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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• Missing prostitute Rachel Wilson’s body found at Coulby Newham – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)
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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

Related articles

• Pimps Posing as “Sex Worker Activists” & Other Conflicts of Interest (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Pimps Posing as “Sex Worker Activists” (freedomfrompornculture.wordpress.com)
• Nevada’s Legal Brothels are Coercive Too (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• http://nypress.com/does-backpage-com-help-or-hinder-sex-trafficking-protesters-outside-the-village-voice-disagree/

The Anti-Trafficking Movement Needs Survivor Voices: Why Are We Ignored?

Sister survivor Holly Austin Smith has a great new post on her blog, titled The Importance of the Survivor Voice.  She discusses an issue that’s central to most  of us:  Why aren’t more survivors being uplifted to lead the anti-trafficking movement?  Sister  survivor Rachel Lloyd is a splendid exception to this rule, as are  Vednita Carter and Kristy Childs.  But so many of us our ignored and discarded after we’ve been used by anti-trafficking organizations once or twice to tell our story.  No one knows more about the sex industry and human trafficking than we do.  No one knows more about recovery from trafficking/prostitution than us.  The absence of  survivor leaders  in most  major anti-trafficking organizations creates a hole in the movement.   Much more would accomplished much faster if we were given the chance to lead.  Because so few of us are empowered to lead,  so much time is wasted — so much knowledge and insight lost.

What’s especially troubling is that even when survivors find ways to lead on our own we’re ignored or talked through.  Our Canadian sister survivors in the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network, Educating Voices, LaCLES, and SexTrade101  have been valiantly educating the public about the harms of the Bedford ruling — which upholds the criminalization of prostitutes on the street — who are crime victims– while it empowers and legitimizes their predators, the male and female pimps and traffickers who own brothels and escort services.  While some of the major anti-trafficking organizations have commented on the ruling or written documents concerning its issues, there’s been precious little support and acknowledgement of the brave work of these Canadian survivors.

The 34 members of Survivors Connect recently voted to issue a statement of support for our Canadian sisters against the Bedford decision.  34 prostitution/trafficking survivors joining our voices  in political action is a big deal.  It was a historic moment, and marked a big change in how survivors participate in the movement.  But there was no response by the big anti-trafficking organizations.  A  few wonderful women within these large anti-trafficking organizations  have reached out to me — there are great people in these groups, of course.  But in general survivors are ignored, not uplifted.

What can survivors do about this situation?  What we’ve been through in the sex industry unites us.  We must remember our voices are powerful, form survivors groups where there are none, and join existing survivor groups.  Sometimes nonprofit organizations become competitive and don’t work together.  We can’t afford this.  It’s important that our different survivor groups work and flow together as one so that our voices aren’t fragmented.

Survivors Connect is an international online leaderless network.  We already have 34 survivor members, and we’ve only been around for two months.  We joyfully welcome new sister survivor members. Here’s how to join us.

In response to the need for survivors’ voices,  Holly Austin Smith has started a speaker’s bureau called Survivor Strong.  Here’s an excerpt from her brilliant post on the subject:

 I am in touch with survivors from around the world: new survivors, empowered survivors, educated survivors, struggling survivors, and scared survivors.  We unite under these umbrella organizations to offer each other support, guidance, and empathy and to work together on survivor-inspired projects.

There is a particular topic which has been surfacing lately on many of these forums and that is the lack of survivor invitations to participate in local and national conferences, symposiums, workshops, etc.  Often, survivors are requested to recount the details of their testimonies, and then they are excused from further participation.  This is baffling to me.  If there is to be a discussion regarding the prevention of human trafficking and the protection of survivors, shouldn’t there be a survivor’s perspective present?

Please realize I recognize that many organizations involved in such events are survivor-informed; however, I still believe that empowered survivors whom are able to attend the event should be invited to participate.  What better way to convey to new survivors that their futures hold promise but by providing a place and by lifting the voices of survivors who are ready to come forward?

Read more.

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• The Sneaky Language of the Sex Industry Lobby (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• I’m Not the Only One Who was Mistreated in Prostitution (survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)