Sex shop opposition grows as decision is delayed - (26.11.04) www.icberkshire.co.uk

A PORN baron forced a delay to the council's decision for permission to open a sex shop when his legal team produced a dossier of legal precedents.

Ray Darker, boss of Darker Enterprises Ltd, appeared before Slough council's licensing committee on Thursday to win approval for a sex shop licence.

A legal representative for the company then produced documents to challenge a 20-year-old council resolution, which effectively banned sex shops opening in the town.

Councillors voted to delay a decision after committee chairman Pat Shine (Ind: Britwell) called for more time to consider the points raised.

Mr Darker's document includes responses of councils which have given the thumbs-up to Mr Darker's 85 outlets nationwide.

It argues that the Human Rights Act Articles six and ten, confer the right to a fair and public hearing, and the right to freedom of expression.

It also includes a passage of legislation, which cited a quote made by Baroness Birk in the House of Lords in March 1982.

She had said: "A number of people feel that despite their views on sex shops, it is wrong to deny people in a large locality the chance to have access to something which is complete and legal."

A decision is now expected by the committee on Thursday, January 27.

Church leaders joined the chorus of protest at the proposed sex shop this week, as calls and letters continued to arrive at the Express.

Four leaders of Britwell Baptist church wrote expressing their 'strong opposition' to the bid.

The letter from Tony Wernham, Gideon Reuben, Jo Morris and Linda Williams, said the site was close to shops used by local adults and children.

"The existence of such a shop would be detrimental to all values and ethics Britain has stood for in all our generations," it reads. "We shudder to think of the moral decline that would result due to this move."

But a Catholic mother with a 12-year-old son said she supported the plan. Britwell resident Angela Gaffney, said: "Nobody will be forced to go in there. Everybody has sex. We are all here because of it.

"Educating children about sex is important as they can be more careful and make their own decisions."

Council votes to set up red light district - Nigel Bunyan (27/01/2005)

Plans to open the country's first official red light district were approved last night. Liverpool city council voted by "an overwhelming majority" in favour of a designated area where prostitutes can ply their trade legally and safely.

Based on the Dutch model used in Utrecht, the zone would operate in an industrial area at night away from homes and evening businesses. It would be easily accessible by car and public transport, and have ample parking.

The site would also have CCTV cameras, premises to be used as a health and welfare centre, and controlled entrances and exits. A uniformed presence of either police officers or city wardens would patrol the zone.

Police would adopt a policy of zero tolerance elsewhere in the city.

Flo Clucas, the council's executive member for housing, social care and health, said: "We had to come up with a solution to the terrible problems caused by prostitutes working in our residential communities."

Councillors will now take the proposals to the Home Office to try to > get the law changed so the zone can be established. A department spokesman said: "We are looking into the pros and cons of such zones but it would require primary legislation."

The merits of a managed approach to prostitution - 26 January 2005

Liverpool's plans to introduce Britain's first officially sanctioned red light areas will draw predictable disapproval from those who want to see this as official encouragement for soliciting, pimping and kerb-crawling. But while few would view street prostitution as desirable, it is already endemic in most of our cities. That Liverpool city council should be tackling the social problems that accompany it with such a common-sense approach is laudable.

True, the five proposed zones, to be patrolled, lit, and located in industrial areas, will allow the city's sex workers to go about their business untroubled by the police. But most prostitutes are drawn into this unfortunate and dangerous profession at a young age and remain in it only because they are addicted to drugs or alcohol. These vulnerable women (four out of five British prostitutes are women) deserve an opportunity to improve their lives and address the problems that force them to earn a living by selling their bodies for sex.

Provided the "tolerance zones" are properly designed and managed, they should offer prostitutes a degree of safety from violent pimps, clients or drug traffickers, which they do not enjoy at present. The women will also gain access to drug and sexual health units, and perhaps a permanent escape route via career counselling and advice centres. And even residents who campaigned against the zones may come to see the benefits of a reduction in violence, drug trafficking and the other forms of anti-social behaviour. This, certainly, has been the experience in Dutch cities such as Utrecht, where this approach was pioneered.

Liverpool's plan will do nothing to combat the links between prostitution and organised crime, in particular that modern form of slavery which sees thousands of women and young girls illegally trafficked into Britain each year for enforced labour in the sex industry. But managed zones, which other local authorities should be considering, may help to lift some of the stigma and silence surrounding street prostitution.

If that were a first step towards breaking the grip of the gangmasters, who rely for their profits on ignorance and official myopia about the problem, it would be welcome.

Liverpool ready to create Britain's first official zone for sex workers - Ian Herbert, North of England Correspondent 26 January 2005

The high road through Everton Brow, 300ft above Liverpool, is lined with signs warning motorists: "Kerb-crawlers beware - police patrol area." But they did not deter the teenager in micro-skirt and knee-length boots who marched along in search of some early business at 11.30 yesterday morning.

The girl was interested by the approach of a car but she was not in the mood for talking. When business is dead, this is the time of day when prostitutes like her will pay their pimps a cut of last night's earnings (£200 if they're lucky) and pick up their next fix of heroin. So in temperatures just above freezing, she strutted off up Netherfield Road, beyond the boarded- up tenement blocks which mark out one of Britain's most impoverished districts.

Today, Liverpool council is expected to set in motion its plans to end such solitary, dangerous journeys, which the city's 100 prostitutes take most days, by voting to establish Britain's first "managed zones" for sex workers. The council is likely to seek Home Office approval for five zones which will remove prostitutes from residential areas such as Everton Brow and introduce them to patrolled, well-lit areas in light industrial districts.

The option was put to all local authorities in a Green Paper published last August by former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, and for regulars at the Inn on the Hill pub, on Everton Brow, the change cannot come soon enough. Ever since the city's prostitutes were driven up here by the gentrification of the Edwardian properties at their former haunt near the Anglican cathedral, locals such as Keith Goulding have been adjusting to life in a red-light zone.

Any woman who walks Netherfield Road is a target for kerb-crawlers: from the women's darts team from the pub, who have taken to leaving in groups after Tuesday night matches, to Mr Goulding's wife, who is in her sixties. "Can you believe it? They just pull up and ask her: 'Hey love, how much?'," Mr Goulding said yesterday.

The demolition of several local tenements has removed some of the prostitutes, by obliterating the secluded spots they provided. But the mid-evening procession of prostitutes into the pub, to take cover from police and inject themselves in the lavatories, remains as much a part of life as ever. As does the occasional murder. The body of one woman who walked the Brow was found dismembered in a bin bag in nearby St Domingo Vale last year.

The solution to all this has been uncovered by public health scientists at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), who examined so-called "tipple zones" introduced to light industrial areas at Utrecht, in Holland. When businesses there close at 7.30pm, a red-light district opens up. Prostitutes are picked up in an area at the front of industrial buildings and take their clients to clinically titled "finishing-off areas" for sex. "The areas are patrolled by police or neighbourhood patrol teams to make sure rules are obeyed and the girls are not [attacked]" said LJMU's professor of public health, Mark Bellis.

The idea, which builds on the unofficial toleration zones for prostitutes tried in Edinburgh and Glasgow, has found support from a city council desperate to clean up the streets in time for its year as European Capital of Culture in 2008. Consultation has found more than 80 per cent in agreement that managed zones - earmarked for central Kempston Street and Jamaica Street - would allow better policing of prostitution.

But many have their doubts. Kevin Baker, who runs a printing business in Jamaica Street, dismissed the notion that the industrial units stop work at 7.30pm. "I finish at 10pm, or later if I've got an order on, and I don't fancy walking out of the door straight into a prostitution zone," he said. The professional occupants of two property developments under construction in the area may soon feel the same.

Leanne Latimer, 21, a mother, was another sceptic. "The prostitutes get beaten up anyway but once people know where to find them, they'll have a very bad time," she said. Her views matched those of Jenny, a prostitute. "It's a bogus argument about safety because the areas are out of the way [and] not safe," > Jenny said. "If everybody knows where they are working it leaves them open to attack, either entering or leaving, as people know they are going to earn money."

A city councillor, Flo Clucas, delegated to take the lead on the issue, admits that getting women out of prostitution altogether is the ultimate goal. A city-wide project offering prostitutes education, advice and clothes will begin in April, with that aim in mind.

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New book on Sex Work published

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Britain should stop prevaricating and protect sex trafficking victims - Ed Vulliamy Wednesday December 8, 2004, The Guardian

The day her life changed, 13-year-old Majlinda was on the way to her aunt's to help iron clothes for a wedding. Near the house, three men grabbed her. Beaten and raped into submission, Majlinda spent the next four years as an enslaved prostitute, struggling to meet quotas of up to 20 clients a night, all night, every night - usually concluding with another rape and beating from the traffickers. She managed to escape back to her native Albania, but was told by her family: "So far as we are concerned, you are dead." Despite a hollow smile, she was the most utterly destroyed person I have met - and there have been a few.Majlinda was one of hundreds of thousands of victims of the world's fastest growing, most lucrative and most depraved crime: trafficking in young women and children for enforced prostitution. An estimated 800,000 people are trafficked each year for this and other forms of enslavement; Unicef and Save the Children suggest that up to 80% are under 18 - that is to say, under international law, children.This week in Strasbourg, officials from the 46 states of the Council of Europe, including Britain, meet to finalise the wording of a treaty binding governments that sign up to minimum standards for the protection of trafficked people. The question in Strasbourg is: how far will they go to help some of the most vulnerable of all people? And the question here is: will Britain sign up to and enforce the treaty? The Council of Europe has the opportunity to bring about a fundamental shift in the way policy on trafficking is conceived. Too often, particularly in Britain, it is seen as a criminal matter alone, entwined with asylum and immigration - a prism through which the individual and her rights, if acknowledged at all, are subordinated to the criminal process.

Against this, Unicef, Amnesty International and Anti-Slavery argue that the rights of the abused person must be at the kernel of the matter: not instead of the prosecutorial urge to catch traffickers, but as a far more effective means of doing so.It is essential that the > treaty enshrine four basic needs. The first is a package that offers medical care, shelter, counselling and physical protection. These women and children have suffered unimaginable trauma and deserve compassion, and protection from those who would retraffic and punish them if they were ensnared again. It is crucial that such protection not be conditional (as it is in Britain) on a victim's agreement to cooperate with police against her traffickers. The second is a period in which a woman can, in the words of the draft treaty, "recover and escape the influence" of traffickers. This is not just an act of humanity: experience shows that as a traumatised woman begins to recover, physically and mentally - and to trust those around her - she is more likely to provide information for the police: about her persecutors, where other women are held, and details that may lead to other investigations. The third is the provision of temporary or permanent residence permits whenever - and this will apply in many cases - victims are in danger if they return home. Majlinda, for one, lives in hiding in Albania, in fear of her life. The fourth is help in resettling those who feel safe in returning to their country of origin. The stigma suffered by Majlinda at the hands of her family is > typical of many. Only one country has unilaterally adopted these provisions - Italy, where there is a degree of protection and prosecutions run into thousands, in contrast to the handfuls elsewhere. Some of these provisions are contained in an EU directive agreed last April. However, EU protection is conditional on a trafficked person coop erating with the authorities. Britain, though an important "destination" country, exempted itself from the directive, effectively deciding to go it alone in dealing with a crisis that is by definition international. Last year's Sexual Offences Act criminalised trafficking. And the Home Office has agreed to support the Poppy Project in London, which has space for 25 women who have escaped, but has been full for months. Last Thursday, at a parliamentary meeting called by Amnesty, the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, called trafficking "a pernicious trade, the worst kind of degradation". He said he has appointed Harriet Harman "to take on a special responsibility in our office" for trafficking. But Lord Goldsmith declined to commit himself on the "delinking" of trafficking from migration, or on the UK's intentions towards the binding convention. If Europe is serious about confronting trafficking, then it must adopt a robust treaty that, as Amnesty's legal adviser Jill Heine put it, "has the protection of the rights of trafficked people at its core" - and goes after their persecutors. And if Britain is serious, it must adopt the treaty - failure to do so would be half-hearted at best, callous at worst.

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UK sex workers debate law change - BBC News (04.12.04)

Sex workers are calling for decriminalisation of their industry.

Women working in the sex industry around the world will debate proposed changes to the UK prostitution laws at a conference on Saturday.

The event in London is in response to the government's consultation paper on prostitution, published in July. It launched the UK 's first re-think in decades of how to deal with the issue. But Niki Adams, of the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), said the document had not addressed "any of the core issues such as poverty". In launching the consultation, Home Secretary David Blunkett said he wanted to meet head-on "the devastating consequences of prostitution".

'Two-tier system'

A 1999 survey estimated that 80,000 women in the UK were involved in the sex trade. Prostitution itself is not illegal in the UK but most of the activities around it, such as soliciting, pimping and running a brothel, are criminal offences.

Legalisation rather than decriminalisation means you're on the game for the rest of your life says Niki Adams, from the English Collective of Prostitutes

The Home Office consultation paper invited comments around a wide range of issues, including creating "managed tolerance zones", registering sex trade workers and licensing brothels. The ECP sent in an official response and says it wants full decriminalisation of all activities surrounding sex work. Measures such as tolerance zones and licensing have been proven not to work, according to Ms Adams. She said: "Few women work in the licensed areas. They just set up a two-tier system. Also, to work in those areas you must register with the police and thus lose your anonymity. "Legalisation rather than decriminalisation means you're on the game for the rest of your life." The ECP also disputes some of the statistics in the consultation paper - such as one saying 95% of street prostitutes have a drugs problem - saying they are "selective".

NZ 15-year vice battle

"Women who work on the streets and do not use drugs rarely go to the Home Office-funded projects because they do not want to compromise their anonymity," the ECP response states. At Saturday's conference, sex workers from around the world will share their experiences, particularly around the issues of legalisation and decriminalisation.

'Mean-spirited'

One delegate, Rachel West of US Prostitutes Collective, also believes the UK government is taking the wrong approach. Ms West said a task force on prostitution in San Francisco , where her organisation is based, had recommended total decriminalisation rather than tolerance zones or licensing. "This is the model the UK should be following instead of the mean-spirited and dead-end options in the report," Ms West said. The consultation period for the Paying the Price document ended on 26 November. A Home Office spokesman said 850 responses had been received. They would now be collated and published next year when the government would decide on what further action, if any, to take, he added.

Sex workers reject red light zone - Prostitutes have used the Millbay area for generations - BBC News (10.12.04)


Prostitutes have rejected a Plymouth MP's call for a new "managed" red light zone in the city.

Labour MP Linda Gilroy made the suggestion following the end of council consultation on the issue. It comes as some residents in parts of the city call for action to stop their areas becoming new red light districts. The English Collective of Prostitutes said forcing women into zones would be unworkable and did not tackle the causes of prostitution.

Linda Gilroy could spend her time better considering how to alleviate the causes of prostitution such as domestic violence and poverty

Residents in Mutley Plain fear that their streets could be used by prostitutes as the traditional red light area around Millbay is redeveloped for upmarket housing. Ms Gilroy said: "They haven't got a prostitution problem at the moment, but they are worried that as Millbay is redeveloped it will move up there. "We should be able to do it in a managed way, a way which takes it away from anyone's back yard. "It could put it into the area of light industrial estates - somewhere that doesn't impinge on people's daytime way of life as well."

Domestic violence

Cari Mitchell of the English Collective of Prostitutes, told BBC News: "We are very much against forcing women to work in specified areas. "Ms Gilroy is proposing to put property developers above those of the women who have worked there for generations. "She could spend her time better considering how to alleviate the causes of prostitution such as domestic violence and poverty."

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Police chief urges vice rethink - BBC News (10.12.04)

A 1999 study estimated there were 80,000 prostitutes in the UK

A leading police chief has said forces across the UK have not paid enough attention to tackling prostitution.

Gloucestershire's Chief Constable Dr Tim Brain published a new strategy to help officers deal with sex workers. It criticises official "red light zones", which have been condemned by the Association of Chief Police Officers, and said the number of prostitutes was rising. The report is supported by all 43 chief constables in England and Wales . Dr Brain also said the number of brothels masquerading as massage parlours was also on the increase.

'Misery and exploitation'

"Trafficking of women into the country from other parts of the world is growing, as is its links with organised crime," he said. "It all represents misery and exploitation of too many women." He said prostitution had traditionally been a low priority for the police, which was mirrored in the wider community's views. Sex workers are calling for decriminalisation of their industry


Friday's report found the number of women cautioned for street prostitution fell from 3,323 in 1993 to 732 in 2001. The number of girls under 18 cautioned during the same period fell from 296 to just six. But Dr Brain did say there was a gradual change, and police were beginning to realise prostitution was a growing problem. In the report Dr Brain said police should concentrate on the harm that was being done to prostitutes, and protect communities affected by the sex industry. "The Government review may result in new laws and priorities, but any outcome is at least several months away, if not longer. "We need to deal with priority operational problems now," he said. Dr Brain rejected arguments in favour of official "red light zones" because they would require a change in the law and evidence on how successful they were in other countries was inconclusive. The police report followed a meeting in London by prostitutes from around the world debating Britain 's proposals to change prostitution laws, the subject of a July white paper. In launching the consultation, Home Secretary David Blunkett said he wanted to meet head-on "the devastating consequences of prostitution". A 1999 survey estimated 80,000 women in the UK were involved in the sex trade.

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The Truth Is Always Better - Lynda Hurst, The Toronto Star (08.12.04)

Violence `must stop,' Amnesty report says.

Urges nations to prohibit such acts by their militaries. Sexual brutality against women and girls must no longer be seen as a tragic but inevitable outcome of war, says a harrowing report released today by Amnesty International.

Arguing that rapes, torture and killings don't occur "naturally," but are a deliberate strategy of combat, the report demands an end to impunity for the perpetrators - whether they are conventional soldiers, members of armed groups, or peacekeepers.

"This has to stop; we've had enough," said Hilary Fisher, director of Amnesty's worldwide Stop Violence Against Women campaign. "In recent years, the assumption that justice is an unrealistic goal in conflict situations has been challenged. Prosecutions are the key."

Ad-hoc international tribunals have successfully prosecuted armed groups in Yugoslavia and Rwanda on the basis that rape is a war crime.

The International Criminal Court, which hears its first case (against the Democratic Republic of Congo) next year, will be crucial in spreading that message globally, says Fisher. The court will recognize a broad spectrum of sexual-violence crimes - including rape, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilization - as crimes against humanity or as war crimes. But the court will step in only when national governments are unable or unwilling to prosecute.

Amnesty is therefore asking individual nations to publicly denounce gender-based violence, to instruct their militaries and security forces on the prohibition, and then enforce it. Governments are called on to end impunity against prosecution for soldiers, in combat or in peacekeeping, who commit crimes of sexual violence. And it recommends they be subject to civilian, not military, jurisdiction.

The report, Lives Blown Away is not "intended as a catalogue of horrors," says the London-based human-rights organization, "but as a call to action." It is both. Amnesty says that during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, 250,000 to 500,000 women were raped, one-third of them gang-raped. After the conflict ended, the victims were often ostracized by family and friends; 80 per cent of survivors were found to be "severely traumatized." The world was horrified, but a decade later, it says, nothing has changed. Women and girls are still the unacknowledged casualties of the world's conflicts, currently raging in 35 countries from Iraq and Chechnya to Colombia and Sudan. This, despite various United Nations declarations, treaties and promises that underscore the gravity of violence against women caught in these conflicts.

Amnesty field workers report that in the year-long crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, thousands of women have been systematically raped or mutilated by pro-government militiamen known as "Janjaweed," or "men on horseback." In many cases, women have been publicly assaulted, in front of their husbands or wider community. Pregnant women have not been spared; those who resist have been beaten, stabbed or killed.

"Girls as young as eight have been abducted and forced to stay with the Janjaweed in military camps," says the report. "Several testimonies collected contain clear cases of sexual slavery. Some record women's and girls' legs and arms being deliberately broken to prevent them from escaping." Those who succeed in gaining access to U.N. camps are often met with the risk of further abuse, sometimes by fellow refugees, sometimes by camp workers or peacekeepers. Patterns of sexual violence don't "just happen" in the rage and fog of war, the report says: "They are ordered, condoned or tolerated as a result of political calculations. Furthermore, they are committed by individuals who know they will not be punished."

Armed groups should not be beyond the law's reach, any more than conventional militaries, Fisher says. They always get help from other countries, therefore the international community must start to put pressure on those that supply it. "Somewhere along the line, we have to say `No. This can be stopped, it doesn't have to happen.'" The report documents how, earlier this year, a group of women put an end to the military atrocities being committed in the Imphal region of India. After a woman was arrested, mutilated and killed by security forces on suspicion of belonging to an armed group, the group stripped naked and publicly dared the soldiers to rape them. Word spread and mass protests erupted all over the region. The action led the central Indian government to end the categorization of the region as a "disturbed area," and to stop the use of military "special powers" there. Ordinary people, including Canadians, can make a difference, says Fisher. They can work to ensure their own government prohibits discrimination against women and actively encourage it to demand the same internationally.

"Amnesty has been here 40 years and we've seen change happen. You can't just say, `This is terrible,' and then turn the page."

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