Did you take your complaint up with the quango in question before lodging it with the BAI?

I’m sure the victims of trafficking appreciate your views.

Kevin, I wrote to Newstalk twice about the ad, but they never responded. After over three weeks of silence from them, I forwarded my complaint to the BAI.

I didn’t write to the Turn Off the Red Light Campaign, since my objection was more with Newstalk broadcasting the ad. With hindsight, though, I should have CC’ed the Campaign too. My mistake. To be honest, I never thought of it, since my problem was less with them, and more with the broadcaster.

Indeed, Pidge, they have a political objective in mind. They also advertise because they are unwilling to debate on political shows their political stance with opponents such as those of the Turn Off The Blue Light campaign which seeks to decriminalize the sex work industry in the Republic of Ireland.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Fair play to you for having the courage to come forward, admit that you were the one that complained and explaining in detail why you took that course of action.

Also in that advertisement, the Immigrant Council of Ireland claims that it seeks to decriminalize people who are forced to sell sex. This is a flagrant lie. At present, both the purchase and sale of sex is legal in the Republic of Ireland. Surrounding activities are criminalized such as keeping a brothel, soliciting, procuring, living off the avails of prostitution and so on.

Paul, sorry, but I don’t think that’s fair. The Turn Off the Red Light Campaign has been fairly active, and I’ve heard speakers from the campaign on the radio once or twice. The Campaign has been a fairly decent one, as far as I can tell.

The problem, to my mind, in NewsTalk, not the Immigrant Council or the Campaign. NewsTalk should know the Broadcasting Act, and know that this sort of ad is against the law. When I complained to NewsTalk (fairly politely and reasonably, I think) I didn’t even get an acknowledgement to either of my two emails. I think they’re the ones at fault here, not really the Campaign.

Kevin: Does this quango receive taxpayers’ money? If so, I suggest that be stopped until it stops its political campaigning.

By quango, I mean the Immigrant Council of Ireland.

Pidge: What is unfair about my criticism? They say on the ad: “The only solution is to penalize people who buy sex, and decriminalize those who are forced to sell themselves”.

Leaving aside the fact that the vast majority of sex workers are not forced to sell sex, that statement is factually accurate.

Fact is, at present, both the sale and purchase of sex is legal in the Republic of Ireland.

One cannot decriminalize something that is already legal.

Typo: I meant to write “that statement is factually inaccurate”

Pidge: Are the spokespersons of the Immigrant Council of Ireland debating on the radio why we need a Sweden Style Sex Purchase Act, where the purchase of sex is criminalized (and thus livelihood removed from the sex workers), with actual sex workers?

While I agree with the content of the ad (no one chooses to make a “career” of living in some dingy house in Longford and every day “servicing” a stream of pathetic Irish men who can’t get a woman – The Swedish law has been very successful in reducing prostitution and the exploitation of women).

…but it pains me to say that the BAI are right and the content was political…

SaintRuth: Not true. Prostitution and human trafficking for sexual purposes and other purposes has skyrocketed since the Swedish Sex Purchase Act was introduced in 1999.

That’s according to the Swedish police.

http://feministire.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/swedish-police-stats-show-more-not-less-prostitution-and-trafficking/

@Paul, I think he meant it’s unfair that you said they make ads rather than debate. To be honest, it feels like this issue is constantly being debated recently.

Well done Pidge.

In the USA, they take things a step further by also criminalizing the sale of sex. There’s a “War Against Prostitution” going on in the USA that the Turn Off The Red light campaign are reluctant to tell you about.

There are plenty of other wars going on in the USA and conducted by the USA abroad that are better known such as “The War on Drugs”, “The War Against Mexicans” (their border fence), “The War Against Terror” (meaning the terror directed against the US but not the terror perpetrated by the US government). I also like to call the US government’s “War Against Terror”, “The War Against International Law and the UN Charter”.

The “War Against Prostitution” is similar to these other wars in that it can never be won.

Paul, now that website can hardly be construed as objective.

Here:
http://www.thelocal.se/27580/20100703/

“While the law punishing the client rather than the prostitute may not have caused a dramatic drop in prostitution as a whole, its true triumph, according to the report, is that “street prostitution in Sweden has been halved.”

I lived in Stockholm for several years and I also lived in Amsterdam for a few months. I hope Dublin ends up like Stockholm.

SaintRuth: That blog update is analyzing a Swedish police report which shows that prostitution, human trafficking for sexual purposes and human trafficking for other purposes has skyrocketed between 2008 and 2010 alone.

That thelocal.se report is on a self-congratulalory Swedish government report from 2010 that claimed that street prostitution had halved. Since the government implements the law, naturally they’re going to try to justify it. It claims that the scale of Internet initated prostitution is greater in neighbouring countries. How does the Swedish government know?

Purchase of sex is criminalized in Sweden, Norway and Iceland.

Both the purchase of sex and the sale of sex is criminalized in the USA.

The 1999 Swedish Sex Purchase Act is merely the candy version of the US law, as implemented in all 50 US states.

The effect of the Swedish law is the same as the US version. If you criminalize the purchase of sex, you take away livelihood from sex workers and therefore sex workers are forced out of the industry. The raisin d’être of the Swedish Sex purchase act is to destroy the prostitution industry in Sweden. That is exactly what the US government wants to do in the US. It is an unwinnable war.

The ad was extremelly untruthful and demeaning to sex workers who are real people who exist with lives, and minds of their own outside of the Turn Off the Red Light campaign who’s only real objective is to do them harm and make their lives far more difficult than they need to be (that’s why they have to misrepresent sex workers, to minimise the amount of people who see through what they are doing and object.).

But, apart from that, I can see the bigger picture of why the complaint was made. Somebody had to draw a line, otherwise you would be opening the door to, for example, the Church of Scientology buying air time to advertise it’s beliefs as facts.

Can’t believe the amount of red thumbs on some of the comments. How many people actually talk to and listen to real sex workers on these issues I wonder? Or do they just make an opinion based on what they imagine sex work to be like and who enters into it?

I’m very grateful to Pidge for sending in the complaint and he was right to do it.

Thry just say whatever they feel like Eleen and invent “survivors” to back it up. As for the red thumbs they have quite a team to take down anyone they do not like. The smear campaigns are only mighty.

(You should see Ruhama on twitter late at night, gives a whole new meaning to the word “immature”.)

They just forgot one thing, The people with power and influence are a lot more grown up than they are and have been seeing through this nonsense, and trying to talk to real sexworkers (independent of their “intercession”) all along.

That’s good news at least.

I’m only just getting my head around how awful Ruhama and this campaign are…talk about exploiting vulnerable people, jesus.

I totally agree Anne…the single, biggest problem that will drive more people into sex work is the recent change to welfare payments and conditions for single parents.

When you legislate to force a single parent to work full time before her child can be left alone, you force her to find child care, and it is many times easier to find childcare that is adequate for a couple of days or evenings, than it is to find adequate regular, full time childcare. It also costs less.

Special needs childcare prices are astronomical (€15+ ph), and this applies whether the DSP considers the parent worthy of carers and DCA or not.

Cuts are leaving people in impossible positions.In the current situation I d not think there is any way to avoid that entirely.

Sex work expands whenever the state leaves people in an impossible position and should probably be studied as a barometer of that rather than something to be shut down, because sex work is often the last resort when the state has failed.

When that happens, the least the state can do is leave people in peace to do whatever benign thing they can to save themselves…and that should always have a clear priority over fine tuning fads in “women’s issues”.

It wasn’t “an informative campaign” it was propaganda and wall to wall fiction.

Eileen, you’re right.

Anne: I’ve already given you a reliable source. The Swedish police!

Pimping and aggravated procuring – up 136% between 2008 and 2010.
Human trafficking for sexual purposes – up 106% between 2008 and 2010.
Human trafficking for other purposes – up 563% between 2008 and 2010
Purchase of sexual services – up 569% between 2008 and 2010.
Purchase of sexual acts by children – up 402%

Source:

http://polisen.se/Global/www%20och%20Intrapolis/Rapporter-utredningar/01%20Polisen%20nationellt/Organiserad%20brottslighet/slutredovisning_prostit_manniskohandel.pdf

The Swedish Sex Purchase Act was introduced in 1999.

The New Zealand route is the way to go. Give sex workers their health, safety, human, civil and labour rights on a par with all other workers. By empowering them, we protect them. It’s not rocket science. In 2009, for example, a police officer was jailed for blackmailing a sex worker into giving him free sex. Also, by New Zealand law, a sex worker has a legal right to refuse to have sex with a client who refuses to wear a condom. I could go on…

The 1999 Swedish Sex Purchase Act, aside from being a stupid law, is also an impotent law. As I understand it, it provides for prison sentences of up to 6 months for anyone who purchases sex. As of 2010, no one had gone to prison yet despite over 600 at that stage, if memory serves, being convicted of purchasing sex under the act.

Anne, last week the gardai raided over 100 premises used by sex workers.They did not find one single suspected victim of trafficking, so, it would seem, the problem has been much exaggerated after all.

Every woman in sex worker is a woman with a *job* and a decent income. This is what happens to people with no jobs and no money in a recession:
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/06/02/greek-crisis-spurs-epidemic-of-suicides-mental-illness/

I do not see why 1 – 2000 Irish sex workers should be forced into similar hardship and despair to gratify you and your colleagues.

However, none of this is relevant at all the the fact that it is unlawful to broadcast advertising with a political agenda. It is also unlawful to broadcast deliberately misleading advertising, which would also apply in this instance.

The intent of the Swedish Sex purchase is the same as the prostitution laws in all 50 US states – to eliminate prostitution. It was introduced in Sweden in 1999 when most US states had already criminalized both the sale and purchase of sex. The US law, in my view, was the main influence for the Swedish law.

Responsible government should manage the sex work industry and empower sex workers not seek to eliminate the industry.

Hi Anne, it’s not true that those who oppose the Swedish law are silent about the Netherlands. I have looked at the official Dutch figures here:

http://feministire.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/sex-trafficking-in-the-netherlands-should-we-believe-the-hype/

While Laura Agustín looked at the official German figures here:

http://www.lauraagustin.com/numbers-of-trafficking-victims-fall-in-germany

I’m sure you don’t consider myself or her reliable sources, but these are the official numbers, we’re not making them up :)

Also, if you read materials from before the Swedish law was introduced you will see that there were plenty of reports already about their low rate of prostitution relative to other countries. Richard Posner for example wrote about this in his law and economics book in the mid 1990s. To the extent that it is true (and measuring these things is always difficult), it was also true before the law and so cannot be attributed to the law.

Wendy:
I am very sorry but I can’t use the figures from feministire for anything at all – I don’t know why you bring it here – I have seen the real figs and report from the National rapporteur in human trafficking and I acctually read the police reports and whatelse they bring about prostitution i Netherlands – so feministires figures are not what I call a reliable sourche.
As I know you are one of the feministire I would surgess that yoy read a lot more about the Netherlands before you make such kind of analyse another time. The trafficked women in the Netherlands and Germany are real human beings – not figures you can manipulate with. Acctually I have read some of the policereport Schone Schijn about the situation in the Red Light District – it told a bit of what the traffickers do to the women – and because I know what they do to the women it makes me angry when people like you and others try to manipulate with the truth.

And Laura Agustín “analyzes of the German figures – she can’t hardly be called neutral in her “research” as she has been active in IUSW. She has seriously stated that trafficked women by them self choose to be locked up by traffickers and the trafficked women are living in a cosmopolitan world where they meet a lot of interesting people. Frankly, that kind of “research” I can not take seriously. I know policeofficers who has spend more than 10 years working with trafficked women and their stories don’t really match Laura Agustins pink picture of the trafficked women.

Paul Carr: Figures and statistics are very greathful to work whit. When the figures rise from 1 to 2 persons it’s a rise of 100 % – so the “enormously” rise in your figures has to be seen in the right perspective. So when you blow a figure up to enormously highs you should probably see it and compare it with other countries as Denmark, Netherlands and Germany.
You don’t even compare the figures with the Danish figures eventhough Denmark and Sweden are very close and very similar to each other.
Copenhagen has got 3-4 times more street prostitution than Stockholm.

By the way – why are you so affraid of a sexbuyer ban? Don’t tell me that you have any concern of the women caught in prostitution – if yoy did have any concerns, you would listen to the survivors. They know what they are talking about and they don’t have any financial interest in the sexindustry anymore in opposite to madames, pimps, escort services owners and other nice people in the sex industry do have.

You mention New Zealand – they do have all the problems – real problems – with violence – the only difference between before the law and after is, that now the prostitutes can go to the police and report violence – but it has not changed the customers behaviour – they are still violent, health problems, stigma, murder – women in prostitution are still murdered in New Zealand, trafficking, street prostitution and more important childprostitution. Childprostitution is a serious problem in New Zealand.
The organised crime gangs from esp. China owns brothels and imports women from China to New Zealand. These women don’t use condoms, because they earns more money when the customers buy sex without condoms. And the brothels are perfect shelters for money laundry. You should read the police reports.

And the citizens who have to live with the sexindustry every day and night litterally at their doorsteps, are sicka and tired of the prostitutes and their customers. So right now the Parliament in New Zealand are discussing a new legislation which will be able to give the power back to the cities so that they can remove prostitution from the suburbans and inner city. They don’t want it anymore.

Anne,

Let us get this fiction out of the water please. There are no real figures coming out of Sweden in support of the “Swedish Model” in any sense, only PR and heavily spun hype that falls apart at a casual glance.

But let’s go deeper than that shall we?

***
By the way – why are you so affraid of a sexbuyer ban? Don’t tell me that you have any concern of the women caught in prostitution – if yoy did have any concerns, you would listen to the survivors. They know what they are talking about and they don’t have any financial interest in the sexindustry anymore in opposite to madames, pimps, escort services owners and other nice people in the sex industry do have.
***

A “sexbuyer ban” will take away the incomes of sex workers.It is intended to eradicate their livelihood.

This is a recession, no-one can afford to have their livelihood arbitrarily cancelled in a recession, the will never find other work for years, and welfare provisions are being constantly cut back to the point where many are already below subsistance.

I was, formerly an ordinary, decent sexworker, and like many ordinary decent sexworkers who have moved on with their lives rather than a handful of people (who have often never been sex workers in the first place) who are fighting to cash in on the prohibitionist agenda for attention and gain, I thank heavens sex work was available to me, because without it there is absolutely no way I could have survived.

I resent your conviction that my life, and the lives of anyone like me should be sacrificed to your fad ideology. Distress and desperation only matter to you as long as you can use them.

But this is not all about me and people like me. What about the many other ordinary decent sex workers who are grateful that sex work is available to them to provide them with more and better choices for themselves and their families? Don’t they matter? Of course they don’t, because they are of no use to you.

The one thing we all have in common is that, as intelligent, thinking human beings we all resent your insistence that you know more about our needs and the way our minds work than we do.

Last time we dialogued you were claiming to be pleading with current sex workers to support the loss of their income for the sake of former sexworkers who were suicidal with PTSD (who could easily be helped without the slightest need for a “sexvbuyers ban” to punish other sexworkers) today the true clours show and you are just “sick and tired of prostitutes and their clients”.

So stay away from us in future.

Anne, the figures in my piece ARE the National Rapporteur’s figures. Laura Agustin’s piece cites German government figures. There are links there for you to verify them, if you wish.

Anne: You asked for a reliable source. I gave you one. The official Swedish police report, published in February 2011, which shows, in the space of just 2 years, significant increases in sex and trafficking offenses across the board; pimping and aggravating procuring, human trafficking for sexual purposes and other purposes, the purchase of sexual services and the purchase of sexual acts by children. And these astronomical increases have taken place after the Sex Purchase Act had already been on the statute book for 9 years. You now appear to be dismissing the Swedish police report.

http://polisen.se/Global/www%20och%20Intrapolis/Rapporter-utredningar/01%20Polisen%20nationellt/Organiserad%20brottslighet/slutredovisning_prostit_manniskohandel.pdf

This police report should be translated into all the official languages of the world so that legislatures the world over can contemplate what a complete failure the Swedish Sex Purchase Act has been .

Pye Jacobsson, Swedish Sex Worker and Sex Worker Activist, points out in this 2009 interview, street prostitution has always been low in Sweden before and after the Swedish Sex Purchase Act came into being……because it is cold!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D7nOh57-I8

Stockholm, for example, is two thirds of the way up to the North Pole from the Equator. Summers are short. Many Street Sex Workers move indoors.

As for New Zealand, I see no evidence that New Zealand’s National Party led government is seeking to repeal New Zealand’s 2003 Prostitution Reform Act. There is a proposed bylaw being discussed by the New Zealand parliament, presently in a Select Committee due to report back at the end of July, which if enacted, will allow Auckland city council to zone certain areas of the city where street sex workers cannot operate. Even if this bylaw is passed, Auckland city council won’t be able to zone off the entire city as off-limits to street sex workers.

Hopefully, this bylaw is not passed. People need to learn to get on with one another. Informal agreements should be forged and enforced between sex worker representatives and local residents’ boards. Apparently, last year, in South Auckland, some local residents were complaining that prostitutes were disturbing the peace in Hunter’s Corner and Sutton Crescent this year. Sex Workers and their Representatives had already agreed not to work in this areas during normal business hours but Sex Workers also live in these areas, do their shopping there and pay their bills there. An informal agreement can be worked out and enforced provided a little toleration is displayed by both sides.

As yhou bring it up Paul, let me point out that any call for “decriminalisation” is focussed on Street Work, which was recriminalised in 1993 with, what even Ruhama admit, are disasterous results:

Presentation to the Oireachtas Justice Committee
On 23rd May 2006
By Kathleen Fahy, Director of Ruhama

“There have been huge changes within the sex industry since 1989. For a number of years the majority of women we worked with were in street prostitution, with most of them operating for themselves, with no involvement of serious criminal gangs. While brothels were in existence their prevalence was much less than today. Encounters with non national women were extremely rare.”

“Information technology and newer forms of communication, (mobile phones/ internet advertising escort agencies etc) are replacing streetwalking as a way of making contact with clients. This makes it easier for pimps and procurers to operate, and renders an already secretive trade even more invisible”

Of course, street work did not go away, and surely we have finally proved, it could only be beneficial to everyone to decriminalise it again?

Even so, sex workers are mere mortals, and tend to behave as such. I do not think indiscriminate decriminalisation of street work combined with informal agreements could ever be made to work here at all. Sex workers do not function as co-operatives and have leaders. As they are also in competition it would always be a very bad idea to have zone compliance, effectively, policed by sex workers.

It would be far better to specify the creation of flexible exemption zones from the existing provisions.

Chosen wisely, these exemption zones could be very positive things:
*Additional late night security for premises
*Additional late night safety for people
*Traffic calming

The location of these zones could be determined by the Gardai.

Eileen: you write: “Sex workers do not function as co-operatives and have leaders. “.

Well, they should. If they can function as a co-operative in New Zealand, I don’t see why they can’t function as a co-operative in the Republic of Ireland.

I can’t agree there Paul.

It might work among indoor, elective sex workers, but I cannot see it working on the streets. Sex workers are competitors as well as colleagues. On the streets they are mostly survival and crisis workers, with a lot at stake, and the various points of conflict of interest are huge.

Crisis and survival sex workers are often in sex work as a last resort, because all their alternatives are genuinely far worse. This is why there is no justification whatsoever for making their lives any harder, as legislation has consistently done since 1993. But it also means that they remain reluctant to commit to any aspects of sex work, or form ties with the sex industry and other workers. They want to get out as fast as possible and as thoroughly as possible. This is at the root of why any attempt to coerce women out of survival and crisis sex work, whether by persecution, or destroying the market they depend upon, is not only doomed to failure but also cruelly abusive.

If they had any alternative at all they just would not be there. They haven’t “missed something” because they are children of a lesser god, or not adequately qualified in “women’s studies” – they really would not be there if they had a better alternative, and they will not be there as soon as a better alternative presents itself. But that does give them a marked aversion to seeking or adopting a collective identity. I am not sure any of them can afford exposure as a “sex workers leader”.

(This is one of the reasons why it has been possible for an organisation to appoint itself to represent them, not only without mandate, but against their wishes without any kind of outcry. )

I am afraid that statement is a completely left of field misrepresentation I have never heard them come out with before today, but it always boils down to the same thing:

They want to take away the income of every sex worker in the country in the middle of deep recession. Many of those women will not be able to find other work for many years. Some have no access to an adequate source of alternative income, some have no alternative source of income available at all.

If they succeed in this they will also be petitioning for more funds to “support” these women who have understandably enough, never wanted anything to do with them, so that they can continue to pay themselves generous salaries from the public purse.

What happens to the sex workers, and their families, simply does not seem to matter to them at all.

Also, I don’t get what legal loophole they’re talking about? Selling and buying sex is legal, there is no loophole.

Well Paul, I can tell you that all surviving members of “Turn Off the Blue Light” will be partying in the trenches until the small hours, because, whatever the intent, this amounts to a significant blow to the organisations that are spending so much time and state funding on trying to take away the income of other women, in a recession.

Who wouldn’t be thrilled to bits to find tat the law is willing and able to protect you from being the target of a campaign of demeaning lies, from and organisation that still obtains funding on the pretence of offering you help and support?

Sex workers are not made of rubber and this campaign was deeply hurtful.

Hi Paul, The above article includes comments from the Immigrant Council of Ireland because the topic of the article is the BAI’s decision to uphold a complaint against one of their ads. The complaint did not concern any other campaign.

Susan: But in your article you mention that the Immigrant Council of Ireland are part of the wider Turn Off The Red light campaign which seeks to outlaw the purchase of sex and thus ban prostitution altogether. Therefore, it seems appropriate to me that you also include an opinion from the rival Turn Off The Blue light campaign on the BAI ruling. The Turn Off The Blue light campaign seeks to decriminalize the adult sex work industry.

I’d say Susan wanted to keep it from descending into yet another Journal article into the pros and cons of the two campaigns. I don’t think it’s relevant, as she didn’t set out the campaigns arguments or do anything but really not that it exists and a half-sentence about it’s aim.

What’s really missing is a quote from Pidge. ;-)

Sorry Susan, and Nick, but, unlike you, the ICI and Turn Off the Red Light I *DO* think the views of the people this campaign is working against (and I am only interested in reality, not ridiculous “1984″ style claims) count.

Well, that’s not what the complaint was about, the person who brought it has said. You have an opinion, but that doesn’t mean Susan’s journalism is somehow incomplete.

No the fact that she has missed out so many significant facts mean the story is incomplete.

If they’re migrant women without the right to live or work in this country, they get deported.

Think they welcomed the raids?

One of the things that keeps me awake at night Wendy is that they are “rescuing” these women, and sending them straight back into a nightmare.

Some of these women have been “trafficked” with their consent by their entire extended family because so many of them have no source of income at all. Some of the women they are celebrating putting on a plane “home” will not be alive within 12 months.

Sometimes the world really *IS* that brutal and cruel, and when it is, you are living in a parallel universe, fighting for basic survival. ALL those women deserve compassionate leave to remain, and the wages from MacDonalds will not be enough to do any good for the family left behind. I accept you have to draw the line somewhere…but the last thing you need is a self satisfying, deluded do-gooder smashing your life into the ground in the name of rescue, simpering and telling you it is for your own good.

The Immigrant Council of Ireland, as part of the Turn of the Red Light campaign, want a Sweden style sex purchase act introduced in the Republic of Ireland where the purchase of sex is criminalized. Naturally, they cannot explicitly mention that in the ad as then it would unambiguously violate broadcasting rules against political advertising.

Hi Adrian, I posted a link to the ad in my post above. The purpose of the ad is to get a change in the law, where those who pay for sex are criminalised, and sex workers aren’t. The change in the law is the political objective.

All other considerations aside Pidge, I haven’t a notion how they ever got the idea that kind of legislative change could ever be described as “closing a loophole”..

What in heaven’s name is the difference between “changing the law” and “closing a loophole in legislation”?! I figure the Immigrant Council of Ireland’s Nusha Yankova had her Murphy’s Law hat on at the time she made that remark to thejournal.ie.

Don’t know if I can post a link but if I can, apparently they saw it as much more than “closing a loophole” in April:

http://www.immigrantcouncil.ie/media/press-releases/545-government-must-set-timeline-for-reform-of-sex-laws

Anne, they are the real figures from the National Rapporteur. I’ve provided the link so you can see that for yourself. I’ve also explained in detail how I came to my conclusions. Perhaps, instead of repeatedly insisting that I am wrong, you could point out exactly what errors you think I have made.

At no time did I say it was not possible to be a trafficking victim in your own country. This is what I said:

‘It is true that trafficking can occur within state borders, but it’s fairly unusual for a state to recognise its own nationals as trafficking victims, at least on such a wide scale….One possibility could lie in the Dutch definition of trafficking, which to my reading is extraordinarily broad. The UN definition is often said to boil down to “movement, control and exploitation”; however, the Dutch law allows for convictions without any “movement” element at all, within or across state borders. Note Article 1.1.6, which defines a trafficker as anyone who “wilfully profits from the exploitation of another person”.’

In other words, the Netherlands is defining people as “trafficked” who would probably not be defined as “trafficked” in other countries, even if they were in the same situation. This is just one of the reasons it is not possible to make accurate cross-country comparisons about trafficking on the basis of official trafficking figures. You can only do that if both sets of figures are measuring the same thing, and they aren’t. That’s something a first-year research student would learn.

I’d also point you to Julia O’Connell Davidson and Bridget Anderson’s research piece on the relationship between demand and trafficking. It’s much more complex than you suggest.

The demand isn’t going to go away though, you know? It’s just going to be pushed deep underground. Women will still sex sell, people will still be trafficked, they will be afforded a lot less security because everything will have to be even more shady.

There will be less people buying sex because they’ll be scared away – wouldn’t that just mean that sex workers will have to take bigger risks to attract customers? And that there’ll be more people (women especially) without a way to make good money and make a decent life for themselves?

Can’t there be a way for sex work to be legal and regulated and for there to be no more stigma attached to it so everything can be more open? I mean, that doesn’t mean it has to be an industry that follows the exploitative models of other industries does it?

I have a better idea, why not pour all available resources into the women who genuinely want to exit sex work – and leave the women who don’t mind staying there alone?

That gives everybody the best possible chance of making it through the recession with a real future.

A

According to Swedish sex worker and sex worker representative, Pye Jacobsson, in this 2009 interview, Swedish social services don’t give any money to women who seek to exit sex work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D7nOh57-I8

I have been instructed by a fan of “The Swedish Model” that the intention is that sex workers who wish to “exit” should be able to obtain the money to do so by suing former clients for damages.

To me this is morally reprehensible.

As a sex worker, I freely chose to market sexual services to my clients in return for an agreed price. I cannot turn around and sue them for the non-existant destructive effects of abuse that did not happen…honestly? I would rather die than live with something so wrong on my conscience, and yet, the implication is that the only way I would be able to get the money I needed would be to perjure myself and abuse my former clients…or start to develop false memories.

Well more accurately what Pye Jacobsson said was that the Swedish government doesn’t give any money to social resources which can, in turn, set up exit programs for sex workers and provide specially trained social workers and so on.

I know Paul, the above was just the abolitionist answer when challenged about that…which, to me would be beyond the most disgusting form of moral blackmail as it even infringes upon personal opinions and freedom of conscience.

To me, the reality Pye states in the video is just a statement of the glaringly obvious. There is no money for such resources, but, if the state decides to legislate away a perfectly legal means of livelihood those affected have every right to demand, and expect, compensation. There is little or no chance of alternative employment for the forseeable future and whatever issues motivated survival and crisis sex workers are unlikely to spontaneously evaporate.

What happened in ’93 is that the formerly free, independent street workers were driven wholesale into the hands of organised crime and punitive agency rates in a manner that did not even begin to evolve and stabilise for another 10 years.

The only resource available to sex workers who want out at all is Ruhama, and who, in their right minds, is going to place their life at the mercy of a ruthless adversary when they are vulnerable?