence in the police.

This is only the third Crown Prosecution Service lecture. The first was given by the then Director of Public Prosecutions, now Lord Macdonald of River Glaven and a most warmly welcomed recent arrival in the House of Lords.

The second, a most admired lecture which I remember well, was given by the current DPP, Keir Starmer. So it is indeed an honour for someone who is not, nor ever has been, nor ever will be a Director of Public Prosecutions, someone who is not even a lawyer, to be standing before you tonight.

I am most grateful to Keir Starmer for asking me to deliver this lecture. The reason he asked me is that just over a year ago I was invited by the Government to carry out a review of how rape complainants are treated by public authorities. That work gave me many new experiences and some insights. It forced me to think more deeply about what we mean by justice. That is what I am going to reflect on this evening.

May I begin by sharing with you some of the experiences and perceptions I had which provide a context for my later remarks. My work in preparing the report brought me into contact with some remarkable people. I met some young women who work to protect street prostitutes from violent assault. Two specialist projects, one in Liverpool and one in Bristol, do this work. The staff go out in pairs and get to know the women working on the street. They carry free condoms and free needles. They also encourage the prostitutes to report to the authorities when they have been attacked, abused and raped by men paying for their services.

It is not an easy thing for women working in street prostitution to report anything to the authorities. But it happens. And a number of men have been convicted for assaulting and raping women working on the streets. In one recent case, according to the BBC report, the prosecution told the court that the defendant would pick up the women and take them to his home. There he had transformed a bedroom into a “torture chamber”. He was convicted. READ REST OF LECTURE HERE:

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As a follow up to a previous post on the use of scapegoating by anti sex lobbyists, this recent article in the UK press highlights the plight of Romanian children being used as slave labour. The article dramatically emphasises the issues discussed in that post .
The unhealthy and usually vitriolic attack by anti sex work lobbyists on the sex industry results in the sidelining of the overwhelming majority of trafficking cases. The statistically small percentage of proven cases of trafficking of women and children for sexual slavery is hugely outnumbered by the 90% plus of trafficking victims who suffer appallingly to pick the fruit and vegetables we all consume.
I have not once heard Mallissa Farley or Julie Bindel or any of the other sensationalists who work tirelessly to create and maintain an hysteria around sex trafficking calling for the owners of super markets to be arrested or the shoppers at super markets to be made criminals for consuming the products of forced/coerced/trafficked labour. Instead these single minded lobbyists divert resources and attention away from the majority of trafficked and exploited victims. The result is the appalling suffering of children and women and men. Suffering conveniently ignored by both the media and most politicians. They are ignored because they are not sexy, or perhaps not exploitable as a story. No votes and no sales equals little attention.
The job of sex worker activists is to force both the media and politicians to be aware of the damage being caused by the anti sex lobbyists. Our job is to raise awareness of the suffering their deliberate blindness is causing. Victims of trafficking are ignored because of a moral crusade masquerading as genuine concern.
This is not justice.

The story is from the Mail on Line Monday, Oct 25 2010

Romanian children, some as young as nine, have been found working as ‘slaves’ in near freezing conditions in the first discovery of its kind.

The seven children were discovered without food or water and dressed in thin summer clothing working among 50 Romanian farm labourers picking spring onions last week.

Some of the children were with their parents but others appeared to have been brought to the field in the back of a box fan on their own, the Gangmaster’s Licensing Authority (GLA) said.

Read more:

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I came across this excellent presentation on the use of scapegoating by anti sex work campaigners and its dangerous consequences. The recent scapegoating of craigs list by anti sex worker groups using hyped up and ridiculous claims that they, craigs list were responsible for allowing traffickers to exploit huge numbers of children is highlighted as an example of how dangerous this form of scapegoating can be.
Closing down transparent areas of advertising where real perpetrators of abuse can be traced, endangers further those being exploited. By forcing all sex workers, including those genuinely being exploited to become practically invisible makes it harder for law enforcement to contact the exploited and to take action against those doing the exploitation.
These crusades against sex workers actually aids traffickers while denying human rights and enforcing prejudice and social exclusion and stigma on the majority of sex workers who are neither trafficked or exploited but who make an informed decision to sell sex.. It is unfair, unjust and cruel.

What is worse is that the hysteria over sex trafficking, which even the most generous estimates guess to be around 10% of all trafficking world wide results in the majority of victims of traffickers, those 90% that are trafficked and abused through non sexual trafficking being ignored. How often do we ever read about any other kind of trafficking abuse other than sexual trafficking? How much effort and private and public funding is thrown at those advocates for sexual censorship and the abolition of sex work which results in 90% of trafficking victims being ignored and which does nothing to help those 10% of genuine victims of sexual trafficking?

Anti sex traffickers are not however really interested in saving or even helping victims of sexual trafficking but are more concerned with a moral crusade against those who do not have sex in a manner approved of by them. This is the simple but unpalatable truth that we must all be aware of. The media and politicians play their game because sex sells copy, gets head lines, gets votes. It is plain and simple and it is why the public must be alerted and why sex workers themselves have to stand up and fight not only for their rights but for the human rights and civil liberties of eveyone.

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The following Pattaya Draft Declaration on Sex Work in Asia and the Pacific 2010 was written about on the excellent plri.wordpress.com

This Declaration has been agreed by sex workers representing regional, national and local networks of sex workers present at Pattaya Thailand 12-16 October 2010. APNSW will be conducting a consultation to finalise this document.

It represents a unified and rights based approach to the reduction of HIV among adult sex workers.

Preamble

Recognising that:

Sex workers of all genders are subject to violence, both in their personal lives and at work. This violence is a manifestation of stigma, discrimination and judgemental attitudes.

International and national trafficking law and policy has resulted in increased violence against and oppression of sex workers.

United Nations organisations and specialised agencies have previously agreed that criminal and other laws that lead to dangerous settings for commercial sex and limit access to services must be repealed.

In many parts of the world, sex workers are amongst the most vulnerable to HIV and STIs.

Twenty years of experience has shown that effective HIV prevention, treatment, care and support for sex workers is possible only with their meaningful and active involvement.

Collective organising and community mobilisationand community led processes are key to ensuring that sex workers benefit from HIV policies and programmes.

Building capacity within sex worker networks and communities must be understood as part of the commitment to the respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of sex workers.

Sex workers who are socially included, have better economic and social status and are less vulnerable to human rights abuses and HIV.

It is necessary to provide and scale up access to rights based HIV programming for sex workers and their clients of all genders, HIV positive or negative.

Successful rights based interventions that have been shown to reduce HIV and STIs among female, male and transgender sex workers and clients must be strengthened and scaled up.

Coercive efforts to control or reduce sex work are contrary to human rights. Mandatory medical treatment or procedures, raids, forced rehabilitation, or programmes implemented by police or based upon detention of sex workers are all examples of coercive programming and in some circumstances may constitute torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

To be effective, HIV programming needs to be devised in true partnership with sex workers, and be dynamic, participatory, non-coercive and must address the diverse realities of human sexuality and sexual expression.

Read rest of the article here

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I would like to welcome Teegan Fox to Harlots as an author. Teegan has kindly forwarded an interview she recently did with Fiona Patten of the Australian Sex party. Possibly it is time for a new sex worker movement here in the UK and if this is the case then why not a political party that fights for our civil liberties?

The Australian Sex Party was founded in 2009 and grew out of the Eros Foundation – a national lobby group for the adult retail and entertainment industry.

In the 2010 Federal elections the party contested six of the 150 seats in the Senate and received more than 250,000 first preferences , and won 2.04 percent of the national Senate vote .

During the vote count the Sex Party were “neck and neck” with the Family First Party for the fourth place in the national Senate vote. The party “outpolled several more prominent minor parties and came within about 10,000 votes of Family First for the Senate in Victoria”.

After the party’s first federal election contest, Fiona Patten leader of the Australian Sex Party claimed that the Sex Party was “now the major minor party in Australian politics”:

Fiona Patten is the President of the Australian Sex Party and she has very kindly answered a few questions.

Hi Fiona,
Many thanks for taking the time out to answer these questions.

1) What does the Australian Sex Party stand for?

Fundamentally we are a civil liberties party but we also stand for less government in our lives and businesses

2) How does it feel to be the major minor party in Australia?

It is pretty exciting to have had such a great response in such a short time. In Australia politics have been moving further and further to the right. The Christian Lobby is proving very powerful and I think Australians are now looking for an alternative voice.

3) You are a political party which has no past, no tried and tested candidates and I can only assume a handful of staff and volunteers. How did you manage to get your message across?

Having sex in your name is certainly an advantage to getting attention. We did have some great dedicated candidates, volunteers and staff. Being a new party with no past we were not afraid to promote ourselves where no one else would go! For example adult shops all over Australia plastered their windows with party promotions. Brothel waiting rooms had our posters and a whole range of adult mags and websites gave us some space.
We also did some really fun mob promotions in bars, queer events and nightclubs.
Bright yellow tshirts with the word sex emblazoned on the front does get attention wherever you go.
We are of course always looking for volunteers and possible candidates so if any of the readers are interested feel free to contact me!

4) What policies can you as a minor party affect or change?

Quite often we can be the voice that goes “hang on a second”….. Most politicians I have dealt with are scared stiff of discussing anything sexual, especially the sex industry. Most of them are men and if they speak in favour of, for example, sex work or sexual media they feel that they are assumed to be clients and customers. We are not afraid to raise sexual issues and have frank conversations about them. While a lot of civil liberty issues like voluntary euthanasia are conscience issues for most parties, for us they are policy.

5) What is the proposed Censorship and Internet filter, and how will that affect the sex workers industry in Australia?

What is it? It is a really bad idea! Basically the Australian government is proposing to keep a blacklist (secret) of websites that breach the Australian Classification Act. Any site that features or promotes any fetish behaviour would be deemed in breach and therefore could be blacklisted. The result of this is that all Australian ISPs would have to block Australians accessing that site. They say that it is to filter child porn but, hello, child porn is already illegal and is rarely found on www sites.

6) Equal Rights and Equal Love for everyone. What is the status at present in Australia, and how do you propose to improve that?

It is outrageous that any Australian law discriminates against a person on the grounds of their sexuality. We would work to ensure that all laws are amended to end this discrimination. (Check out our policy page for more info)

7) The debate prior to the election with Family First was excellent. How did you feel after the debate?

Frankly a bit shell shocked. After the debate Wendy Francis came up to me smiling saying how lovely it was to meet! But we were very fortunate to have had the opportunity to get onto prime time TV and give a little information about some of our policies. Most Australians had heard of Family First but most had not heard of us and overall the feedback was very good. I think Wendy is still claiming victory.

8) What are your policies to protect sex workers rights for both Australians and visitors?

To enact national anti discrimination laws which make it illegal to unfairly discriminate against people or companies on the basis of job, occupation, profession or calling. (more info on this is on our website http://www.sexparty.org.au/index.php/news/asp-news-a-updates/876
Abolish sex slavery and sexual servitude by introducing non morality-based immigration policies that allow bona-fide sex workers to work legally in Australia.
Give sex workers’ access to fair visas so that they can enjoy human rights while they are working in Australia.
Prevent human trafficking by granting sex workers the same human rights as other workers in Australia – decriminalize sex work and allow sex workers to travel here.
Ensure trafficking is a crime in Australia; sex work is not. It is legal for sex workers from other countries to travel here for work. It is not legal to exploit them while they are here.

9) How have the major religious groups reacted to your party and policies?

They have been great! I mean if it wasn’t for them we would not have received nearly the same amount of media attention. In the beginning they submitted objections and appeals to our registration.
Now, they are pressuring the major parties to exclude us in any preference deals in the election but they have been largely ignored. Although this is difficult as the major parties have a lot of links with religious orgs or provide a lot of support.

10) Politics and sex scandal often go together, where the private lives of politicians are broadcast to undermine them, due to their contradiction mainly. Why is there a contradiction of personal life with policy?

Why do politicians and campaigners feel the need to dictate and control the sex lives of others?
Who knows?? But hypocrisy has its price!
Fortunately in the Sex Party we have no skeletons in the closet we are all out of the closet. In the federal election nearly half of our candidates were gay or lesbian and nearly a quarter had worked or do work in the sex industry.

11) Would you support a politician that was “outed” in some way due to their “controversial” but private sex habits?

No I don’t support outing but …. It does piss me off when some politicians are so very hypocritical.

12) You are basically a Civil Liberties party, so why use the word “Sex” in your name?

One of our mentors was the founder of the Australian Democrats, Don Chipp. He said that the hardest thing that a new party faced was getting media attention. Calling ourselves the Sex Party certainly helped us there. Of course sex is the core to our being. It encompasses and depicts many aspects of our everyday lives including pleasure, gender, culture, finance, environment and law. It is a basic part of people’s lives and identity but most politicians are afraid to discuss it. While people find our name controversial there is a need for the sex party.

13) Where do you go from here?

We have just been registered in the Australian state of Victoria and will be standing candidates in next month’s state election. From here we will continue to build our base, expand on our policies and hopefully win a seat in government in the not too distant future.

Fiona Patten with Marianne Leishman, known by her stage name Zahra Stardust is a professional pole dancer and ASP candidate for the Senate

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Recently the anti sex work lobbyists have been making absurd claims that the average sex worker starts working (they rarely if ever mention or mean “him” in the context of sex work but then oops forgot male sex workers don’t count) as a child of around 14 which of course justifies their demands that those evil men (remember in their absurd world women don’t buy sex but are just sad victims) whom we know as our clients are pursued as criminals while we the poor, poor abused sex workers are decriminalised. Of course the anti sex work brigades view decriminalisation very differently from how sex workers view decriminalisation. Sex workers view decriminalisation as in New Zealand where we can get on with our lives and our business in peace protected by the law rather than persecuted by the law. When anti sex workers talk of decriminalisation they really mean that that they want to force sex workers out of business. In the Swedish model that they advocate sex workers cannot advertise in the press and in order for them (the authorities) to convict our clients sex workers have to be coerced into giving evidence. Sex workers cannot work together (like any other worker) for companionship or most importantly safety because of the mad and dangerous laws on pimping and brothel keeping. The average sex worker in this situation would prefer to stay a criminal than accept the poisoned chalice offered by the Swedish absurdness that institutionalises sex workers as victims.

This article in the VANCOUVER SUN Wednesday, October 13, 2010 by John Lowman who teaches criminology at Simon Fraser University is important because it asks some very important questions about the research methology given by such as Malissa Farley as evidence and which is quoted so often by anti sex work campaigners as though it were the absolute truth handed down from God. Governments in particular should read this article.

John Lowman [Editorial]
(John Lowman teaches criminology at Simon Fraser University.)

p. A15

Prostitution and the radical feminist agenda

In a couple of columns over the past few years, and most recently on Oct. 6, Vancouver Sun writer Daphne Bramham has claimed that the average age of entry into prostitution in Canada is 14 years.

Bramham’s claim about the average age of entry is an important theme in the radical-feminist version of prohibition, which would decriminalize sex selling and criminalize sex buying.

If prostitution nearly always begins with the sexual exploitation of a child, it is easier to argue that when they become adults, sex workers have no free will and do not choose to sell sex, in which case the government needs to save them by criminalizing sex buyers.

But is the claim about age of entry accurate? Why did the Ontario Superior Court fail to find evidence to substantiate claims like it? Does Bramham have evidence that the court did not?

To defend the three prostitution laws that were ultimately struck down, the Crown called various expert witnesses — including Janice Raymond and Melissa Farley from the United States, and Ottawa professor Richard Poulin — to support its contention that prostitution is inherently harmful.

Like Bramham, most of them view prostitution as “violence against women.”

After examining more than 2,500 pages of evidence, the court concluded that these three witnesses lapsed into advocacy, and could not substantiate certain claims. One such claim concerned age of entry. The court concluded that “some of Dr. Poulin’s citations for his claim that the average age of recruitment into prostitution is 14 years old were misleading or incorrect.”

Even the Crown acknowledged that only “one study in Canada indicated that an average age of entry may be as low as 14 years of age.”

But that study deliberately excluded persons who entered prostitution as adults. Needless to say, the average age of entry in this sample is under 17.

When challenged to substantiate her claim that 14 is the average age of entry into prostitution in Canada, Bramham offered just one Canadian and two U.S. studies as evidence.

One of her U.S. sources is a Department of Justice website that relies mostly for its information on the second study she cites, Estes and Weiner’s Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

But this study does not offer an estimate of the average age of entry into prostitution in Canada. Their U.S. and Mexico samples again exclude adults, thus making it impossible to use their data to estimate the average age of entry into prostitution as a whole in either country.

In contrast, the Canadian study does allow one to compute the average age of entry for its sample of Prince George sex workers — but the average is apparently 18, not 14. Why does she not mention other studies of prostitution in Canada, including a second B.C. sample where the average age of entry was 18, and a third where it was 22?

Either Bramham does not understand basic statistics, or her political agenda determines which information she cherry-picks to substantiate her rhetoric.

Obviously children should not be involved in prostitution. But we need accurate information on which to base policy and law reform, not propaganda.

Do journalists have an ethical duty to present accurate information when expressing opinions?

Yes they do. The B.C. Press Council’s Code of Practice says, “A newspaper’s first duty is to provide the public with accurate information … journalists shall strive to avoid expressing comment and conjecture as established fact.”

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While sex workers await the result of an appeal launched by the Canadian government against the decision by the Ontario courts that the existing anti sex work legislation endangers sex workers and is a violation of human rights the anti sex work lobby have been busy. Ex sex workers have been exploited by the anti sex work lobbyists and encouraged to mount a demonstration outside the Canadian courts against the ruling. Once again anti sex work groups hope to emotionalise the debate to their advantage by providing sensationalist stories to a lazy media that prefers emotionalised propoganda to facts. Yes some people are exploited and trafficked within the sex industry but this is also the case in other industries and the overwhelming evidence suggests to a substantially greater degree. The problem is that the sexual abuse of one person is a human tragedy that can be easily exploited both by anti sex work lobbyists and the media to create a sensationalist story while the exploitation of thousands forced to pick fruit for example would hardly attract media attention. Sex after all sells. That is just the way it is sadly and the anti sex work lobbyists know this and exploit this laziness of both the media and of governments to their advantage. The result as Canada has recently experienced is the screening of biased and emotionalised documentaries/news which once again exploit the upsetting experiences of some sex workers and give credence to statistics and anti trafficking propaganda that are at best questionable if not simply salacious hype.

Andy Sorfleet has written this open letter to the CBC the station responsible explaining the anger of sex workers.

From: Andy Sorfleet
Committee to Unite Prostitutes

http://walnet.org/cup

Regarding: “Is Canada becoming a haven for sex traffickers?” (which aired October 6, The National, 10 p.m. local time)

Dear Ms. Mesley,

I was appalled by your report on the “question,” Is Canada becoming a haven for sex traffickers? There certainly was no question in this sensational piece of propaganda, nor where there any alternative viewpoints. I have rarely seen such an unbalanced news story on the CBC so devoid of journalistic integrity.

You begin with some dark and eerie, lurid footage of sex workers in hooker boots — who you didn’t even get consent from to film and had to blot out their faces — and pans of legitimate business licences (City of Burnaby for example).

Then, you swiftly completely dismiss the viewpoints and hard work of an Ontario Superior Court judge, a constitutional challenge law team, an esteemed law professor, a sex workers rights orgnization and a person herself charged under Canada’s archaic bawdy-house laws. This is to prepare your viewers for your thesis claim that “pimping” (no definition provided) could become legal, making it more difficult for the police to “keep an eye on the pimp’s business.” This leads us to the hook of your story — the big, scary Internet and the proliferation of sex ads.

You follow by getting yourself nicely off the hook, by enabling someone else make the outrageous and unsubstantiated claims which you present as facts. Nothing convinced me — the viewer — however that Natasha Fall was anything more than a character from a bad CBC drama, played by an actor. You failed to create an atmosphere of suspended disbelief. There are some viewers, perhaps, who can easily believe that “these girls” all start working in the sex industry at the age of 14 and even younger. But the stories begin to stretch from there.

This practically anonymous young woman who works for a mysterious and unnamed support group states that all these “indepedent business women” (as you put it) who are happy about the ruling worked for the same “establishments” she did, apparently with the same escort drivers, and criminal activities etc. Then she becomes more zealous: “These are legal establishments. Children working in massage parlours…” According to your guest, the businesses are all organized crime.

Natasha Fall claims she’s met hundreds of women who are controlled by pimps. “Some are partners, but others are traffickers.” Later we learn that these traffickers are moving *Canadian* women around from massage parlour to massage parlour across the country, in order to provide a “fresh face” and make even more money.

What a way to defame the business licence inspectors and departments of many or most of the larger municipalities in Canada — without a shred of evidence!

In my 20 years as a sex worker advocate in both Toronto and Vancouver I have certainly not met hundreds of sex workers controlled by anyone but themselves.

You tell us that even in happy-hooking Amsterdam, legalization of prostitution led to an explosion of human trafficking. Your evidence: half of sentence from a former Amsterdam mayor, who simply says that “it didn’t work out.”

Your journalistic talents shone when you used clips from Canadian police TV fictional dramas (scenes of “girls” rescued from shipping containers) for entertaining filler (to help us get through you droning on with your definition of human trafficking) to take us to the meat of your story: how sex for sale has moved out off the streets and out of the strip clubs (also licensed by municipalities?) and onto the Internet.

I really don’t need to go with the play-by-play. I think you get the idea.

Your attempt to defame veteran and respected alternative news weeklies such as NOW magazine in Toronto and The Georgia Straight was charming. First you compare their businesses with ads on Craigslist. Then “Natasha” flips through a newspaper you just pulled out, and claims “I’ve met a lot of these women. I’ve witnessed — first-hand — who these women are and what their experiences are.” [Impossible.] “These women, at the end of their shift they’re going home to men who abuse them.”

You didn’t pull any punches when you interviewed Alice Klein (editor of NOW). You accuse NOW Of running ads for selling underage girls and other criminal activity. Klein didn’t see that coming. I have run ads in NOW magazine and others on your list of alternative papers. I dealt in person with my ad reps. I provided photo identification that was filed to my phone number in the ad. I payed by credit card even sometimes. You are not anonymous when you take out adult classifieds ads. Surely you know that.

Your accusations are like saying that a newspaper is responsible for classified ads for automobiles which turn out to be someone selling stolen cars. No classified advertising venue can guarantee that their all the ads published are by law-abiding citizens. It’s not the publishers’ responsibility.

Frankly, Ms Mesley I am embarrassed to think that the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. National 10 o’clock news has sunk to this low level. Next time, perhaps you could do just a little bit of research to verify the claims in your show’s reports. Perhaps you could talk to sex workers who you don’t have to blot the faces out in your footage. Perhaps you could talk to people who have some credibility — if you ever expect to gain any.

During cross-examination in the Ontario case, Dr. Poulin (an expert witness for the Crown) was asked to provide a verifiable source for his claim that the average age of entry into prostitution in Canada is 14. At para 357 of of her decision, Judge Himel comments “… during cross-examination it was revealed that some of Dr. Poulin’s citations for his claim that the average of entry into prostitution is 14 years old were misleading or incorrect.” Even the Crown acknowledged that there is just one study in Canada reporting 14 as the average age of entry of the sample. The other studies report a higher average age of entry, some much higher.

Canada is blessed with a wealth of very smart, dedicated and veteran social science researchers in fields such as criminology, such as Frances Shaver, John Lowman, Celia Benoit, Gus Brannigan to name only a few. Canada also has several sex-worker advocacy groups who are long-established and well-respected, including Maggie’s in Toronto, PACE in Vancouver, Stella in Montreal to name only three.

I am certain you will have no trouble locating a wide range of opinions and facts to truly ask questions — and have a discussion that involves a variety of viewpoints — about prostitution and legalization here in Canada (and not just your own).

Regards,
Andy Sorfleet

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