Ontario

[krystalclare]

Terri-Jean Bedford (L) stands next to prostitution advocate Valerie Scott infront of the downtown Toronto courthouse on October 6, 2009.

Tracey TylerLegal Affairs Reporter

The terms street worker and courtesan have had their day.

How about “experiential affiant?” That’s the name that has surfaced in documents for a case that begins Monday in the Ontario Court of Appeal.

In plain English it means a woman who’s worked as a prostitute and given a sworn statement about what the work is really like.

“It is violating to be reduced to body parts,” the “experiential affiant” known as J.S. says in an affidavit filed with the court.

“Not only are you reduced to a commodity,” she continues, “but you have to pretend that you like it, time after time.”

Lawyers for the federal government have gathered her evidence — one of seven affidavits from women who have worked as prostitutes — as support for their case that what harms women in the sex trade is the selling of sex itself, not laws aimed at curbing prostitution.

That runs counter to the findings of a Toronto trial judge who struck down those laws last September, saying they were endangering sex workers’ lives.

Justice Susan Himel said Criminal Code provisions meant to protect women and residential neighbourhoods from the dangers of prostitution — laws banning bawdy houses, “communication” and living off the trade — violate freedom of expression and security of the person.

It prevents them from hiring bodyguards and forces them onto the street, she said.

Although Himel’s ruling would usher in a new era, allowing prostitutes to converse openly with customers and work in brothels without being charged, the decision was suspended to give the government a chance to appeal.

That process gets underway Monday, when the appeal court begins hearing legal arguments scheduled for five days. If the past is a reliable guide, the atmosphere around the downtown Toronto courthouse will crackle with the sound of a riding whip wielded by dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, one of three women who challenged the legislation.

But beneath the spectacle, both sides raise a serious issue: Do anti-prostitution laws protect or harm women?

The federal government argues Himel largely ignored the evidence of its witnesses, among them a former Edmonton sex worker named Dawn.

“While I was a prostitute, I felt as though my soul was being systematically murdered,” she says in an affidavit.

Prostitution does psychological harm, which women can’t escape by moving it indoors, lawyers for the justice department argue in their material.

Several groups representing native women, female prisoners and Canadian sexual assault centres have banded together to support the federal government’s case, calling themselves the Women’s Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution.

“I’m going to let my blood stop boiling for a moment,” said Valerie Scott, legal coordinator for Sex Professionals of Canada and another of the women behind the court challenge.

It’s “patronizing and paternalistic” to argue sex workers need to be rescued from psychological harm, she said in an interview.

“The ‘save the sex worker industry’ is huge and they want us all to be listed as mentally and psychiatrically inferior — and damn our right to (self)-determination,” said Scott, 53.

New Zealand, Germany, the Netherlands and parts of Australia and Nevada have introduced municipally-based licensing of prostitution.

When the case is over, Scott wants to attend the Rotman School of Business. She’s optimistic about opening her own brothel some day.

“We’d like brothels to be in commercially zoned areas, not in a red light sex ghetto or on the (Toronto) islands or some ridiculous idea like that,” she said.

“If you put in all in a ghetto, well, then organized crime moves in.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/a...court-set-to-hear-prostitution-challenge?bn=1

 

[pure bliss) :O]

Ontario’s top court set to hear prostitution challenge

“experiential affiant?”

You have to like that name. :

 

[Jake]

Here we go again. How many politicians see sp btw?. I say 10 % do so let the girls have their safety place.

 

[Rich]

They have these affidavits from women who feel their souls were being sucked out or whatever. I can provide some too from people working in offices that feel their souls are being sucked out. I'm sure we could go to any working group and find those who say their line of work is a shit life and is physically and emotionally draining them of the will to live. How do these examples in the sex industry mean any more than those of any other industry?

I hope that people around the world will learn to live and let live and start getting rid of all these laws that tell us how to live our lives. As long as no one involved is underage (18 yrs seems a good standard) and everyone is consenting...why should it be anyone else's business?!

 

[Wayne Carr]

Well said :great: