Canada: Pro-prostitution lobby wages war on Salvation Army

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Canada: Pro-prostitution lobby wages war on Salvation Army

Postby sam » Thu Oct 01, 2009 9:03 am

Pro-prostitution lobby wages war on Salvation Army
Protesters will target prayer vigils
Mark Hasiuk
Vancouver Courier
Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Name the greatest threat to Vancouver prostitutes toiling on street corners and in storefront brothels:
A) pimps B) abusive, disease-carrying johns C) an apathetic public D) the Salvation Army

According to Vancouver's pro-prostitution lobby, the answer is D, the Salvation Army.
Tell them what they've won, Regis...

The Salvation Army launched its local anti-human trafficking campaign last September after working on global sex trade issues for years. The charitable organization joins a growing movement of feminist and church groups who fear a spike in trafficking as the 2010 Winter Olympics draw near.

Human trafficking is among the world's fastest growing criminal industries, rivalling the illegal arms industry and drug trade in scope and impact. According to the U.S. State Department, approximately 800,000 victims are trafficked annually across international borders. Victims include women and children from Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.

In Vancouver, where brothels bloom like dandelions in some neighbourhoods, the magnitude of the problem is unknown. Due to a lack of law enforcement, Vancouver's sex trade industry--fuelled by domestic and international trafficking--remains a mystery.

Like most other anti-trafficking campaigns, the Salvation Army campaign targets the demand side of prostitution--pimps and johns. Last month the Salvation Army hung posters, depicting young women being beaten and abused, above urinals in downtown bars.

"This is a bold step for the Salvation Army," says Brian Venables, a Salvation Army spokesperson and chief architect of the campaign. "We've stepped out of the shadows and said this isn't going to happen anymore, and we're going to do what we can to stop it."

The pro-prostitution lobby is not amused.

The Salvation Army received several threatening emails about the campaign, but Venables says the criticism is misguided. "Our campaign is not against or about prostitution, it's about people who are forced into sex slavery," he says. "The issue is about those who don't have a choice."

But according to Susan Davis, a vocal member of Vancouver's pro-prostitution lobby, anti-trafficking campaigns are dangerous. Such campaigns, she says, prompt law enforcement to raid massage parlours--which she describes as "safe work places"--and drive the industry underground.

However, according to the city's licensing department, no massage parlours have been shut down this year.

Davis, a 41-year-old career prostitute, also claims that "Vancouver police are raiding Asian massage parlours" in a "racist and anti-immigrant" assault on the industry.

While the VPD cited "ongoing investigations," no massage parlours have been raided this year.

In fact, more than 50 de facto brothels--officially known as health enhancement centres--operate in Vancouver. Countless other unlicensed establishments operate with tacit approval from city hall.

Davis also attacked UBC law professor Ben Perrin, Canada's foremost expert on human trafficking. (The Salvation Army crafts its campaign on information complied by Perrin and others. The Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada and the U.S. State Department have confirmed Perrin's findings.) Perrin, she says, uses "fear mongering" and "demonization" to promote his anti-trafficking agenda.

Perrin dismisses the attack, noting Davis unsuccessfully lobbied in 2007 for legalized brothels in Vancouver. "This a pro-brothel lobby group," he says, "whose business is threatened by individuals who try to help people exit the sex trade and who try to confront exploitive pimps and traffickers."

Davis plans to mobilize other pro-prostitution activists and protest the Salvation Army's upcoming day of prayer, scheduled at churches and Salvation Army sites for Sept. 27.

She also targets Salvation Army volunteers who will visit Downtown Eastside street corners to pray for the anguished and abused. Davis plans to produce pamphlets warning street prostitutes about the Salvation Army threat. The pamphlets, she says, will be distributed by the publicly funded Mobile Access Project--also known as the MAP van. MAP van spokesperson Kate Gibson says she was unaware of Davis's plans but didn't rule out distributing the pamphlets.

"There's potential for a violent clash between sex workers and Salvation Army people, who have no comprehension of the way that we live," says Davis. "They assume we need rescue when in fact what we need is rights."

Davis may not need rescue. The vocal members of Vancouver's pro-prostitution lobby claim to live charmed lives.

But considering the widespread misery and abuse associated with the sex trade, her opposition to the Salvation Army campaign is desperate and her intentions are small.

Nevertheless, when she waves her placard in protest outside a Salvation Army church, she'll be included in those prayers--whether she likes it or not.
"Your orgasm can no longer dictate my oppression"

Trisha Baptie
sam
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Postby sam » Thu Oct 01, 2009 9:09 am

Salvation Army in battle over prostitution
A campaign to help victims of human trafficking stirs controversy and allegations of fear mongering

Jane Armstrong
Globe and Mail, Sep. 18, 2009

Timea Nagy was 20 when she answered a help-wanted listing in her native Hungary seeking nannies to work in Canada. The flight and travel arrangements were all paid and it seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime.

It turned into an unthinkable nightmare. The arrangement was, in fact, a human trafficking operation. There was no happy family at the Toronto airport to greet Ms. Nagy. Instead, three men "one Canadian and two Hungarians" whisked her to an Etobicoke motel, handed her some skimpy lingerie and drove her to a strip club, where she was forced to dance and perform sexual favours for male customers.

Over the next two months, Ms. Nagy was sexually attacked by her agent and verbally threatened by his associates, who forced her to work day and night in strip clubs and massage parlours, which were fronts for brothels. All her earnings "more than $2,000 a week" were confiscated by her captors.

She and four other Hungarian women were moved from motel to motel, and the men warned them that they would hurt or kill family members back home if they tried to escape.

"It's not like they chained you up," Ms. Nagy, 32, said in a recent interview. "They didn't have to. They threatened us every single day. They said, 'We'll burn your mother's house down. We have her address.'"

Eventually, Ms. Nagy overcame her fears and escaped, and was able to turn her life around. Today, she works for the Salvation Army as a counsellor helping trafficking victims.

Her story will soon be featured in an aggressive and controversial awareness campaign launched by the Christian church and social services agency against human trafficking. The campaign features graphic photos of young women being abused and degraded. Some of these posters have been draped in men's bathrooms in Vancouver bars.

The Salvation Army has also announced plans to set up a Vancouver shelter, the first of its kind in Canada, for trafficking victims. The 10-bed facility, which will open this fall, will be staffed 24 hours a day. The church says the shelter is needed in part because it believes the Olympics will cause a spike in human trafficking. It doesn't have hard data but notes that, in the past, large sporting events have prompted such an increase.

"I know we don't have numbers, but my gut tells me this is happening, probably a lot more than we even know," said the Salvation Army's Major Winn Blackman.

Human trafficking experts, sexual assault centres and aboriginal groups have applauded the new shelter, saying it's badly needed and overdue.

But the Salvation Army's campaign has drawn scorn from some prostitutes, and reopened the angry debate between those who want to legalize all aspects of prostitution, and abolitionists, who say it degrades and endangers vulnerable women. Critics say the Salvation Army, which wants to end all forms of prostitution, is fear mongering when it asserts the Olympics will increase the demand.

They say there is no evidence that large sporting events necessarily lead to more prostitution. And they have accused the Salvation Army of exaggerating the scope of human trafficking in Canada to advance its abolitionist agenda. Prostitution is legal in Canada, but it's a crime to solicit for the purposes of prostitution.

"It's one of those shock-and-awe campaigns," said lawyer Karen Mirsky of the Pivot Legal Society, which advocates for Vancouver's poor and marginalized.

Ms. Mirsky said the awareness campaign was designed to "generate an emotional response." She cited a recent study, paid for by the provincial government, which suggested there will be no surge in prostitution during the 2010 Winter Games. From strictly a business perspective, it said, the prospect of bringing women to the Vancouver area for a two-week sporting event isn't cost effective.

"What is far more likely is you will have women in the sex trade voluntarily coming here because they perceive more business," Ms. Mirsky said. "That's mobility. That's not trafficking."

One Vancouver sex worker, Sue Davis, said the Salvation Army campaign demonizes prostitution and encourages police raids, which drive sex workers underground. Ms. Davis, 41, said abolitionists are attempting to create panic by suggesting that hordes of prostitutes will descend on Vancouver for the Games. She said legalizing all aspects of prostitution "including licensing safe brothels" would make life safer for sex workers.

But the Salvation Army and many women's groups disagree. Lee Lakeman, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres, said she's seen an increase in the last five years of trafficked women who flee to shelters to escape captors.

Meanwhile, Maj. Blackman said the church has received reports in the Vancouver area that attempts have already begun to lure women and girls into prostitution. "We can only assume that this is [related] to the Olympics," she said.

Ms. Nagy said her harrowing story is proof that human trafficking exists and that victims are terrorized into silence. She escaped her captors a decade ago with the help of a sympathetic bouncer at a strip club where she worked. Ms. Nagy took her story to the police and was eventually granted permanent residency in Canada.

She believes the Salvation Army shelter will save lives and that its awareness campaign will set the tone in Vancouver by telling visitors it's not okay to sexually exploit women and children.

Ms. Nagy said she hopes her story will persuade the public that human trafficking is widespread. "The reason why there is no data," she said, "is because it's designed from beginning to end to make sure the women are always in a state of fear."
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Re: Canada: Pro-prostitution lobby wages war on Salvation Army

Postby phio gistic » Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:20 pm

In fact, more than 50 de facto brothels--officially known as health enhancement centres--operate in Vancouver.


This is sickening. It reminded me of something I wrote last year:

"When 'sex work' is legalized, the state becomes a pimp.

If the state can force you to work picking up trash on the side of the road, why wouldn't it also be able to force you to work as a prostitute?

In the future we will see/be criminals sent to work in the rape rooms, which the state will call pleasure palaces."
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Re: Canada: Pro-prostitution lobby wages war on Salvation Army

Postby gbl » Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:23 pm

What the hell is a "career prostitute", especially in Vancouver? One that hasn't been beaten to death yet, or turned into pig feed?

That woman just makes my blood boil.
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Re: Canada: Pro-prostitution lobby wages war on Salvation Army

Postby stargleamer » Sat Dec 12, 2009 10:42 pm

Never in a million years would i have thought I'd be cheering the Salvation Army on.

I wish there could be a move in Canada toward adopting the Nordic Model. Canada does have at least some commitment to Equality so you would think there would be some support for it somewhere.
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