[SWAF-Potluck] Vancouver sex-trade workers no safer under proposed laws: study

[Andy Sorfleet]

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/
BC CTV NEWS
Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Tamsyn Burgmann, The Canadian Press



Vancouver sex-trade workers no safer under proposed laws: study

[photo caption]
The study found that Vancouver sex workers could not screen clients
and were pushed to isolated spaces without police protection. (File
photo/CTV)

VANCOUVER -- Odd nighttime hours, secluded areas of the city and a
pervasive reluctance to report safety concerns were all conditions a
Vancouver woman who calls herself Chili Bean used to face on the job.

The retired sex worker's concerns were addressed when Canada's highest
court ruled last fall that the laws perpetuating the risky work
atmosphere for those in the sex trade violates their Charter Rights.
But now she worries new laws about to be unveiled by the federal
government won't be an improvement.

A study published Tuesday out of British Columbia has concluded that
even when Vancouver police targeted just clients of prostitution and
pimps with arrests, city sex workers endured virtually the same rates
of physical and sexual violence.

"The old laws made sex work dangerous for myself and other workers,"
said Chili Bean. "What I don't want now is to see us go back to the
same dangerous situation."

Justice Minister Peter MacKay said earlier this week the forthcoming
legislation intends to take a Made-in-Canada approach to protecting
vulnerable individuals and shield them from exploitation. But MacKay
said buying sex will still be illegal.

Katrina Pacey, a lawyer with Pivot Legal Society, which published a
complementary legal analysis also released Tuesday, said the minister
is glossing over an enormous body of evidence that contradicts the
conclusion that the new bill will protect vulnerable sex workers.

"This government is about to propose legislation that is speaking to a
law-and-order agenda and is not consistent with human rights or with
the leading evidence," she said.

Advocates and the study's authors are calling on the government to
acknowledge their findings and reconsider new prostitution legislation
that is expected as early as Wednesday. They argue the current
policing approach in Vancouver is not making women safer and that the
reality-based example should be applied to the new regulations.
It was prompted after the Supreme Court of Canada ordered the
government to craft new measures around the sale of sex when it struck
down the current provisions in December 2013. The ruling found the
laws didn't uphold sex worker's constitutional guarantee of life,
liberty and security.

Lawyers are already preparing to take the government back to court,
based on the expectation the new legislation will not stand up to
constitutional scrutiny, Pacey said.

MacKay's press secretary declined an interview and said she will
address more questions after the legislation is revealed.

The main study was expedited for publication in the online British
Medical Journal Open ahead of the expected bill. Its authors examined
statistics and interviewed 31 street-based sex workers about their
experiences following the Vancouver Police Department's decision to
install new enforcement guidelines in January 2013.

The new policy saw a jump of 71 arrests of mainly sex-worker clients
last year from 47 in 2012. But rates of work-related physical and
sexual violence were nearly unchanged, with a quarter of the sex
workers facing harm in the years before and after the policy change.

The study found that the key issues unresolved by only targeting
clients were that sex workers in Vancouver remained unable to screen
or negotiate with clients, that they were pushed to work in isolated
spaces and were unable to access police protection.

A spokesman for the Vancouver Police Department said a carefully
analysis of the study was needed before making any comment.

Decriminalizing prostitution is the only approach that will protect
women, said Dr. Kate Shannon, the study's senior author, who works for
the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

"The criminalization of the purchasing of sex in Canada really risks
recreating the same harms that we've heard over the last two decades
of missing and murdered women," she said.

There's been at least three murders of sex-workers in B.C. over the
past year, she said, and 11 homicides remain unsolved over the past
ten years.

Further, the country most closely resembling Canada's incoming law,
Sweden, which pioneered the so-called "Nordic" model, has had a
documented increase in violence against sex workers and no declining
demand for the industry over 15 years, said Kerry Porth, who's also
with Pivot.

"It hasn't worked in other countries and it won't work here," Porth
said. "Sex workers will continue to die."