Paula Todd, host of CTV’s “The Verdict”, interviewed York law student Ehsan Ghebrai (BA ’05) who is part of the legal team mounting the Safe Haven challenge of three provisions in Canada’s criminal law dealing with prostitution. Ghebrai told Todd: "What we're really saying with this challenge is that there is Section 7 violation of the charter, right to life, liberty and security of the person, because you're taking away those things by forcing women out into the streets in vulnerable positions, and taking away their support.
* When governments are too cowardly to repeal bad laws, the courts inevitably step in, wrote columnist Mindelle Jacobs in The Toronto Sun March 23. Just as judges forced change on the medical marijuana issue, they will hopefully repeal our terrible prostitution laws. Still, the government is too lead-footed to act. So, Alan Young, criminal law professor at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, and three former sex-trade workers have launched a constitutional challenge to quash the laws against bawdy houses, communicating for the purpose of prostitution and living on the avails.
Just to be clear, Young doesn’t want to strike down the pimping provisions that deal with procuring, exploitation and control, wrote Jacobs. He just wants the section that bans living on the avails of prostitution repealed. Young would like to see the current laws overturned so the provinces and municipalities can step in and regulate what will, hopefully, be a legal activity. “You have murder on one side of the ledger and a big question mark on the government side,” he says. “I’m not saying [the Robert Pickton murder case] wouldn’t happen if these provisions were repealed. But you have to give a sex-trade worker on the street who is exposed to violence...legal options. And there are no legal options.”
* The Edmonton Sun also carried a story on the Safe Haven initiative March 22.
Y-File
http://www.yorku.ca/yfile/archive/index.asp?Article=8163
Sex workers challenge Canada's prostitution laws
Wed. Mar. 21 2007 7:20 PM ET
Canadian Press
TORONTO — Canada's prostitution laws place the lives of thousands of women working in a legal trade in grave danger, amounting to a form of "urban genocide," a group of sex-trade workers and advocates said Wednesday.
The Safe Haven Initiative, led by Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young and a volunteer group of law students, is launching a constitutional challenge to strike down laws against bawdy houses, communicating for the purpose of prostitution and living on the avails of prostitution.
While there is no wording in the Criminal Code specifically outlawing prostitution, nearly all aspects of a transaction - including hiring a prostitute, scouting potential customers and making money from sex - are made illegal by those three provisions.
Young said because those laws make it illegal for prostitutes to work in their own homes or hire a bodyguard for protection, women are deprived of their right to liberty and security - a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
"There is nothing inherently dangerous about prostitution," said former prostitute Valerie Scott, who is executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada, an advocacy group for sex workers.
"What makes it so dangerous is the way it is currently set up in this country. It's the way the laws force us to operate in totally unsafe conditions."
The situation is so dire that the laws amount to an "official death penalty" for prostitutes, Scott said.
Lawmakers and the general public must remember that prostitutes are human beings who should have equal rights under Canadian law, she said.
"So what if most of these women are drug-addicted street girls?" Scott said. "They are A, human, and B, Canadian.
"We are humans. We are part of the community. We don't come in on a shuttle from Mars every night and leave before sunrise."
Young said he felt compelled to launch the challenge and stand up for those women's rights after watching media coverage of the investigation into the disappearances of more than 60 women - mostly sex-trade workers - from Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside.
"As the body count was mounting, I thought, 'Somebody has to do something to stop this urban genocide,"' Young said.
The Vancouver case is an extreme example of the brutal violence often faced by prostitutes, he said, but it highlights a problem that goes much deeper.
"The reality is threats, violence and assault define the daily existence of people who work on the street in the sex trade," Young said.
The Vancouver investigation culminated in the arrest of pig farmer Robert Pickton, who was charged with 26 counts of first-degree murder and is currently on trial for six of those counts.
An Edmonton-area man is also standing trial for the killings of two prostitutes. His charges stem from Project Kare in Alberta, which looked into the disappearances of almost 80 people, many of them women in the sex trade.
Prostitution activist Sue Davis said she believes changes to the laws could have saved the lives of many murdered prostitutes.
"They target the most vulnerable of sex workers, the visible trade," she said.
"It is driving them into more and more isolated areas and making them work in more and more dangerous conditions."
A 2006 Statistics Canada report found that 171 female prostitutes were murdered between 1991 and 2004, and that 45 per cent of those cases went unsolved.
A House of Commons sub-committee concluded in December 2006 that the number of reported homicides among sex workers is "almost certainly lower than the real figures."
But after hearing testimony from more than 300 witnesses, MPs from the various parties on the sub-committee couldn't agree on legislative changes to the prostitution laws.
Canadian Press
TORONTO — Canada's prostitution laws place the lives of thousands of women working in a legal trade in grave danger, amounting to a form of "urban genocide," a group of sex-trade workers and advocates said Wednesday.
The Safe Haven Initiative, led by Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young and a volunteer group of law students, is launching a constitutional challenge to strike down laws against bawdy houses, communicating for the purpose of prostitution and living on the avails of prostitution.
While there is no wording in the Criminal Code specifically outlawing prostitution, nearly all aspects of a transaction - including hiring a prostitute, scouting potential customers and making money from sex - are made illegal by those three provisions.
Young said because those laws make it illegal for prostitutes to work in their own homes or hire a bodyguard for protection, women are deprived of their right to liberty and security - a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
"There is nothing inherently dangerous about prostitution," said former prostitute Valerie Scott, who is executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada, an advocacy group for sex workers.
"What makes it so dangerous is the way it is currently set up in this country. It's the way the laws force us to operate in totally unsafe conditions."
The situation is so dire that the laws amount to an "official death penalty" for prostitutes, Scott said.
Lawmakers and the general public must remember that prostitutes are human beings who should have equal rights under Canadian law, she said.
"So what if most of these women are drug-addicted street girls?" Scott said. "They are A, human, and B, Canadian.
"We are humans. We are part of the community. We don't come in on a shuttle from Mars every night and leave before sunrise."
Young said he felt compelled to launch the challenge and stand up for those women's rights after watching media coverage of the investigation into the disappearances of more than 60 women - mostly sex-trade workers - from Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside.
"As the body count was mounting, I thought, 'Somebody has to do something to stop this urban genocide,"' Young said.
The Vancouver case is an extreme example of the brutal violence often faced by prostitutes, he said, but it highlights a problem that goes much deeper.
"The reality is threats, violence and assault define the daily existence of people who work on the street in the sex trade," Young said.
The Vancouver investigation culminated in the arrest of pig farmer Robert Pickton, who was charged with 26 counts of first-degree murder and is currently on trial for six of those counts.
An Edmonton-area man is also standing trial for the killings of two prostitutes. His charges stem from Project Kare in Alberta, which looked into the disappearances of almost 80 people, many of them women in the sex trade.
Prostitution activist Sue Davis said she believes changes to the laws could have saved the lives of many murdered prostitutes.
"They target the most vulnerable of sex workers, the visible trade," she said.
"It is driving them into more and more isolated areas and making them work in more and more dangerous conditions."
A 2006 Statistics Canada report found that 171 female prostitutes were murdered between 1991 and 2004, and that 45 per cent of those cases went unsolved.
A House of Commons sub-committee concluded in December 2006 that the number of reported homicides among sex workers is "almost certainly lower than the real figures."
But after hearing testimony from more than 300 witnesses, MPs from the various parties on the sub-committee couldn't agree on legislative changes to the prostitution laws.
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