Published in Tribune, 16 February 2008

http://www.compassonline.org.uk/article.asp?n=1343

Accused: British legal system that fails to protect women

Lisa Longstaff says failings of the law and reluctance to apply it let violent men off the hook and leave women vulnerable

RICHARD SCORER (Tribune January 25) suggested the Government should criminalise the buying of sex. Women Against Rape says prosecuting clients is a diversion from prosecuting violent men.

In 2006, in response to the murders of five Ipswich women, WAR joined the Safety First Coalition set up by the English Collective of Prostitutes. It brought us together with bereaved families, Ipswich residents and local campaigners to demand safety as the priority and the decriminalisation of prostitution.

There is a widespread refusal in the criminal justice system to act against violent men. The statistics are damning: just 5.6 per cent of recorded rapes reach conviction and a third of reported rapes are not even recorded as crimes.

Sex workers, like others who report sexual violence, confront the prejudices of police, prosecutors and judges. It is common for evidence not to be collected, a case to be inefficiently presented in court and for the key witness – the woman – to be denied the chance to tell the jury what she has suffered.

It’s easier and better for crime figures, to arrest women for loitering, soliciting or anti-social behaviour and their clients for kerb-crawling than pursue those who are truly violent.
Whatever our profession or behaviour, women remain vulnerable to violent men. Such men know whom it is relatively safe to attack: partners and children. And sex workers. They know criminalisation prevents women from coming forward and discredits us when we do.

Toni Cole approached WAR in 1993. She had been raped two years previously by a client while working for an escort agency. The policewoman she reported it to said it was “unfortunate, but as it was my word against his – and I was a sex worker – no one would believe me.”

Toni insisted on making a statement, because she feared the man would attack others. Nine months later, he raped another escort. The police were now ready to act, but the Crown Prosecution Service was not. So, with the help of the ECP, Legal Action for Women and WAR, the two women brought the first private prosecution for rape in England and Wales. In 1995, a dangerous serial rapist was convicted on evidence the CPS had dismissed as “insufficient”. It subsequently emerged that this man had previously been given a six month prison sentence for trying to kidnap a 17-year-old. The police suspected he had attacked many more women. Some may not have survived. He got 14 years, reduced to 11 on appeal. He served seven.

Toni says: “Because of the instruments he used to torture me, I had to have a hysterectomy, couldn’t work or look after my children and my marriage eventually broke down. The trial was a terrible ordeal, but was made bearable by the fact that our legal team prepared and presented the case extremely well. Our lawyers believed in us and treated us in a non-judgmental manner. The evidence was meticulously presented and both our husbands were called as witnesses. All prejudices were confronted at the start of the trial and the jury was encouraged not to give in to them. Why can’t CPS barristers do that?”

Another sex worker who came to us for help had been kidnapped and tied up in the back of a van. A taxi driver came to help her when he heard her cries. The police refused to arrest her attacker.

Richard Scorer claims criminalising men who buy sex would protect victims of trafficking and drug abuse. But would it? There are enough laws to protect us from rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, extortion, racist attacks and domestic violence. Why are they not applied? Why are youngsters who want to get off drugs denied resources and support? Why are children who come out of care offered no help?

Judges tell juries: “Convict or acquit only on the facts that are presented to you.” But if the facts are not presented, or are presented partially and unconvincingly, how can juries be expected to convict? And if juries are prejudiced, it is surely the job of the court – especially the judge – to undermine and overcome rather than encourage their prejudices.

Under pressure for letting thousands of rapists off the hook, the Government is diverting the focus to prostitution and clients. WAR led the 15-year campaign for rape in marriage to be legally recognised as a crime. We believe that, in marriage or prostitution, consent is the issue. Is a wife more consenting than a sex worker when she allows sex with her husband in order to keep a roof over her children’s heads? Should we ban marriage? Or should wives and prostitutes be able to prosecute their attacker, whether he is a husband or client? This is a fundamental principle of the anti-rape movement: whoever we are, whatever our relationship to the attacker, we have the right to decide what we do with our own bodies and for justice and protection whenever that right is violated.

On January 16, the Safety First Coalition held a packed meeting in the House of Commons, hosted by Labour MP John McDonnell and Baroness Stern, against the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. This legislation introduces offences of persistent soliciting and the forced “rehabilitation” of prostitutes. One ex-sex worker spoke forcefully: “Trafficking is about slavery, not prostitution. Slaves do a lot of different things – domestic work, cockle picking – yet no one is proposing we ban the sale of cockles.”

Pye Jakobson, a sex worker from Sweden, said that, when men were criminalised there, prostitution was forced underground. Women in Sweden are now more afraid than ever to report attacks and pimping has flourished.

Catherine Healey, a New Zealand government advisor on prostitution, said decriminalising prostitution in her country has made it safer for women to work and easier to leave prostitution. And men are less afraid to report the trafficking of women to the authorities.

In Britain, a group of anti-prostitution feminists has joined forces with church groups hostile to extra-marital and gay sex. With their support, the Home Office has imposed anti-trafficking laws which deliberately conflate immigrants who have come to this country for a better life with trafficked women. No force or coercion need be shown to prove trafficking, so anyone who brings a friend or relative to this country to work with them can be regarded as a trafficker.

At the same time, rape victims seeking asylum are deported. At least 50 per cent of women seeking asylum are rape survivors. Thirty to 40 such victims meet at our centre every fortnight. One was raped by Ugandan soldiers after they beat and “disappeared” her son. She was told by the immigration judge who turned her asylum claim down that the rape was not persecution but “simple, dreadful lust”. If she hadn’t launched a public campaign with WAR, she would have been deported. Those who are so vocal over men buying sex are silent about the suffering of rape survivors who are sent back to face being raped again and even death.

Hidden behind the moral crusade against prostitution are fundamental issues of poverty and immigration. Since most women enter prostitution out of economic need, it is a class issue. Some feminist professionals object to working-class women earning a living by selling sex. But the moral issue is poverty, not sex. Some women feed themselves and their children by working as prostitutes. Our job is to protect their safety in every circumstance, not to launch a moralising witch-hunt. And aren’t women who come from overseas seeking a better life also entitled to protection?

Lisa Longstaff is a spokesperson for Women Against Rape. On February 16, at WAR’s Public Trial – The Rape of Justice: Who’s Guilty?, women from all over Britain will testify about their experiences of sexual, domestic and other violence, and say who is standing in the way of justice or protection. For further information please visit: www.womenagainstrape.net

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Richard Scorer says criminalising those who pay for sex could reduce the levels of abuse in the sex industry
Tuesday, January 29, 2008

SHOULD the Government criminalise the buying of sex? Harriet Harman, Leader of the House of Commons, recently announced that ministers are considering changing the law on prostitution to make the buying of sexual services a criminal offence. The aim is to counter the growth in trafficking of women and children into Britain for sexual exploitation.

Harman’s proposal is modelled on legislation Sweden introduced in 1999 that criminalised the buying of sex and decriminalised the selling of it. The Swedish law provides for prison sentences of up to six months for the buyers of sexual services, six years for pimps and 10 years for traffickers of prostitutes. Harman argues that more needs to be done in this country to tackle “the demand side” and protect women, particularly victims of human trafficking.

In Britain, prostitution itself is not illegal, but the associated activity around the industry often is. The Street Offences Act 1959 includes offences of loitering and soliciting in a public place for the purpose of prostitution. The Sexual Offences Act 1985 was aimed at kerb crawling. It made it an offence to solicit another person or persons for the purpose of prostitution from a vehicle in a public place and also created an offence of persistent soliciting in a public place for the purpose of prostitution. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 made it an offence to pay for the sexual services of a child (up to the age of 18) and the sexual exploitation of children is now punishable by lengthy terms of imprisonment. The Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 also makes the placing of advertisements for prostitution in telephone boxes illegal.

The current laws are primarily aimed at reducing nuisance in local neighbourhoods and also at protecting children. But prostitution itself remains legal. The proposal to change that invokes complaints from some about the interfering nanny state. According to one argument, the selling of sexual services is simply a commercial transaction and criminalising it would involve an unwarranted diminution of personal liberty. The most vocal exponents of this view appear to be the UK Independence MEP Godfrey Bloom and Observer columnist Henry Porter.

However, the classic constraint on liberty is the harm principle: in exercising one’s liberty, one must not cause harm to others. Where harm could be caused, the state has a duty in protecting possible victims. The harm caused by prostitution is now surely beyond doubt, despite the misleading image often portrayed in the media, as in Belle de Jour, the recent television series. Such portrayals belie the ugly reality of an industry which exploits young and poorly educated women (and sometimes children) and often exposes them to violence. As a lawyer representing victims of child abuse, many of them formerly in care, I constantly see the sex industry ensnaring drug dependent and vulnerable young people, many of them with mental health problems. Complaints about the “nanny state” also ignore the new dimension to prostitution of the massive growth in the trafficking of women from developing countries by organised gangs. Unfortunately, while those who make light of the harm caused by prostitution are wrong, their attitudes may be culturally pervasive.

A more powerful objection to further legislation is that it would be counter-productive. It is argued that banning prostitution would simply drive it underground, putting prostitutes at greater risk of assault and exploitation. Some proponents of this view argue for regulation of prostitution in legalised brothels. Among the supporters of this position is the English Collective of Prostitutes, which claims that the Swedish system of criminalising men who buy sex has forced prostitution underground and made women more vulnerable to violence.

However, those involved in implementing the Swedish legislation argue that it has been broadly successful. The evidence from the Stockholm police and prosecuting authorities is that Sweden now has significantly less prostitution than other Scandinavian countries, even allowing that some of it happens underground. The Stockholm police cite figures of around 120 women – both on the internet and on the street – involved in prostitution in Stockholm, contrasting with 5,000 in Oslo. The Swedish government also estimates that, in the past few years, only 200 to 400 women and girls have been trafficked annually into Sweden for prostitution, while in neighbouring Finland the figure is around 16,000.

There also appears to be considerable anecdotal evidence that criminalisation and the accompanying social censure deter demand. By contrast, a report to the Scottish executive in 2003 found that countries such as the Netherlands, which had legalised and/or regulated prostitution, had seen a dramatic increase in all aspects of the sex industry and a corresponding increase in organised crime and violence against women.

So, if the issue is considered purely on a utilitarian basis of whether criminalisation would succeed in reducing demand, the evidence so far suggests that it probably would. Clearly, Sweden is only one country and it’s possible that sex trafficking has simply been displaced elsewhere, rather than reduced overall. This cannot be entirely discounted until more countries introduce legislation similar to Sweden’s. However, the evidence to date indicates that demand will be reduced by criminalisation and increased by the liberal (and Liberal Democrat) solution of legalising and “regulating” prostitution.

Another argument in favour of criminalising the buying of sexual services is that laws send out powerful messages about what values are important to society. Prohibiting the buying of sexual services is a strong statement against the increasing commodification and marketisation of sex and sexual relationships and in favour of sexual equality. As the Swedish government says: “In Sweden, prostitution is regarded as an aspect of violence against women and children. Gender inequality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them.”

In raising this issue, Harman has opened a cultural hornet’s nest. Many people decry the evils of prostitution, yet seem to be reluctant to use the criminal law against it. Harman has been attacked as a humourless feminist. But the victims of violence and exploitation in the sex industry are not getting the protection they need. The Swedish experience shows a society can combine progressive, liberal attitudes towards sexual freedom with zero tolerance of the exploitation of women. It also suggests the criminal law can be an effective tool in this area. Harman is right to start a debate on this issue and right to suggest that part of the answer may be to bring the law to bear on the buyers of sexual services who – directly or indirectly – help to perpetuate the violence and abuse rife in the sex industry.

Richard Scorer is a lawyer and Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Hazel Grove