... and ain't I a woman?: Sex work and the law
On November 10, Lisa Jane Brown, a young Perth sex worker, went missing. Three months later, an extensive search was eventually launched but has turned up few clues. WA police and the West Australian newspaper speculate that she may have been murdered.
Women who work on the streets are often seen as legitimate targets of violence. Frequently assaulted and raped, they are provided with no police protection. Laws principally punish sex workers, the majority of whom are women, and allow the clients (usually male) to stay out of the courts.
While selling sex is not a crime in WA, several activities associated with prostitution are criminal offences, in effect making sex work illegal.
Few women turn to sex work without some sort of economic pressure to do so.
Twelve months ago, police cracked down on street soliciting. In recent months police have attempted to relocate sex workers to non-residential areas. There has been little thought given to women's safety in these less frequented, poorly lit areas. While 11 brothels operate on a de facto legal basis in non-residential areas, many women are forced to seek clients from the streets.
Residents in the Northbridge area, not far from the Perth CBD, have formed a group to campaign against street soliciting near their houses. They have taken pictures of prostitutes and their clients, rung client's wives and taken out restraining orders against sex workers to prevent them from being within 50 metres of homes. The groups seems to have little concern for the health and welfare of sex workers.
In recent months, there has been public debate on whether decriminalisation or legalisation of prostitution is a solution. A recent West Australian editorial declared prostitution "control laws" overdue, and demanded regulation rather than prohibition. Sex work is an unpleasant, morally reprehensible, abhorrent occupation which nevertheless had to be controlled, the paper declared.
Many "morals crusaders" who campaign for the rigid enforcement of anti-prostitution laws declare their concern for the welfare of sex workers, but nothing could make sex workers more vulnerable than criminalising sex work.
The illegality of the sex industry affects sex workers in many ways: working conditions in brothels can be poor, and workers can do little to challenge this; sex workers are marginalised and unable to confide in friends and family about their work concerns; and sex workers are also more vulnerable to exploitation, harassment and violence from pimps, corrupt cops and clients.
The illegality of prostitution gives police control over large numbers of women. When the NSW government in the late 1970s decriminalised prostitution, the Police Association took out full-page ads in daily papers asserting that police had been robbed of the power to control crime on the streets.
Only a week ago, a police constable was summonsed to appear in court on three charges of rape, committed against two sex workers. He coerced one woman into having sex with him in a police station, in return for him agreeing not to press charges after he had caught her and a client having sex.
Decriminalisation is simply the removal of criminal sanctions, and not legalisation, which entails formal state recognition and control such as licensing. Attempts at decriminalisation of prostitution, such as the 1992 legislation passed in the ACT, have been considered more successful than legalisation.
Public opinion seems to be on the side of decriminalisation. In a poll conducted in 1996, 57% of Adelaide voters supported the decriminalisation of prostitution.
Maintaining prostitution as a crime will not make it go away. It will exist as long as there is economic insecurity and poverty amongst large numbers of women.
Prostitution is neither glamorous nor "morally abhorrent". It's the sort of work which many women are forced to take up in a society which commodifies sex and women's bodies, and at the same time disempowers many women from having economic control over their lives.
Decriminalisation won't change sexist attitudes toward sex workers overnight, but it is the first step to recognising prostitution as work, and ensuring that all sex workers have the same rights as other workers, including the right to organise in unions for better conditions.
The call for the repeal of all laws that victimise sex workers should be widely taken up to ensure that these women will not have to put up with the dehumanising conditions that results from illegality.
[A protest against the police rape of sex workers will be held outside the Central Law Courts, Murray St, Perth, on February 22. Phone Anne on 9227 7367 or Sarah on 9473 0684 for more details].
By Sarah Stephen