For release: 31st March 2011
The story reported in The Age
The Australian Christian Lobby said a report in today’s Melbourne Age revealing
human trafficking in legal brothels, is further proofthat attempts to make prostitution safe through regulation have failed.
ACL’s human trafficking spokeswoman Michelle Pearse said she is not surprised by the news that underage women are working in Victoria and that the licensed industry is being investigated as part of a human trafficking inquiry.
It comes as a Parliamentary inquiry is underway in the ACT following the tragic death of a 17-year-old girl of a drug overdose in a legal brothel.
“The British Government’s 2004 Home Office Report into prostitution[i] criticised Victoria’s legalisation of the sex trade when it said that Australian licensing schemes ‘have failed to deliver the safe working environment that they set out to achieve’,” she said.
“It’s clear that legalising brothels does not make prostitution safer because prostitution in itself is harmful to women. The best alternative is to support prostituted women to leave the exploitative trade and to tackle the demand – the men who purchase prostituted women,” she said.
“This is not a new idea, in fact overseas in Iceland, Norway, Sweden and South Korea, the governments have introduced a model that criminalises the purchase of sex – because it sees it as a human rights issue.
“The scheme has been very successful and in Sweden, for example, the Swedish police said last year in the report Prohibition of the purchase of sexual services[ii] that the ban on the purchase of sexual services acts as a barrier to human traffickers and procurers who are considering establishing themselves in Sweden,” Ms Pearse said.
“It’s clear that this law has affected the demand for prostituted women and therefore the amount of women trafficked into the country. It’s the only model that lessens the amount of women exploited in prostitution,” she said.
The Australian Christian Lobby is calling for the Victorian and other State and Territory Governments to fix the broken system and to criminalise the purchase of sex everywhere so that men cannot legally exploit women.
“Community safety will only be achieved when the Government recognises that prostitution is exploitation and seeks the safety of those in prostitution as well as the wider community,” Ms Pearse said.
Media Contact: Katherine Spackman on 0408 875 979
[i] http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/16_07_04_paying.pdf
According to the A21 campagn, there are around 27 million children and women of child-bearing age trafficked in the world today. Most women are lured into sex traffic by the offer of a job and a better life. They have their documents taken from them and are repeated raped until they are completely broken. They are then forced to service hideous amount of men per day (Ive heard examples ranging from 40-100 men per day).
In Europe the A21 Campagn have undercover women in health clinics who have successfully befriended some of these women and, helping them to escape, have removed them to safe houses. And then the amazing power of God’s love has transformed these broken women to wholeness. The officials in Greece dont understand how A21 is successful when no other NCOs are not. (There are hundreds of women around the world supporting A21 in prayer,for this tragedy to end and for these captives to be set free, in Jesus name.)
One girl asked the heart-breaking question “What took you so long?” Can you even imagine one day of this hellish nightmare existence?
Please, please keep this issue before our State and Federal Governments until our laws are changed and the purchase of sex is made illegal. If our country has loop-holes in our law that allow people to be bought and sold across our borders it makes me ashamed to be Australian. How can we best work towards stopping this atrocity?