Sex Work
By David Schneider
Sex work is well known as "the worlds oldest profession", but while this may be a rather humorist approach to the topic, few people in the general community see sex work as a humorous subject. We see people like the Festival of Light campaigning for tougher laws to crack down upon sex work, and there is also a very strong feeling in most schools of feminist thought that sex work is highly degrading to women, as they are seen as sex objects, and not as people. But does the average person in the street have any real idea of the issues concerned with sex work, or even what legal restrictions currently apply to it. "What's this got to do with me?", you may ask. The fact of the matter is that sex work is being turned to by a large number of university students as a way of making ends meet. As one person involved in the sex industry told me, "Sex work is becoming the waitressing of the nineties." An unfortunate sentiment? Perhaps, though I think that it's a little more damning of our society and it's alleged high moral values than those who are involved in the trade. Be this as it may, there is considerable pressure, and indeed need, for an overhaul of South Australia's aging laws pertaining to sex work.
Sex work has been with us for some considerable period of time, so it may be useful to take a quick peek at a few historical examples of sex work. Did you know that the term "Hooker", by which sex workers are often described, originates from the American Civil War from the recreation policies of General Hooker, when he assumed command of the army of the Potomac? During the Crusades when the crusaders were experiencing difficulties in the siege of Jerusalem, they expelled all their women "camp followers" from their lines as a sign of penance, an interesting sacrifice from people who ate Muslims when food supplies were low, and who butchered thousands of unarmed Muslim civilians whenever they took an Arab town or city. An interesting perspective to say the least.
But what of sex work in South Australia today. At present we have this quaint thing that our law enforcement officials call operation Patriot. This program targets brothels primarily. Now, when you think about this, there seems to be a bit of a quandary. Clearly the safety of people must be a paramount concern for police. Sex workers are members of the Community, and are citizens of Australia so are entitled to the full protection of the law, and as such, regardless of ones attitude to the concept of sex work, their safety must be an issue. Now, in a brothel a sex worker is in their place of employment. The client is entering their "territory", giving the sex worker the psychological edge. Furthermore, the sex worker has the advantage of having other sex workers, the receptionist, and other persons normally on the premises available to come to their aid should a prospective client become aggressive, violent or otherwise unreasonable.
Then there is escort agency work, which is not a main target of operation Patriot or any other specific police activity. In escort sex work, you go to a place chosen by the client. The sex worker is entering their place of power, putting them at the psychological advantage. Furthermore, unlike in a brothel, where the money is swiftly removed from the worker and the client, the sex worker will have to retain the money until they return to their "base". This clearly puts the sex worker into a position where the sex worker may be assaulted and robbed for their fee subsequent to the sexual service being rendered. In addition, the sex worker faces the risk of assault, grievous bodily harm, murder and rape at the hands of a would be client in the escort method of work. Yes, you can rape a prostitute. Any form of non-consentual sex is RAPE. In such situations the sex worker may find themselves forced to perform sexual acts of a type that they would not normally provide to a client.
In spite of the arguments that I have just made for and against brothels versus agency work, I would be derelict in my duty if I didn't mention that whilst brothel work is often a safer option in theory for the sex worker, this is not always the case in practice. As there is no regulation of who runs brothels or agencies, or indeed any simple way for those they employ to seek adequate guarantees from their employers, there are many brothels where the worker may be often put at risk, or otherwise exploited. By the same token there are escort agencies that go to great pains to look out for the personal safety of their employees. As always we must beware of generalisations, as they are inaccurate by definition.
So, on the face of it, of the two forms of sexual service delivery, escort agency work carries by far the largest risks, both in the form of opportunity for an incident to occur, and in the severity of the incident. Yet the method that South Australian Police have chosen to persecute sex workers appears to have done little more than to drive the workers into a form a work that poses the most danger to their physical and mental well being. Police have chosen to attack the easiest target, the brothels themselves. The only real result being that workers have moved from brothel work to escort work. At the moment in South Australia around 75% of sex workers work via escort agencies. In 1995 there were no less than 84 escort services listed in the Adelaide Yellow Pages, which the police believe to be run by about 52 different operators. At present there is no real attempt to crack down on this form of operation. Furthermore, whilst there is information available about the extent of child prostitution in Adelaide's brothels because of the police crackdown, there is very little information available as to it's extent in the escort agency sphere of work. A disturbing prospect.
The question that goes begging is why is so much effort being put into closing brothels, and so little into cracking down on escort agency work. Well, there are two main reasons behind this. Firstly brothels are an easy target. Once the police have determined the location of a brothel, it is a simple matter to raid it at will, providing arrests, and convictions which look very pretty on their end of year report, whilst attempting to crack down on escort agencies is a much harder affair, where convictions are a lot less certain. The other reason is the sheer antiquity of our laws. The most common offences that sex workers find themselves charged with are Receive money in a brothel, Present on premises frequented by prostitutes without reasonable excuse, & Consorting. At present, the bulk of legislation relating to prostitution is contained in the Summary Offences Act (1953), and is out of date. Indeed the Summary Offences Act completely fails to deal with the concept of escort agencies at all, as they seem to have come about since the passing of the legislation. The Police themselves have been critical about the existing South Australian legislation, though as you'd expect, most of their complaints deal with the difficulty of existing laws hindering their ability to prosecute sex workers.
At present the bulk of offences seem to be brought against the sex workers themselves, or the receptionists, rather than the owners and operators of brothels. This has a rather unfortunate effect. Persons who receive convictions for prostitution related offences will, quite simply, find it difficult to leave the sex industry and find other forms of work. The more convictions a person gets, the less likely they will be able to find an alternative to sex work, should they desire to. This seems a perverse situation, in which the apparent aim of current anti-sex work legislation is to eliminate the practice of prostitution. However by persecuting those persons working in the industry and giving them criminal records, they are in fact becoming trapped in that form of employment. It seems incredible, but it's true. In many ways our existing laws do much to perpetuate the very thing that they are supposed to be stamping out, and in a way that brings a high level of disadvantage to the sex workers themselves.
It seems quite clear that reform in relation to laws applicable to sex work is both needed, and highly desirable.
Interestingly enough, August 1996 saw the report of the Social Development Committee being tabled in State Parliament. This report known as the Inquiry into Prostitution Final Report, makes no less than 29 recommendations to state parliament in relation to law reform with regards to the sex industry. Recommendation 5 states;
The Committee believes that brothels are the safest and, therefore, the preferred type of business for the sex industry. It recommends that brothels that comply with the conditions and siting requirements be allowed to register and operate free from prosecution. Registration requirements should include details of all persons involved in ownership or operation of the business. Any person with a serious criminal record should be ineligible to register.....
This is an interesting suggestion. The short version of the reports recommendations are; the establishment of registered brothels and escort agencies, increased penalties for unregistered brothels and escort agencies, as well as for sex workers working in an unregistered businesses. It recommends a widening of police powers to crack down on such brothels, and requires keepers of registered brothels to encourage safe sex practices. Penalties for securing underage persons for the purposes of prostitution would be severe. Soliciting in a public place would continue to be illegal, as well as using illegal immigrants for such work. Perhaps one of the most interesting proposals of the report is that there be mandatory STD screening in registered brothels and escort agencies of all sex workers, but such agencies would not be permitted to advertise this as an incentive for attracting customers.
That's the short version of the reports recommendations, if you want more specific detail I suggest that you attempt to procure a copy from your local member of state parliament. However I must confess that the idea of mandatory STD screening of sex workers is interesting. Sex workers are reported to be a high risk group for AIDS transmission (though the sex workers themselves say there is little risk if safe sex practices are followed), so we introduce mandatory screening. Sounds all very jolly, doesn't it? But then health care workers are supposed to be a high risk group as well. Should we introduce mandatory screening for them too? What about homosexual persons? They're alleged to be high risk, shall we begin a similar program here? What I'm getting at here is civil liberties. Once we start infringing on one groups civil liberties, how long until we start infringing on another groups? "Oh, but they're just a bunch of whores", some people may say, "who cares what happens to them". I do, and so should we all. They are people, they are members of the community, they are Australian Citizens.
Another interesting section of the report, is the inclusion of a draft prostitution bill, which will, I am informed, go before parliament when it next sits in October. This bill, when presented to state parliament will be the fifth attempt since 1980 to introduce a bill to reform South Australian sex work laws. At the moment The Sex Industry Network (SIN) is reviewing the draft bill, and yet to respond to both the bill, and the Social Development Committee's report, but I advise you all to keep your eyes on the newspaper in following days, as their response should be both interesting and informative.
In this article I have looked a few of the issues related to the subject of sex work in South Australia. Obviously there is much more to this than just the areas raised in this discussion. You may have noticed that at no time in this article have I attempted to discuss the moral issues related to whether sex work is a good or bad thing, evil or not. This is because regardless of why someone has found themselves in the sex industry, we must not lose sight of them as people and individuals. It's too easy to think in stereotypes, and allow our personal ethics and values to cloud the issue. As a society we have an obligation to attempt to bring the best possible situation around for the largest possible number of people, or in cases where there is going to be harm, to bring the least amount of harm to as few people as possible. After all, a major portion of our laws are based on the concept that we have a duty of care to other people in our community.