Letter in the Sunday Independent against the criminalisiing of clients of sex workers

There was a letter printed in the Sunday Independent highlighting the nonsense of crimalising of buying of sex by A Fogarty. It goes as follows:



Policing sex trade


Sunday April 24 2011

Sir -- Concerning Sarah Benson of Ruhama's letter on April 17, 2011 -- criminalising the clients of sex workers is a retrograde step which amounts to a bedroom police.

It is also a thin edge of a wedge where other activities commonplace in a tolerant society could find themselves banned later, for example types of female/male dancing or adult images that fell short of an arbitrary rule on exposure. We would be back to the days of censorship.

Everybody should condemn trafficking, however there is plenty of misinformation surrounding the issue. Groups are overstating the number of people who are victims. The police in the UK recently failed to find a single woman who was trafficked into the country and forced into prostitution.

The proposed Swedish-style law heralded by some as the answer to everything is a failure there. A Swedish judge charged with assessing the results of the law was told that she must have an outcome which is against prostitution -- so much for impartiality! The government there has no idea what is going on in the sex trade and any surveys it took were conducted poorly.

Sex workers are a huge aid to individuals who have to overcome shyness, have a lack of confidence or have a disability which limits access to sex.

The way forward is to regulate the industry properly and provide a safe working environment for all concerned.

A Fogarty,

Dublin



There's a good chance that someone might attack this letter so please back it up. You don't have to have your address printed in the Independent/Sunday Independent.

The letter page email address is sunday.letters@independent.ie for the Sunday Independent or independent.letters@independent.ie for the Irish Independent.

Thanks for bringing the letter to our attention Jack. It's nice to see one of the major rags print a letter in our favour (regardless of where the newspaper Ed really stands). Lets hope common sense will prevail when this matter reaches the Dail.

I think the point about bedroom police is a good one.

Also pointing out that Ruhamma has overstated the number of women trafficked and that the U.K. police couldn't find a single woman involved in the industry who was trafficked - are really important points.

I think the key here is to separate trafficking (which understandably has huge sympathy, for good reason) from escorting.