Lets get all his dosh first. I’m sure the CAB will want a little chat….

Absolutely and that money should be distributed evenly between the Rape Crisis Network, womens shelters, organisations dealing with sex traffic victims and of course, the women that suffered directly as a result of his actions.

Bravo!

Well done for associating this with the bailout.It’s obviously totally relevant….

Indeed Michael, let’s look.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2009/02/04/2003435180

Regards,
Andrew

@Andrew
That link really is the only argument you have, isn’t it?

I’m not sure that legalising prostitution would help the girls who are trafficked in. They are beaten, families threatened and made pay for their transport to Ireland by servicing men in brothels. This is layers of criminality, that would be below the radar of regulation. Even in the countries who have tried legalising it, illegal trafficking, controlling the girls with drug addiction and violence still occurs.

The most successful model worldwide seems to be the Swedish model of name and shame. The person availing of the services becomes the criminal, with part of the punishment being their name published. The one thing stopping these men exploiting the girls appears to be getting their name in the papers.

It was a great program. A lot of work went in, impressed with the database, the surveilence, the impersonations, and way they figured out where the girls were going and what was happening with the telephone numbers.

Then how do you make up the income you are taking away from independent prostitutes who are often utterly desperate?

Also, it would appear, even from the Swedish Governments own statistics, that their bizarre laws have not actually worked.

so its ok to be a prostitute and not to be a pimp!!! FAIL.

Mensah, it already is a crime to be a pimp, it’s just very hard to catch the guys at the top, the girls in the apartments are the ones who are currently getting the convictions.

Prostitution is da oldest job..every1 knows that..mojority of women think is sick…but how can u stop that when is most of them do it by choice..go to holland and it only cost €50 and is regulated..and those women are proud..

Mensah Mensah

” how can u stop that when is most of them do it by choice.”

Most women do not prostitute themselves by choice .There is always an underlying factor or factors.
Poverty , drug addiction, pimp,

Well here is an idea, why not criminalise poverty? (and good luck with that in deep recession)

Helen
I think that is the most terrifying thing ,that they were being moved around the country , in broad daylight and they too afraid to call for help. Horrible . ….and it is going on out there as we type/ read/

Well there is no way they are going to stop it so legalising it makes most sense.

It is rape afterall

It’s called the Vincent Browne show

Ion had a clean (at the time) person rent apartments on his behalf. Credit and employment checks were passed and copies of passports were attained.

They also used the PTRB to remain in an apartment following the discovery of what they were up to and spent over 4 1/2 months illegally squatting in an apartment.The landlord had to (under the 2004 statutes) proceed through the incredibly slow system to force an eviction. They used this system waiting until the end of each 21 day period to file objections etc. Even with mountains of evidence that a brothel was been run from the property the PTRB still did not rule under the Unsocial Behaviour provisions but concluded that they should leave because they had received ample notice.

absolutely yeah.
Whatever is driving the twee RTE ‘outrage’, the only expected outcome is ill-thought-out legislation with un-analysed consequences.
But this is Ireland – we can’t expect intelligent compassionate policy ….

Stellamarr…

I know Dublin Call Girl, like yourself (in in a remarkably similar style, must be because you are such close friends?) is actively campaigning for laws that will take away the income she should know women in prostitution need to survive, and couldn’t care less about what that will do to their lives..

I have already looked at your sites…I am not impressed either by your sincerity or your motivation.

I found prostitution to be a nightmare, but it was far, far better than not surviving at all, which was my only alternative…that is why I did it, and that is why I DEMAND other women should never have that last desperate resort taken away from them to indulge the selfish whims of others.

It would be so nice if that would work here, rather than just push the abuse into the backroom of a legal business, like in what happened in holland when they did that (as far as I understand)

Them the solution is in between the two…decriminalisation, which existed because of a constitutional challenge, between 1982 and 1993. During that time there was little to no pimping, violence or associated crime..

Prostitutes were still stigmatised and pilloried in the tabloids, it was still pretty horrible work to do, but far, far better than whatever alternative drove the individual women into it.

Brothels are a bad idea, because you cannot have a brothel without having some kind of pimp, and that establishes a bad precedent, but decriminalsation can be used to encourage independent prostitution instead.

It’s breathtaking! Look at the Magdalen laundries run by these very same religious orders who are now the trustees of the Ruhama and the Irish Immigration Council. Perhaps 30,000 women, many of them sex workers, were trafficked through their network. The last one was only shut down in 1996. Watch “Sinners”. In that film, we see that many of the so-called “fallen women” gave birth to their babies whilst in their Magdalene laundry prison. Then the babies were taken from them, often against their wishes. These babies were then given to “good Catholic families”.

We should learn from our own history, not import a zero-tolerance approach from Sweden. Incidentally, the Swedish Sex Purchase Act of 1999 was imported from the USA where, if I’m not mistaken, every US state (even Nevada, save for a few counties) bans the sale and purchase of sex as well as all other related activities. There have been “John Schools” in the USA since 1996 where men are “treated” for purchasing sex.

People will say that the situation is different in Sweden to US states. In Sweden, they’ll say only the purchase of sex is criminalized but the sale of sex isn’t. This is a distinction without a difference. By criminalizing the purchase of sex, livelihood is removed from all sex workers. Many are driven more into the shadows particularly vulnerable migrant workers. They may be deported if they present themselves to the police. They are exposed to a higher risk of violence from customers and criminal gangs and are exposed to a higher risk of catching STIs.

We need to adopt a harm reduction approach as is adopted in New Zealand. Let the sex workers unionize in the Republic of Ireland. Empower them. Give them their full human, civil, labour, legal, health and safety rights just as are given to all other workers. The Dutch and German approaches are flawed because their laws are crafted from the point of view of maintaining law and order. Instead, give street sex workers the right to solicit anywhere they like in the country. Allow brothels and smaller sex worker led cooperatives the right to set up anywhere in the country. Local authorities can then pass bylaws if they wish to regulate where the brothels and sex worker led and operated cooperatives can set up. Brothels will be subject to national registration and regulation requirements.

Give sex workers the benefit of the doubt. Assume they are law-abiding citizens just like any other category of citizen unless proven otherwise on an individual case-by-case basis. The police’s default job is to protect them not prosecute them. Let the sex workers have access to the courts where they can take and receive cases in their own name.

Make it a criminal offense for a John to refuse to wear a condom. Load the legal dice in favour of the sex worker in order to deter any would-be ugly mug from raising his hand in violence and intimidation against a sex worker. Provide hot lines between brothels and sex worker owned and operated cooperatives and the local police station so that they can phone in complaints against violent customers.

I am sure you have heard of Robert Pickton who for a number of years terrorized and murdered many vulnerable street workers and drug addicts in Vancouver. After he was finally caught, he bragged in prison that he killed 49 people. Sex workers who were physically abused by him but not murdered went to the police to complain about him. But because they were sex workers, their complaints were not taken seriously and Robert Pickton continued with his killing spree. In Canada, the situation relating to sex work is similar to the Republic of Ireland. The sale and purchase of sex is not prohibited but related surrounding activities are, such as soliciting, procuring, keeping a brothel or, bawdyhouse in Canada speak, and living off the avails of prostitution.

We ought to fully decriminalize and legalize prostitution in the Republic of Ireland (but not legalize in the German or Dutch sense). We ought to legalize in the New Zealand sense. Sex work is a profession and so we give sex workers their full civil, health, safety, human and legal rights like are given to all other workers.

Sex work is not going to go away with the wave of a legislative wand. Time to regulate and tax where possible. It’s time to recognize the profession officially without necessarily approving of it as an profession open to everyone. We recognize it but not promote it. There is a difference.

Frank Duff and his Legion of Mary successfully campaigned to shut down the Red light district of Monto in the 1920s. Ultimately, his zero tolerance and pseudo moral campaign didn’t work. Organized prostitution was removed but prostitution broadly was only driven underground. Organized prostitution re-emerged in the 1970s as the Republic of Ireland started to liberalize and open up particularly after our accession to the EEC.

Anyone who says that, with some amazing legislative sleight-of-hand prostitution can be wiped out, is an idiot. The Social Democratic party of Sweden that passed the Sex Purchase act in 1999 believed they could wipe out the sex industry. They were wrong. There was a renewed clampdown on the industry after 2008. Police stats between 2008 and 2010 show that across a broad category of sex related and trafficking related categories such as the purchase of sex with children and adults and trafficking for sexual and not sexual purposes there have been huge increases.

Sweden is selling a fantasy of itself to the world. Most of the rest of the world won’t be taken in.

Ditto guys…
*Paul you brought tears to my eyes with the breadth and detail of your insight
*Eamonn it’s actually a bit worse than that, because it is the Sisters of Charity and the Good Shepherd sisters who are the only trustee of Ruhama. The good Shepherd sisters did not close their last Magdalene laundry in Waterford until 1996…7 years after they founded Ruhama. They actually had Nuns who had worked in a laundries involved in setting it up.

In terms of supporting or caring for women in prostitution it is one big sham, always was, always will be.