Jul. 09, 2008 - Issue #664: Rocky 12

Prostitution - Another escort death has sex trade workers debating how to stay safe

In the early hours of Jun 30, 20-year-old Chantel Brittnay Robertson, an escort, went missing. Days later, Robertson’s remains were exhumed from the yard of an Edmonton residence, and the medical examiner concluded that she had been strangled to death. 
 

Reports of Robertson’s murder, the second death of a sex-trade worker in less than a month, immediately renewed calls to crack down on those who buy sex and do more to get the women who sell sex out of the business.
 

However, others, like Carol-Lynn Strachan, counter that this anti-prostitution or abolitionist approach is actually the root of the problem.

“It has murdered. It has killed women. It has had them beaten. And it has driven them out of the city. If this is what they hoped to accomplish, then good, they’ve done it!” Strachan exclaims, indignantly.
 

A prostitute for over 20 years before retiring from the business to pursue other interests, Strachan is also a member of the Sex Trade Workers of Canada, a group of about 500 prostitutes and human rights activists concerned with the rights and safety of those involved in the sex trade. 
 

“[The abolitionists’] whole thought of eradication is one of the top reasons women are found out in the Strathcona County fields. If this [approach] is working then how come we find so many women dead?”
 

There are already anti-prostitution measures in place in Edmonton, Strachan notes, pointing to the prohibitive $1700 licensing fees women must pay and the criminal background check that women must pass in order to get an escort license.
 

The problem with these measures, Strachan argues, is that if a prostitute wants to operate indoors, more often than not they turn to street-level prostitution first, in order to get enough money to pay the exorbitant fee. 
 

Furthermore, women who want to escape the often violent streets to work in what Strachan describes as the safety of an escort agency often cannot get a license to do so, because they can’t pass the criminal record check. As a result, these women continue to work on the streets, hoping they don’t get killed, or they advertise themselves illegally on internet dating sites and hope the authorities don’t catch them and slap them with a hefty fine. 
 

What we should be moving towards, Strachan says repeatedly and with exasperation in her voice, is legalization of prostitution and all the activities surrounding it, for the safety of all the women who want to be in the sex trade. 

 

For some, the idea that any woman wants to be in the sex trade may be hard to swallow. But it is an idea that Strachan unwaveringly defends. She believes that about half of women involved in street-level prostitution want to be there. When asked about indoor prostitution through businesses such as escort agencies and massage parlours, Strachan says the figure is probably even higher, maybe even in the area of 99 per cent.
 

However, a 1998 report, “Prostitution in Five Countries: Violence and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” states the opposite, saying that 92 per cent of women involved in prostitution want out of the trade. A different report examining prostitution in about a dozen countries, conducted in 2003, agrees, saying that 89 per cent of prostitutes want out of the business but cannot leave for various reasons, including not having other means of economic support, threats of violence against them if they leave, mental health issues or problems stemming from drug and alcohol abuse. 
 

Statistics like this can’t be trusted though, Strachan says, because they’re usually conducted by organizations whose business it is to get women off the street and thus have a financial investment in the matter, or they are conducted by groups morally opposed to the whole business of prostitution.
 

The perception that most prostitutes are mentally ill, or abused, or drug or alcohol addicts or were all forced into the business, is also false, Strachan argues. She points to herself as an example of someone who consciously chose to be a prostitute, until, she says, she “just got bored of it.” There are some drug-addicts, mentally ill and victims of human trafficking in the sex trade, Strachan admits, but she says they are the exception and not the rule.
 

The real problems aren’t drug addiction or mental illness, Strachan says. One of the problems is when sex trade workers fail to follow safety protocols. The death of Chantel Robertson probably could have been avoided, Strachan says, if Robertson’s driver had stayed outside the client’s house instead of driving off for an hour and leaving her all alone before coming back. Alternatively, some kind of call-in procedure could have also been followed, meaning that if Robertson hadn’t called her driver by an agreed-upon time, someone would have come to Robertson’s rescue within minutes.
 

The other problem, Strachan says, is that prostitutes who report violent men to the police are often not taken seriously. 
 

“You have to force the police to press charges,” Strachan gasps, but she hopes legalization could change that.

 

Tristine White advertised herself illegally on internet dating sites for 10 years, before finally “finding some self respect” and getting out of the profession. White agrees with Strachan that the $1700 fees that escorts are forced to pay is nothing more than “legalized pimping” by a city that offers sex trade workers little assurances of safety in return. 
 

White disagrees, however, with the idea that the majority of women working in the sex trade made an educated decision to do so. As an Aboriginal woman who looks Caucasian, White explains that during her childhood she was accepted by neither her Aboriginal nor her white peers. As a result, White got involved in drugs and alcohol with some fellow misfits and eventually started to have underage sex. As she puts it, she was presented with a way to finally fit in, and what she thought was a great way to make money.
 

“After a while, you lose your self respect and think, ‘Well, I might as well charge. I mean, I’m giving it away for free,’” White says.
 

When it comes to legalization, White is adamantly against the idea. First of all, she points out, the business is inherently unsafe.
 

“Unless there’s someone sitting on that couch with you, or in the room with you, you’re not safe. If he’s going to kill you, he’s going to kill you no matter what.”
 

For this reason, some organizations fear that legalization will only result in more women getting into the sex trade and, as a result, more women being hurt.
 

“By legalizing prostitution, you’re saying its okay to buy someone else and do whatever demeaning thing you want to them,” White says. She then demands, “How much do you think you’re worth? What’s your worth to be fisted? And would you want your daughter working in the brothel?”
 

In a worst-case scenario of what legalization could bring, White is afraid that women will one day go to an unemployment office to collect welfare, and be turned away because prostitution will be considered a legitimate way of earning a living.
 

“They’re going to be told that they can go work at Billy’s Brothel because they have a vagina! They’re employable!” White exclaims.

Monica Valiquette has worked as a street-level prostitute and an escort for 30 years, and has no plans to quit. Legalization, she says, is something that she definitely supports.
 

Over the phone, as she cheerfully drives to a client’s apartment, she says that government officials should consider adopting a model like the one that was adopted in New Zealand a few years ago.
 

In New Zealand, prostitution between consenting adults and everything surrounding it has been legalized.
 

“They’ve basically built a brothel [the size of a city block],” Valiquette explains. “The girl can still market her wares on the street. And when the fellow is prepared to hire her, he goes [over to an attendant], shows his ID, rents the place for $15, and gets the room for the hour. They do their thing and he leaves.
 

“Basically, somebody is watching the girl at all times in the sense that they know she’s there—they know the room’s been rented.” Valiquette summarizes.
 

The idea sounds great in principle, but according to some critics, it is White’s nightmare come to life. Impoverished New Zealand Aboriginals make up a disproportionate number of the prostitutes in brothels like these, and while legal prostitution has doubled under such systems as this, illegal prostitution is thought to have quadrupled. 
 

Furthermore, a recent report on the sexual exploitation of children notes that “the presence of a thriving adult sex industry in a community [has] the effect of increasing child prostitution in that same community.”
 

In addition to this, police records show that in the Nevada state counties in which prostitution is legal, the rape rate is roughly 50 per cent higher than it is in the rest of the United States, even when compared with other major urban areas like Los Angeles.

And so, the debate about what to do about the world’s oldest profession rages on. And with a hint of sadness in her voice, White proclaims that it will probably continue to do so, forever. V 

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