Sex Worker?s Action Network Symposium - Kitchener

April 16, 2010

Report by Melinda Dalton in The Record, 16 Apr 2010:

http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/698536

KITCHENER ? Reaching out to sex trade workers on the street is a challenge and so is convincing them a brutal sexual attack isn?t just a workplace injury.

Conveying the same message to the anonymous, young faces behind internet ads selling sex in non-descript hotel rooms is near impossible.

?Thanks to the internet [...] you don?t have to work on the street anymore,? said Det. Wendy Leaver of the Toronto Police Service?s special victims section. ?I can tell you some of the major hotels in downtown Toronto are nothing but bawdy houses. We?ve eliminated the street and what?s frightening about that is we?ve eliminated (visibility of) the younger girls and the younger boys. They?re all indoors.?

As part of a five member unit devoted to investigating assaults against those in the sex trade, Leaver has seen for herself the dilemma that faces sex workers when it comes to their perceived position in society and their safety.

Often, she said, sex workers believe taunting from johns that no one will trust their stories and that police won?t do anything to help, so the violence goes unreported.

?What is so frightening is the opinion that sex workers are expendable, marginalized, that they?re of no value to our society or our community,? she said. ?They?re stigmatized 100 per cent.?

Leaver was one of three speakers addressing issues of prostitution and the justice system at the second annual Sex Worker?s Action Network symposium at the Walper Terrace Hotel Thursday. More than 100 people from agencies across the community attended the event.

The special victims section, part of the sex crimes unit, of the Toronto Police Service emerged three years ago out of a pilot project. While their mandate started out as investigating sexual assaults against sex trade workers, it has been expanding to take in things like robberies or other crimes committed against those in the trade.

The section handles between 50 and 60 cases a year. It works, Leaver stressed, because of the buy-in from social services and other agencies who already have creditability with those in the business.

While prostitution is technically legal in Canada, most of the activities surrounding it ? like communicating for the purposes of prostitution and keeping a bawdy house ? are criminal. The fear of being charged themselves is a barrier that can prevent sex trade workers from reporting assaults, even brutalizing ones, to police, Leaver said.

?We?ve arrived on the scene and the first thing the woman will say to us after she?s been brutally assaulted by a client, ?Are you going to arrest me?? or lying in a hospital bed, crying ?You?re going to arrest me, aren?t you?? No, we?re not,? she said.

In Waterloo Region, the major crimes unit investigates any reports of sexual assault. The service set up a so-called bad-date line for local sex trade workers, but Staff Sgt. Tom Matthews, who heads the unit, admits it?s not well used.

He said the unit investigates all incidents of sexual assault with the same diligence, regardless of who the victim is. While there?s no local section exclusive to sex trade workers, regional police do have a member serving on the Sex Worker?s Action Network and are always interested in new ways to make connections with all members of the community, said Matthews, one of several local officers at the symposium.

The rise of the internet in the sex trade and sex worker victimization is on the local radar, he said, though they?re not seeing a significant spike in cases.

In Toronto, the special victims section is proactively trying to reach out to those behind some of the thousands of internet sex ads. They check out [the internet] weekly and try and set up dates if the person offered up seems particularly young. They?ll show up, ask for ID and make a referral to Family and Children?s Services, if he or she is under 17, or try and make a quick connection so the sex trade worker knows who to call if things get out of control.

While Toronto police are proactively tackling the ever-expanding issue as best they can, it?s not unique to large metropolis.

On Wednesday, a 26-year-old Toronto man was sentenced to the equivalent of nine months in jail after pleading guilty to procurement involving a 16-year-old Kitchener girl. The charge stemmed from an incident last December in which three men went to a Kitchener hotel to have oral sex and intercourse with the teen for money. Court heard the men had responded to an ad from an online dating service.

It?s those kinds of victims, particularly the ones who don?t come to the attention of police, who can go on being victimized and brutalized out of view of the resources set up to help them, Leaver said.

The Sex Worker?s Action Network, a local advocacy group that supporter workers in the sex trade, have focused their efforts on street-level sex work in the two years since the network was founded. Cathy Middleton, director of women?s services at the KW YWCA, said they hope to expand their work in the future to include those in the business who work at massage parlors or escort services and aren?t as visible.

The aim of the symposium was to open up discussions about all the issues affecting those in the sex trade, independent of the moral and ethical dilemmas that can build barriers, she said.

?The negative judgment toward them makes it really difficult for them to believe they?re valued and what happened to them is wrong and there is a way to bring people to justice,? she said.

?It?s tricky because they kind of sit in a world where there is a real negative attitude toward sex workers. And yet the paradox is that there are many more people in the community who want to ensure that they get their basic needs met.?