Ontario’s Prostitution Ruling Misrepresented Evidence and Contravened the Charter & Case Law

Max Waltman, a legal scholar who has been published in the New York Times, has concluded that the ruling in the Bedford case misrepresented evidence, while contravening case law and the charter.  Michelle Brock discusses his breakthrough paper at Hope for the Sold.  Here’s an excerpt:

A paper concludes thatBedford v. Canada erroneously rewrote the law against “living on the avails of prostitution” on basis of misrepresented as well as faulty evidence, and contravenes prior Supreme Court cases and the Charter by making prostituted persons more vulnerable to exploitation.

To date, living “on the avails of prostitution of another person” has been illegal in Canada. That law was challenged in the Court of Appeal for Ontario in Bedford v. Canada on March 26, 2012. The court essentially found that the law prevented prostituted persons to benefit from third parties such as brothel management, escort agencies, bodyguards, or drivers — all whom were perceived as able to enhance the safety and well-being of prostituted persons. Hence, the avails provision was rewritten by the court, stating that it “applies only to those” who live on the avails “’in circumstances of exploitation.’”

Now, a recent working paper from Stockholm University penned by Max Waltman, a PhD Candidate at their Department of Political Science, concludes that the Court of Appeal for Ontario erroneously rewrote the law against “living on the avails of prostitution” on basis of misrepresented as well as faulty evidence, and as a result made prostituted persons more vulnerable to exploitation. The paper highlights how the Bedford ruling contravenes previous Supreme Court cases on prostitution, and is inconsistent with equality guarantees under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Waltman suggests a different decision based on the notion of equality under the Charter’s case law, which would effectively endorse the Swedish prostitution law in Canada that criminalizes purchasers and pimps, and decriminalizes prostituted persons. The case will now head to the Supreme Court. (If you are new to the Bedford ruling, and want to get caught up on the basics, you can read a clear description of the decision here.)

Download Waltman’s ground-breaking paper here

Read  the rest of the article about this breakthrough legal scholarship at www.HopefortheSold.com

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Part 2 – More Pimps Posing as Sexworker Activists & the Bedford Case

James Baldwin wrote “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: she has become a threat.”

I had no idea how threatening my voice was until I started to make it heard.  None of us trafficking and prostitution survivors did, until we started to write about the brutality we’ve experienced and these big players within these pimp-dominated ‘sex worker activist’ groups started to do everything they could to silence us and deny we exist.  Survivor bloggers are cyber-stalked via Facebook, email, twitter and hateful blog comments.  Our email accounts are hacked and private information that could endanger us is tweeted or revealed elsewhere online.  Spiteful emails about us are sent to people we work with.  Supportive activists who feature our writing on their blogs are similarly swarmed with vilifying emails and comments.

I’d like to give you a glimpse of this intense cyber-bullying, using myself as an example. I’m not asking for sympathy; I want to show you what survivor activists go through when we break the silence.

I came out as a survivor online in March 2011.  Almost immediately pro-sex industry men and women affiliated with the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) USA and other pimp-led activist organizations began emailing me and posting aggressive comments on my Facebook wall.  As I got bolder I started leaving comments after articles about prostitution in major newspapers and blogs.  At this point I did not have my own blog, and we hadn’t yet formed Survivors Connect Network.  I was an obscure private person. Nonetheless, members of the “Network of Sex Work Projects” found me.  An anonymous email brought me to this creepy thread about me on admitted pimp Maggie McNeill’s blog.  Another anonymous email led me to this piece on Bound Not Gagged. Here   McNeill implies that I’m a puppet controlled by abolitionists.  Norma Jean Almodovar, the executive director of COYOTE LA, suggests that I might not exist.    Billie Jackson, the founder of SWOP Colorado, criticizes my language. Maxine Doogan, the leader of the Erotic Service Providers’ Union states that I remind her of another troublemaker.  She links to a video created by Michael Whiteacre, a lawyer and filmmaker connected with the pornography industry. The video, called The Devil and Shelley Lubben, slanders Lubben, a survivor who speaks out about abuse in the porn industry.  It includes an interview with an actor who was in a pornographic movie that depicts Lubben with six men.  He discusses her sexual performance.  The message is clear:  Make waves and this could happen to you.

These invasive tactics have only amplified as time passes.  There have been numerous other creepy comment threads and blog posts which pick at me and make false statements written by people I’ve never met who are affiliated with these ‘sex worker activist’ groups.  They are a constant background noise and the volume keeps increasing.  Most survivors who write or speak about prostitution go through this.

Any examples I give are just splashes from an ocean of harassment.  Examine these droplets:

• A few hours after the first ever video broadcast of a talk by Survivors Connect (SC) members, rich and famous Brooke Magnanti sends a tweet to her 49,900 followers, Elena Jeffreys, head of the Scarlett Alliance, an Australian sex worker group affiliated with SWOP USA, and McNeill.  The tweet states that SC members are “like Operation Rescue” an extremist group known for harassing women at abortion clinics.  Survivors Connect formed just four months ago.  Our 48 members are all crime victims and survivors of trafficking/prostitution.  McNeill blogs at Sex Workers without Borders (SWWB) with Jill McCracken, a college professor who is part of SWOP USA. No one at Survivors Connect has ever met Magnanti, McNeill or Jeffreys.

• After receiving aggressive tweets from McNeill I ask her to please stop tweeting my name.  (I’ve blocked her, but if she types the @ sign before my name, I still get her messages).  She ignores my request, and I repeat it many times, explaining that I’m finding the twitter swarm that’s building around her constant tweets scary.  Michael Whiteacre, a lawyer and filmmaker involved with the porn industry (Remember him? He made that hit piece on survivor activist Shelley Lubben) joins the fray. I tell them their intensity is threatening, but they don’t stop, no matter how many times I ask. McNeill tweets “I want you to feel threatened so you BACK DOWN” several times.  Later Christina Page, a doctoral student connected with SWOP USA, joins in.  I’ve never met McNeill, Page or Whiteacre.

• As I’m editing this article I get a tweet from another stranger which contains encoded language that refers to the confidential part of my life.  If I were to interpret this fully I would be revealing my location by a matter of just miles.  The message here is clear: We know where you are.

This is what it’s like for survivor activists every day.  You ignore it as much as you can, and then eventually these people get so extreme, threatening or outrageous that they draw you in.  When this happens, I sometimes fall through the floor of my life and into the past’s deep water.  I become the scared, beat up girl I used to be, locked in a room in a brothel.  Then it’s hard to find my way back to the present.  Resurfacing, I’ll stare into blankness for hours while my legs shake.  I’ll feel hollow and my husband’s voice will seem to come from far away.

Read the rest of the article at www.secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com

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• http://nypress.com/does-backpage-com-help-or-hinder-sex-trafficking-protesters-outside-the-village-voice-disagree/

34 Trafficking/Prostitution Survivors Vote to Stand with Our Canadian Sisters Against the Bedford Prostitution Decision

Survivors Connect, the international online leaderless network of trafficking/prostitution survivors, has voted to stand with our Canadian sisters  in the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network , SexTrade101, and  Concertation des Luttes Contre L’Exploitation Sexuelle (CLES) AGAINST the Bedford prostitution decision.  These amazing women have selflessly and tirelessly been educating the public about  how the Bedford decision harms women in prostitution.  Here’s our statement:

We the 34 trafficking/prostitution survivor members of Survivors Connect stand with the women of  the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network, SexTrade101,  La Concertation des Luttes Contre L’Exploitation Sexuelle (CLES), and Educating Voices.  We are very sad and shocked by the Ontario Bedford case decision.  It’s especially troubling that the Bedford ruling upholds the criminalisation of  prostitutes selling sex on the street, as these women are almost always traumatized crime victims who need support not arrest.  Meanwhile the ruling empowers the people who terrorize and exploit these women by putting the law behind them.  Legalizing brothels hurts women in prostitution by legitimizing the male and female pimps who own brothels,  escort services or call themselves “drivers” or “bodyguards.”      As Natasha Falle has said, “its not the laws that prevent the prostituted from reporting to the police, its the men (and women) who buy and sell them that label them rats and snitches if they do. Violence/death the penalty.”  As Trisha Baptie and Bridget Perrier have stated, ‎”It’s not the streets that kill the women, it’s the men that kill the women.” 

Survivors Connect Network is completely autonomous.  All of our 34 members are trafficking/prostitution survivors.  We have no hierarchy or leader.  We vote on each political issue we choose to address, so we voted on whether or not to issue this statement.  Not one member voted against it.

Joining our voices makes us stronger and harder to ignore.  We are sisters and survivors.  Nothing will break the bonds between us.  We are Survivors Connect. We welcome sister survivors with joy.  All members are carefully screened via personal reference, phone calls or video chat to make sure no male or female pimps or Johns get in.

Related articles

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