trugent

Folks, This is another of the "serious" blogs. Apologies for ... its length (I know, too much), if the more light hearted comments strike the wrong tone and if I am going over old ground and adding nothing new.
I am happy if you disagree with the content though, please comment and explain!

We learnt a bit from the events and public pronouncements of this week – one important thing, if confirmation was needed, is that the Irish Government is a bad government. That is not bad as in “evil” – I am sure they are well intentioned. No, bad here simply means not actually any good at what they are there to do.
Good governments make good law; bad governments make bad law. This government seems on the way to making a bad law.

I have come over the years to be a bit of a fan of the House of Lords in Britain. Not because I have a fetish for pompous oafs dressed in furs and wigs, but because of what they do. They take ideological and populist rubbish served up by elected politicians and ask the question “does this make good law” and if it doesn’t, they throw it back to the politicians with a note I often saw on school reports “Could Do Better!” Oh for something like that over here.

The government must be rather pleased with itself at the moment. With all the unpopular things it has been doing (and the more unpopular things it actually should be doing) it has found a subject which it will get no opposition to from those in society who make the most noise. There is “raised public awareness”, no doubt started by a ministerial prod that this would be a “good subject” with a very willing RTE and Primetime looking to gain a few brownie points by toeing the line after recent disasters. It may have been slightly disappointed with the insipid programme they produced, but a question from the opposition allowed a strong statement around intended legislation and every politician has a warm feeling that here is a topic they can safely “do something about”.

What they have come up with will make no difference in general sex worker welfare. It does not attempt to navigate through the difficult waters of this subject, like distinguishing between those who work in the industry supporting sex workers (eg drivers) and those who force girls to work as escorts under physical or emotional threat. Yes, getting the law right for this would be tricky... good governments would work hard on getting the legislation in place even if it might not pander to populist opinion and prejudice (eg introduce legislation to enable a proper sex worker registration scheme, which includes registration of good legal agencies – agencies being run to support escorts in the provision of accommodation and process of making bookings).

What are they doing... They are looking at criminalising the purchase of sex.

This is nonsense on so many levels and leaves so many open questions. For example - How is it to be proved? I can’t see a cast iron way, aside from the two dedicated Garda who currently work on trafficking in Ireland (we learnt this from Primetime) setting up some sort of sting operation where one pretends to be selling sex and the other springs from a wardrobe and takes a picture just as the cash exchanges hands. Perhaps it won’t just relate to cash – I look forward to making a citizen’s arrest as I sit in a restaurant and overhear a smooth operator say to his dining companion “If you want to come round to my place, I’ll just pay the bill” ... not cash, but banged to rights! I give you something of value and I hope sex will result... actually that’s what escort meetings are (the escort always has an absolute right to refuse any service). There may be a difference in the level of likelihood involved, but how can legislation cope with that.

Two serious points... It may be intended that an escort acts as a prosecution witness as clients are taken through the courts. To do such a thing would require strength of character that is unlikely in a vulnerable, trafficked individual. On the other hand, there are independent escorts I have met who would be strong enough to embark on this process if they chose to. So, the logic suggests that a person who is going to undertake the illegal act of purchasing sex may well be more likely to focus on the weak and vulnerable trafficked escort, who is not going to testify against them, as a means to reduce the likelihood of prosecution. Twisted thinking, maybe, but in the strictest definition... logical.
Secondly, the eyes and ears of the remaining punting population will turn off to trafficking. There may be precious few reports today (would like to know how many), but the folks who continue punting are hardly likely to ring a helpline and say “I was illegally buying sex when I came across a person I think is trafficked... here’s some details that will help identify her but might incriminate and lead you to me in the process”. Sources of information will dry up rather than increase.

So this proposal is there simply to say “People who pay for sex are nasty criminal bastards. It’s the law”

This raises the interesting question – “[B]Am I a nasty bastard[/B]?”

Whilst the Primetime programme was too poor to make me pause and think about this, the debate it has sparked across the boards has. I am thinking very hard about what I currently do and what I have done in the past.

I have always wanted to spend time only with escorts who are working of their own free will and choose to spend time with me. Over the past 18 months I think I have been OK at this – using the PM system to establish contact as much as possible; making conversation on the phone to get a sense of the lady and helping me to know what her voice is like so that when I meet her I know I am with the same lady; spending a few minutes talking at the start of the appointment to try to see the “real” person behind the initial persona.

Before then, making arrangements solely by phone, I made mistakes. Three specific things I did that were wrong .... I had one meeting with a lady who was not too happy at the time – not crying or obviously upset, but quiet and not smiling. I accepted explanations like “Ireland is too cold and wet” and “the apartment block is very noisy” at face value – not probing to see whether a more sinister reason was behind the way she was. Another time I went to one appointment, directed by phone to the location in good English, to find the lady there had no English. I did not go through with the appointment. The lady was not obviously distressed but still I did nothing to report the incident as a potential trafficking issue – wrong. On the final occasion the lady was noticeably drunk... not drugged and not paralytic, but well merry. I accepted her explanation of “half a bottle of wine” and as she was very willing went through with the appointment. Was her drinking a way of generating false willingness?

I share these not to seek redemption. If some of you read this and think less of me, I accept that. I use them to illustrate that whilst I do not think of myself as a “nasty bastard”, there are occasions I have done things that a “nasty bastard” would do.

I do have hope, though. I believe I have become wiser and more clued up – driven a lot by the experience of meeting great escorts and by the things I have learnt through the community elements of EI. I will learn new things over the coming times, and that will help me to be”the best punter I can be”.

If I have two asks of the punting community it would be these.... that we all we take the trouble to understand what we can do to make us the “best punters we can be”, and that we have the courage and decency required to put them in to practice – for example by reporting suspicions of trafficking to the authorities.

In my maddest moments I still can’t imagine the noisy minority looking on us as anything other than “nasty bastards”, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing the right thing.