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http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/06/12/should_prostitution_be_legalized_supreme_court_of_canada_examines_the_issue.html
Should brothels be legal? Supreme Court of Canada ponders issueSupreme Court of Canada begins hearings on an age-old issue: should brothels and other aspects of the sex trade be legalized?
 RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR Former sex trade workers, Natasha Falle (on left in black) and Bridget Perrier ( on right in pink) speak to the group that they run. Former and current sex trade workers get together twice a month to discuss various issues.
The Supreme Court of Canada begins hearings Thursday on an issue as old as time: should brothels and other aspects of the sex trade be legalized?
If the high court justices ultimately answer in the affirmative, it will mean dramatic changes to Canada’s prostitution laws including, possibly, the widespread emergence of licensed bawdy houses.
That worries Natasha Falle, the head of Sextrade101, which bills itself as “Toronto’s only sex trade survivors and abolitionist organization.”
Prostituted at 14 and trafficked for 10 years across Canada, Falle fears the voices of women aren’t being heard in the battle between a government she accuses of doing little to help prostituted women and professional sex workers who want to expand the trade.
“Either we were always blamed as criminals, we were junkies, we were deviants — or we are ‘empowered’ or ‘liberated’ by getting involved in prostitution. There was no voice for the survivors in the middle,” Falle says.
The debate about the sex trade reached the Supreme Court four years after Toronto dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, along with two other sex workers, challenged the constitutionality of the anti-prostitution laws.
Prostitution is not illegal in Canada, but most of the public activities around it are. The sex workers argued the laws infringe on their rights, endangering their safety by driving their trade underground.
In 2010, Ontario’s Superior Court agreed and struck down the laws that make brothels, communication for street prostitution and “living off the avails” or pimping illegal.
Two years later, the Ontario Court of Appeal was split on the issue. It supported the legalization of “bawdy houses” or brothels but kept the ban on street prostitution and “living off the avails” if exploitation was involved.
Both sides appealed the ruling.
Advocates for sex workers say they hope the court will strike down all prostitution laws, giving women the means to protect themselves by hiring drivers or bodyguards and working legally in brothels.
But Falle, who gave testimony for the federal government when the case was before the lower courts, sees all forms of prostitution as exploitation that should eradicated.
“If it’s so great, why aren’t they bringing their sisters and their daughters in?” she says. “The more they say the women are there by choice, the harder it is for us to convince police, social workers and everyone else that these people are vulnerable.”
Abolitionists favour the so-called “Nordic model,” established by Sweden, which limits decriminalization to prostituted women and obliges authorities to treat them as victims of crimes perpetrated by pimps and johns. In Sweden, women caught in the trade are given help, but the men engaged in the selling or buying of sex are jailed.
Falle says her own descent from a comfortable middle-class life in Calgary to the streets shows how anyone can be trapped by the illusion of “choice.”
She slipped into prostitution after the breakup of her parents’ marriage. By 17, she was “in love” with a pimp, whom she married at age 23. She earned enough to buy him a Mercedes and a penthouse, Falle says, but he still beat her while profiting from her work on street corners and escort agencies.
“I had to believe it was my choice. That’s what keeps you alive each day,” she says. “But I don’t know anyone in the prostitution business who hasn’t ended up dead, in jail or on drugs.”
By 27, Falle managed to get out and earn a college degree in counselling assaulted women. She is now a professor in the Police Foundations program at Humber College.
She says Sextrade101 has helped more than 1,000 women — “and I haven’t met one who said: ‘This is what I want to do, this is where I want to be.’ ”
The program also runs workshops for police forces across the country.
“It’s essential that law enforcement see people like Natasha, survivors who have been in the game,” says Det. Thai Truong, of the York Regional Police drugs and vice unit. “They remind us that they are not just prostitutes or escorts, but they are somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister, somebody’s wife.”
Falle and her colleague Bridget Perrier worry that legalization of the business of prostitution could endanger more women, drawn into something they believe is inherently unsafe.
“Having a legal bawdy house is not going to make it any safer. You are still going to attract serial killers, rapists, perverts. Regardless of whether you have a pimp or a bodyguard, you are still subjected to all of the same violence when the act is happening,” Perrier says.
But the advocates for sex workers say the only way to reduce the violence against women is to take the trade out of the shadows and make it legal.
“It’s not plausible that Sextrade101 understands the desires and motivations of every sex worker in the world,” says Gallant. “I don’t feel that it’s fair or accurate or just for an organization to speak for the wishes of all sex workers. It’s just not consistent with global protocols on the health and safety of sex workers.”
The Supreme Court justices will likely take several months to consider their decision.
If the judges do strike down any or all parts of the prostitution sections of the Criminal Code they would almost certainly give the federal government some breathing room to come up with new laws.
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发表于 2013-6-14 17:08:18
