Decriminalisation of Prostitution: Debate in UCC

cork | worker & community struggles and protests | event notice Sunday September 28, 2008 23:21 by English Collective of Prostitutes

with International Prostitutes Collective and Global Women's Strike

Philosophical Society to host speakers on the motion that this house would decriminalise prostitution. Speakers to include Niki Adams from the IPC and ECP, part of the Global Women's Strike network.

Niki Adams, spokeswoman for the International Prostitutes Collective

&

English Collective of Prostitutes will be a key speaker in University College Cork, Philosophical Society debate

This House Would Decriminalise Prostitution

University College Cork

Lecture Theatre Boole 4

7.30pm, Monday 29 September

This debate is right on time as the UK government announces increased criminalisation: targeting “brothels” and lap dancing clubs; penalising kerb crawling on a first offence and prosecuting men who buy sex. Similar measures are being considered in Ireland.

Sold as protection of vulnerable women, this moralistic crusade against prostitution has led in practice to increased arrests of sex workers. From the calls for help received by the ECP in the last few weeks, who is being targeted are immigrant women working independently many of whom now face deportation, mothers supporting families including with severely disabled partners and children, ex-sex workers who are covering their retirement by renting premises and are now facing brothel-keeping charges and a possible seven year prison sentence; young women whose lives and employment prospects have been devastated by a criminal record. Others are living in fear of being shopped by neighbours, waiting for the ‘knock on the door’ and even of physical attack.

This latest crackdown on the sex industry which is being promoted by religious and feminist fundamentalists in and outside of Parliament, will push prostitution further underground making sex workers more vulnerable to violence. Criminalising men who buy sex diverts police resources from investigating the violence which women report. If action is needed it is to tackle the appallingly low 6% conviction rate for reported rape.

Ms Adams will bring information about UK government proposals. Maggie Ronayne from the Global Women’s Strike in Ireland who is also an academic at the National University of Ireland, Galway, will also attend and contribute to the debate.

For further information: 0044 – 7482 2496 0044 – 7956 316 899 087 – 7838688

BIOGRAPHY

Niki Adams is a spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), which is a network of women, Black and white, of different nationalities and backgrounds working at various levels of the sex industry. Since 1975, the ECP has campaigned for the abolition of the prostitution laws which make sex workers more vulnerable to violence and for housing, higher benefits and other resources to enable sex workers to get off the game if they want to. The ECP provide information, help and daily advice to prostitute women on a wide range of issues, including the prostitution laws, discrimination and health.

Ms Adams is widely consulted by sex workers and community and statutory organisations, and is often interviewed in the media. Her work has helped set legal precedents which challenge discrimination and establish prostitute women’s right to protection. In 1995, she was key to the first private prosecution for rape in England, brought by two prostitute women after the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case -- the rapist was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years. Ms Adams was also central to the successful campaign to end the police practice of using possession of condoms to arrest women for loitering and soliciting.

Ms Adams contributed to Prostitute Women and AIDS: Resisting the Virus of Repression (Crossroads Books), the first publication in England on AIDS from prostitute women’s point of view; is co-author of “Campaigning for Legal Change” in Rethinking Prostitution: Purchasing Sex in the 1990s (ed. G & A Scambler, Routledge Press, 1997) , and of “Demystifying Child Prostitution: A Street View”, in Child Prostitution in Britain: Dilemmas and Practical Responses (Children’s Society, 1997), authored Anti-trafficking legislation: Protection or Deportation?, Feminist Review 73, 2003; co-author of Criminalisation: The price women & children pay, the ECP’s response to the government’s review of the prostitution laws December 2004 .