Tuesday 30 September 2014

Minutes of the Meeting - Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill - 29th Sept 2014

The meeting started 15 minutes late and I arrived 15 minutes after that, so I will start with the apologies for those that did not attend.  Apologies from any known currently working Escort.  Oh... wait a minute, no one asked for a representative of the Sex Work Community.  In fact the Union that had been set up to protect the needs of the Sex Workers was scoffed at by a certain Rachel Moran, who said it was not a REAL union, but a way for Pimps to protect their financial investment!

Speech
Lord Morrow of Clogher Valley MLA
 - I'm afraid I missed the first video entitled 'The Trip', but I did listen to Lord Morrow give his speech.  He quite rightly tackled the subject of trafficking and coercion in terms of three areas of concern.  That being:

Labour in the work force - factories etc.
Domestic slavery - i.e. - Women used within the home and not allowed out.
Sexual Exploitation - Used against their will sexually for financial gain.

Rightly so, it was explained that men, women and children can all fall victim to trafficking and coercion and that there were potentially 140 cases of this found across the spectrum within Northern Ireland.

This is where something close to a real statistic is replaced with emotive language and two stories of women were explained and stories these were, as it would seem there was no evidence to support their claims.  One story Lord Morrow distanced himself from, explaining he had never met the lady, but this was her story and that was of domestic servitude.  She had been kept prisoner within a family home for anything from 3 to 5 years and not allowed to leave.  She made a cry for help and it was answered.  She was rescued and it was a success story for Northern Ireland, which I salute and commend for helping this lady.

However, the second story Lord Morrow alleged to know this lady and had met her in person. He made it sound like the story was far more likely to be true and yet the story itself sounded to me (as a current working Sex Worker) like something out of a Hollywood thriller.  The story purports that the lady was taken from her nursing studies in England, where she was studying as a foreign student (she is Romanian).  She was a young 20 year old woman and against her will she was taken by two armed men to the airport and flown over to Ireland, where she was put to work as a prostitute.  She was made to service between 15 and 20 men a day and bundled across Dublin, Limerick and Galway until eventually she was rescued and released from her plight.

First of all I would like to congratulate Ireland for another success story, where a person has been found and taken out of a terrible situation.  I would imagine that this also led to convictions of the pimps, as they had proof of what was happening?  I would also like to believe that the story was followed up to make sure that it was real, because otherwise, however harrowing... it is just a story.  Did anyone contact the Nursing College to ask if the lady was on the course she claimed to be on?  Had anyone at the College reported the lady missing and contacted her family?  I believe foreign students have a mentor to help them while they are in a foreign country, what actions was the mentor taking to find her and make sure that she had left of her own free will and not just abandoned the course?

Anne (the victim) claims that she was made to service 15 to 20 men per day.  This is physically not possible.  If we take 20 as the larger number and consider each booking to be of 30 minutes duration, the time working alone amounts to 10 hours.  That does not allow for picking up and answering the phone, for people running late on arrival, for people over staying etc, etc.  It would also suggest that she was not given any time to wash herself in between, so by the time she had got to the 10th client, she would stink to high heaven.  It just isn't physically possible to see that many clients and then there is the fact that the average high volume working Sex Worker currently working in Ireland is lucky if she is able to secure 10 bookings in a day.  They are competing with the 800 advertised Sex Workers, with pretty pictures and profiles, all offering luxury and clean towels.  This means it takes a certain type of man to choose to see a lady in these conditions and those men are in the minority and they are part of an underground world that most of us are not aware of and never will be aware of.

This brings me on to the clause 6, which advocates the use of the Swedish Model, where currently they are getting no convictions, as they can not get the evidence needed to convict the pimps.  A country that puts more importants on fining clients than helping Sex Workers.  A country that currently has more prostitution than Ireland, with over 1000 recorded working daily and a country that has higher HIV rates than Ireland since their bill to make the client pay came in.  They have no success stories, they have no convictions.

It is already a crime to traffic or coerce a human in any of these three categories mentioned.  There is already support to help the victims and it is a very naive stance for anyone to believe that there is no trafficking or coercion going on in the country that they live in.  There is not a country in the world that is free of this and it is degrading and it is nasty, but it needs to be contained and it needs to be given severer sentencing upon convictions and people need to be made to pay for exploiting other humans, but that should be aimed at the PIMPS, as they are the ones facilitating this and taking people away from their regular lives and taking away their freedom.  These should be the people that are found, the abusers, those in the knowledge that they are there against their will.  This law already exists!!!!

Currently the toughest sentence for someone convicted of trafficking is two years.  That means that they may be walking free again after one year and assuming they are taken into custody before their sentence is passed, then they could be out before that.  It is rare that anyone should get the full term, which means that they can be out of prison and working in the industry again within 6 months to a year.  When you consider the vast amount of money they can make from one single trafficked woman, do you really think that this kind of sentence is going to deter a man who is prepared to treat another human being in this way from doing it again?  The sentences are feeble, the consequences too light.  They do not stop anyone from committing this type of crime, they just take them off the street for a few short months and allow someone else to take their place.

Lord Morrow continued to thank all the supporters for his campaign with regards to stopping sex work and made particular mention to Paul Bailey who he said had read every word of 1200 pages of a report put together by the Justice Committee on trafficking and coercion.  This does beg the question of why only one MP has read this information and in particular, why Lord Morrow had not considered it worth his time to read it?  Surely if this is of such volume, it holds information of great worth and should be considered vitally important?

He then quoted from William Hague who he said was one of his heroes.

You can choose to look the other way,
but you may not say you did not know!

I found this quote to be of particular interest in the knowledge that the voices of the current Sex Workers have largely been ignored, or belittled, as not representative.

Video Presentation
'No Hope'
This video came straight out of a Liam Neeson movie of 'Taken'.  It was emotive and there to cause shock value, but I believe there is very little resemblance to most Sex Workers working in Ireland and Northern Ireland today.

A young girl is waiting at the airport, freshly arrived from another country to work as a Nanny.  She is picked up by the driver who ignores most of her chatter about what work she will be doing with the new family she expects to be with upon arrival.  The driver drags her out of the vehicle and into a wreck of a building with a dirty mattress on the floor, where she is thrown down.

Two more men appear and they rape her and beat her up.  She is given a phone and told that she  must take the bookings or they will hurt her family.  We are then subjected to seeing more men come and go and rape her as she struggles and cries.

This is not sex work, this is not the life of an Escort.  Sex Workers give their consent and work within their own boundaries and can always say..; No!  Sex Workers are NOT raped!  They are not forced and if they are ever in a position where they are made to do something against their will, they can currently report that to the Police and file a report and this can lead to a conviction.  This will not be possible if the law changes, as every man will be considered a rapist and she will want to protect her good, regular clients and will not want to expose where she is working, for fear of them having their lives ruined.

People who arrange to see Sex Workers are not looking to rape anyone.  They are looking for a mutual exchange with another consenting adult.  The majority value that consent and will do their best to make sure that the person they see is happy with the arrangement.  There are showers and towels and protection.  No one is forced to do anything against their will.

The video clip may be representative of trafficking, I would not know, as I have never been in that situation, but I do know that it is NOT representative of the life of a Sex Worker and the two need to be separated, otherwise my right to consent is being taken away from me and as a sane, educated individual I should have that right!

In conclusion, it is not a matter of 'No Hope', but 'No Comparison'.  These are two separate issues and our judgement should not be marred in this way.  Sex with consent is not rape, even when money is exchanged!

My Story
Rachel Moran

Rachel started by saying a little about herself.  She said that in the USA she would have been considered trafficked, as she had started Sex Work at the tender age of 15.  I found this surprising, as I was under the impression that you had to be legally 18 to work as a sex worker in the UK and Ireland, so as far as we are concerned here, she would also be considered as trafficked, or coerced.  it is illegal whatever it is considered.

She mentioned that at that time of her life she felt she had no other choice and there were no other viable alternatives, as she was homeless.  This I'm afraid is incorrect, as being 15 she would still be protected and if she had seeked help, she would have got it.  It would have been a different story if she had been 18 or over, but as a minor, she had the full support of the Country.  Therefor her reasoning for entering sex work due to having no choices, I'm afraid is not valid.  It may have been her preference, but she DID have choices.

Rachel believes that all sex work should be stamped out and that in doing so it would stop trafficking.  However, this does not address the plight of the labour enforced or domestic enforced trafficked victim.  It is far too simplistic to suggest that taking away the sex industry will stop PIMPS from being able to benefit from trafficking.  It is also far too simplistic to assume that making clients criminals will solve the problem.

Surely if this was true, then they would also be tackling the factories, the hotel industry and the Domestic industries and stopping them, as they are facilitating the slave trade and trafficking in the other known and accepted areas of trafficking?  They also have much larger numbers to tackle than the sex industry.

Rachel also said that she had never met a sex worker who worked of her own free will.  I am wondering if she is walking around with her eyes shut, as I'm sure Laura Lee has had a huge presence during these debates and I believe two Sex Workers were present at another meeting she attended and they were also Independent Escorts.  However, just to be on the safe side, I did make a point of introducing myself to her and while we were shaking hands I told her that she had now officially met a Sex Worker, who was working of her own free will and had options.  She assured me that I was in the minority.  I assured her that I was not.  I told her I had met many sex workers who worked of their own free will and also had options, but she shook her head and repeated that I was mistaken and I was in the minority.

I find it incredulous that a woman can stand up on stage and say she cares about people, when in actual fact she only cares about herself.  The woman is there to promote herself and her own book and the more a victim she can be, the better her book will sell.  She has no care for the truth, otherwise she would have asked me about my experiences and how I know people who work of their own free will.  Instead she closed her mind, she closed her ears and she walked away to have a group photo taken with all the other single minded people, that don't care about the people in the industry; who's jobs they are threatening and the lives of those who currently pay to see sex workers to make their lives a better place to be.

Rachel is repulsed by those that use the sex industry, she is repulsed by those that buy women to have sex with and she commented on the 'mock' sex union that pretends to represent sex workers, as they have invested interest in keeping paying for sex legal.  She said it is ran by Escort Ireland, who on a daily basis sell 800 women per day.  This again is emotive language.  Escort Ireland offers advert space and an individual can create their own advert and pay to show their availability on that site.  You are paying for advertising space, as you would do with ebay, vivastreet or any other online website.  Sex Workers are not being sold, as at the end of the time paid for the lady/gent can close the door and never see that client again if she/he so wish.  They are not selling themselves, but they are selling their skill base and company.  They are in control, they decides what they want to provide and they earn their money in the same way any other service provider does.

I also feel that this emphasis on the sex trade and trafficking undervalues the plight of the majority of trafficked people who come under the other two categories.  It seems they don't need a special clause to eradicate the trade that they have been forced into.  It seems that it is far more palatable for the nation to accept that a person may be locked in a room and malnourished, being forced to work long hours in hard labour, as long as sex is not the prime reason.  Is that because there is less money to be made from it?  Or because they feel their plight is less arduous?  Or they believe that it is possible for people to want to do those jobs and have other choices?  I'm not sure, but no one seems to be questioning that.  That seems quite surreal to me.  In essence, I feel that clause 6 serves to devalue the majority of trafficked that come under these other categories, who's lives are equally taken away from them and beaten and abused.  They deserve the same attention and if that is not right for them, then why is it right to attempt to abolish the sex trade?

At the end of Rachel Moran's story we were given the opportunity to ask questions, but before I had the chance to pose a question in my head, she was off the podium and sat back down in her seat.  It was suggested we may like to ask her questions later, as of course it's not likely anyone would want to do it publicly.  I would have liked to, but alas I was not quick enough.

Speech
Rt. Hon. Peter Robinson MLA, First Minister of Northern Ireland, Leader of the Democratic Union Party

Not much to report here really.  He showed his support to Lord Morrow and commended him for fighting for clause 6, saying that it would have been much easier to pass this bill if he had left it out and this bill has been in the making now for the last two and a half years, so much time has past and I do wonder how many trafficked victims have not been helped in that time for hanging on to this clause that will do more harm than good?

I personally feel let down by politicians that are all too eager to believe what they hear without seeking any evidence.  Without doing the proper research and with out really caring about the people in their community, as believe it or not, sex workers are part of the community and they should have rights too.  They should be protected, but in this case, they are needing protection from careless politics and politicians, who are far too busy trying to 'look good', than really care about the good they are doing, or not in this case.

Closing Remarks
Arlene Foster MLA, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment

Again, nothing much to report here.  There was a lot of back slapping and pleas for people to send letters in support of the bill and how wonderful it was to have a letter of support from Jimmy Carter.  It is such a shame that his support is misguided, as this clause does nothing to help those that are trapped in this industry, but if anything hems them in, while they concentrate on entrapping and fining the clients.

If you would like to find out more about this bill then please do visit the site that was newly launched just Yesterday at www.givinghopeni.com

The bill is at its most critical stage, being stage 5 of 10 stages.  Once this stage is complete, there is either a clear path to bring the bill in complete with clause 6, or for taking it back to basics and reviewing the areas that are rejected.  If anyone is reading this and like me, believes that this bill is not being produced to help those that need it most, but to punish those they feel morally should not be having sex with other consenting adults, then please show your hand.    Make it known under what ever guise you feel comfortable that this bill will only make things worse, it will drive the honest and innocent (yes sex workers are innocent with regards to trafficking) underground, it will put their lives in jeopardy and it will destroy the lives of clients, who only seek to spend time with other consenting adults for a fee.  This is not a crime, this is simply a transaction between two adults.

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope you can see how misguided trust is a very dangerous thing.

7 comments:

  1. Looking on the website I supplied on here it states: Since 2009 over 140 men, women and children have been identified as potential victims of human trafficking in Northern Ireland. They have been trafficked internationally as well as from within the UK itself and exploited in Northern Ireland. These are the victims we know about. It is widely acknowledged that this figure is only the tip of the iceberg.

    That means these potential cases span over 5 years. That is approx 28 potential cases per year, spanned over the 3 areas of trafficking. If you divide that equally between the 3 types of trafficking (which we know is not the case, as the majority are in the first 2) that means there are potentially 9 trafficking victims in Ireland each year. Surely they have figures in the last year to show how many 'potential' victims turned out to be 'actual' victims?

    All of a sudden this crisis seems almost obsolete.

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  2. I think Rupert Everett in his programme "Love for Sale" exposed Rachel Moran for what she really is when she freely admitted that she’s actually in favour of sex workers being stigmatised and treated as second class citizens. However, through the power of the Internet more and more people are realising that abolitionists like her spout nothing but lies, myths and propaganda and that if you want the truth you need to speak to a current sex worker.

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  3. I agree that she did not come off well in that at all. She has her standard replies, to which she has no real answers for. She never actually explains her reasoning, it just is!

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  4. Fair play to ya Kate. Why should we be made to feel like criminals. If a man wants to have sex with a woman for money and shes a concenting adult then wheres the harm.
    We should be all allowed to make our own choices. I'm sick of all these narrow minded pricks thinking their speaking for everyone.
    Well done Kate, your blog is very well put together and makes sense. People like you should be listened to.

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  5. Thank you, I am of course in total agreement with you. Let's hope they see sense.

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  6. I find it very difficult to find accurate information. Lord Morrow and others refer to people with appalling stories...but it's not clear to me how much of this I can rely on. There does seem to be elements in the "rescue industry" who are nothing like they claim to be; and suggestions that some of their spokespeople aren't what they seem to be. See, for instance:

    http://harlotsparlour.com/2014/10/23/sworn-evidence-concealed-by-justice-committee-stormont/

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  7. Thank you for the link and I would say if you wanted to believe anything, believe what you read in that link. Gaye Dalton is a very reliable source, unlike the people they have been using to send out emotive messages.

    I don't believe a word Rachel Moran says. She is too detached and unemotional. There is no spark, hate, love, passion. For me if she was the person she says she is, she would have more understanding and empathy with those that are currently working and not blank anything we say. She has no compassion, while saying that she had hit rock bottom while she was doing it. Would she not want to find solutions for those that must (in her mind) also have hit rock bottom?

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