Imagine going to work not knowing if you’ll be ripped off, battered or sexually abused. Not knowing if you’ll come home at the end of the day.
For sex workers in Canada, that's the norm. Violence and crime have become just another part of the job.
However, violence is not something that is actually inherent in the profession – it’s the product of a badly organized structure and a set of laws surrounding sex work.
If society wants to look at sex workers as “troubled” or “misguided” children of sorts, then they should also look to the government as the neglectful parents.
In this country, selling sex is legal, but prostitutes aren’t able to do it safely due to solicitation laws in the Criminal Code. Without being able to work in bawdy houses or brothels, sex workers are left without any protection, and become at risk for violence.
“Currently it’s legal to do our job, but not legal to conduct any aspect of our job,” says Toronto sex worker Brigitte Benoit, who is a member of the activist group Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC).
Enforcement policies have ultimately led to the elimination of safe work spaces for sex workers, says Benoit.
“If we had control over a venue, prostitutes could feel safer, hire security, and have access to showers and safe-sex supplies.”
In October, fellow SPOC members and sex workers Valerie Scott, Amy Lebovitch and Terri-Jean Bedford brought their complaints around the issue to the Superior Court of Ontario. They are challenging sections 210-213 of the Criminal Code that prohibit bawdy houses, living on the avails, and communicating for the purpose of prostitution. The women say these prohibitions are a violation of their human rights.
Attempts have been made in the past to strike down parts of these prostitution laws, but this challenge is the first broad sweep of provisions in two decades.
By striking down all the Criminal Code sections pertaining to solicitation, it would effectively decriminalize prostitution.
Government laws are forcing Canadian citizens into dangerous environments, just so they can make a living, says University of Ottawa criminology professor Christine Bruckert.
Bruckert, a former stripper, spent three years studying the personal and professional lives of sex workers in Ottawa.
She looked at how, within the current justice context, sex workers continually experience violence from clients, and from police.
“Allowing for bawdy houses isn’t the perfect solution, but it is definitely the better alternative to forcing sex workers into dark corners and into jails” says Bruckert.
“If you look at countries that do have decriminzation, rates of violence go down dramatically and working conditions go up.”
Until the government moves to change legislation, sex workers will have to continue to look out for themselves, and each other.
On the SPOC website, they maintain a “bad date” list, to try and bring attention to some violent clients in the Toronto area. For now, says Benoit, that’s really all they can do.
The list includes detailed descriptions of bad “Johns”, the names they gave, vehicles they drove, partial phone numbers and addresses as well as a description of the violent act they committed.
“Colleague was picked up by a client at Queen St.E and Pape Ave. Both walked to a nearby gas station where the male stabbed her in the head and sexually assaulted her,” reads a posting from December 2009.
“Violence isn’t something that naturally comes with the job,” says Bruckert. “It’s a product of the way the industry is organized.”
And though prostitution is legal in Canada, violent crimes against sex workers often don’t get reported because of the stigma and fear of being charged under the other laws that criminalize sex work.
A 2006 government commission found that between 1994 and 2003, “at least 79 prostitutes” had been murdered on the job in Canada. This of course, does not begin to reflect the real number, especially when you consider the hundreds of ‘missing’ Aboriginal women across the country.
The report includes only cases where the police were able to actually determine that the death occurred during prostitution-related activities.
When Robert Pickton allegedly confessed to murdering 49 women – most of them sex workers from the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, the country was horrified, but nothing was done to make the lives of other sex workers safer.
“It’s becoming a real health and safety issue,” says Benoit. “We want recognition of our human rights and safe spaces to work in”
Prostitution sweeps happen frequently in Ottawa – about once every couple of months, according to Sergeant Jim Elves. Sex workers are often charged and thrown into jail for trying to do their jobs.
Although most sweeps happen because of citizen complaints of ‘nuisance’, he says he does not think that bawdy houses are a good solution to getting sex workers off the streets and out of the public eye.
“The only way to solve the problem is to get rid of it altogether,” said Elves.
As the world’s oldest profession, however, it doesn’t look like prostitution will be going away anytime soon.
So, in order to reduce stigma and violence against sex workers, society’s approach to the profession needs to change.