Canada's prostitution laws have created a "sinister" dilemma for sex-trade
workers by forcing them off the streets while forbidding them from moving
indoors, an Ontario court heard Tuesday.
Pressing to have the laws thrown out,
a lawyer for three sex-trade workers argued that provisions outlawing
communication for the purposes of prostitution, living off the avails, and
keeping a bawdy house are contributing to the horrific violence women often face
while plying a legal trade.
"This is not about a right to sell
sex - you can sell sex," lawyer Alan Young told Ontario Superior Court.
"It's about a right to liberty and
security."
Young stressed the constitutional
challenge is not about a moral evaluation of the sex trade. Nor does it quibble
with the "classic" pimping provisions designed to prevent exploitation of women
or rules aimed at protecting children.
Instead, he said, the laws enacted in
1985 were an attempt at dealing with the public nuisance created by street
walkers but failed to recognize the alternative - allowing women to work more
safely indoors - was prohibited.
Young cited statistics behind the
"shocking and horrific" stories of women who work the streets along with
research that was not available when the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the ban
on communication for prostitution purposes in 1990.
The case of Robert Pickton, who was
convicted in 2007 of killing six women and still may face another 20 murder
charges, is one example of similar tragedies across the country, court heard.
Violence against prostitutes has only
increased in recent years, Young said.
Police are still searching for dozens
of missing sex-trade workers in cities across Canada.
Young called it "bizarre" that the
ban on bawdy houses is an indictable offence that carries stiffer sanctions,
including jail time and potential forfeiture of a woman's home, when the
communications ban is usually a summary offence that at most leads to fines.
The overly broad interrelated
provisions prevent hookers from properly screening clients, hiring security or
working in the comfort and safety of their own homes or brothels, he said.
Body guards, drivers, business
partners, or even roommates may all find themselves ensnared by the laws and
even end up on the sex-offender registry because of their relationship with a
prostitute, Young told Justice Susan Himel, who is hearing the week-long case.
"The law criminalizes others who
participate in obvious strategies a sex worker may take protect herself."
Dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, whose
"bondage bungalow" case garnered headlines in the mid 1990s, Val Scott, an
activist sex-trade worker, and Amy Lebovitch, a prostitute who works from home,
are challenging the provisions as unconstitutional.
"The dangers on the streets are
rapes, robberies and beatings which happen on a daily basis and sometimes our
murders; this really has to end," Scott said outside court.
"We cannot keep doing this to a
segment of the Canadian population just because some people have a moral problem
with the idea of commercial sex. It does not make it all right for us to be the
social punching bag for society."
Young noted research that indicates
street hookers are dozens of times more likely than the average woman to be
murdered. Still, he added, at most only 46 per cent of prostitute murders are
solved while police typically solve 80 per cent of homicides in general.
Ironically, Young said, current
statistics suggest 80 per cent of the sex trade now takes place indoors, often
in body-rub parlours that are licensed by municipalities which earn "huge" fees.
At the same time, 90 per cent of the thousands of charges laid each year are
related to outdoor prostitution, with the women charged in 51 per cent of the
cases.
Groups opposed to prostitution are
intervening in the case.
Ranjan Agarwal, a lawyer acting for
the Christian Legal Fellowship, the Catholic Civil Rights League and REAL Women
of Canada, said Canadians don't believe that prostitution is a legitimate
activity even though sex for money is legal in Canada.
"That doesn't mean that the
constitution can be used as a sword to strike down what are legitimate,
democratic restrictions on the activities around prostitution," Agarwal said.
"It may cause jeopardy to women in
the trade . . . but at the end of the day, our (constitution) is based upon
fundamental perceptions of morality and those fundamental perceptions say that
certain activities around prostitution are not valid and not legal."