2014 NI Trafficking results are in

[The Libertarian]

Does anybody know whether there's a court challenge to Clause 15 afoot in NI? AFAIK, there is a case being taken re NI ' abortion status .

Dianne Abbot of the fake socialist party in the UK (she appears on The Politics Programme and was on Question time less night) has been to the forefront in pressing for the regular UK abortion laws to be extended to the North and even visited there to protest! Guess what? she is part of the social engineering set that wants to bring in sex worker hating laws as well! And is frothing at the mouth again page 3 as well!

[The Libertarian]

BTW is the trafficked sex worker maurice morrow allegedly met, the one who claimed to be chained to radiators?

[liffey]

Dunno about a legal challenge to Clause 15 specifically, but Laura Lee has tweeted that she's working on something. Might be possible to take it to the ECHR.

[The Libertarian]

Dunno about a legal challenge to Clause 15 specifically, but Laura Lee has tweeted that she's working on something. Might be possible to take it to the ECHR.

The problem with dealing with these matters at EU level is that the scumbags in The European Parliament (including all of them from The Republic) voted in the previous one to support The Failed Swedish Model as proposed by a UK Labour Party Nutter -Honeyball! This has an advisory effect/'Moral' demension rather than a legal one but it shows where these shitbags are at!

[The Libertarian]

From Laura Lee's twitter:

2014 -
Nr of crimes against sex workers in NI - 70
Nr of POTENTIAL cases of trafficking - 3
Nr of SW's consulted by Lord Morrow - 1

Comments / explanations welcome from any of the 81 MLAs who voted for Clause 15.

In your own time....

A huge problem and something which I didn't realise until this issue arose in Stormont, is that while a court of law requires proof, the process of making law doesn't.

Some of the statements and figures used to justify clause 15 are just plain ridiculous, but no-one seriously challenged them in the chamber. Most MLAs voted without having a clue on the issues. They just knew they disagreed with sex work and that was enough to justify bringing in bad law based on lies and half-truths.

As far as the quoted statistics are concerned, three suspected (not proven) cases is three too many but Sweden has proved (though won't admit) that 'ending demand' doesn't work. In fairness to Sweden and more recently Canada, neither made any secret of the fact their legislation is about disapproval of sex work, rather than coercive trafficking, which is a minority issue.

To quote Canadian Conservative senator Donald Plett last summer; ''We don't want to make life safe for prostitutes. We want to do away with prostitution. That's the intent of the bill.'' In other words sex worker safety comes a poor second to his moral objections. He may be an arsehole but at least he's an honest one.

Well Fitzgerald did make the point in her meeting with some of our working ladies that this was about getting the message across that women are not for sale, which means that any pretense about this madness being about preventing trafficking has gone out the window and of course also that the minister (who is abundantly out of her depth) hasn't the slightest understanding of sex work - nobody buys women in the first instance in consensual sexual transactions - services are provided for a fee - end of! Also it's pretty clear that trafficking and abuse of sex workers will increase because of such insane laws! But this obviously has been ignored and sex workers are viewed as acceptable collateral damage!

[milkman]

The ECHR is completely independent from political lobbying so undoubtedly will be the means where the Swedish Model type legislation will eventually be struck down.
Would take a few years and as seen from Canada,any ambiguity on striking down those laws would.of course,be exploited by TORLesque associations europe wide.

Shouldn't really surprise that many people that E P voted in favour of Honeyball - EP is effectively a body operating on the very practice of lobbying. Look at Breda O'Brien's contribution to the ClaireByrne Show last Monday night on SSM - Rhetoric, deliberate muddying of the waters ,presenting worst case scenario etc.

Swedish Model laws will (almost) certainly fail through the court system , when political horse trading is inevitably excluded.

The entitre issue does show however that most Irish politicians are as corrupt they ever were - turning a blind eye to abuses if lobbied enough ...just like they were in clerical child abuse, magdelene laundries , mother and baby homes , mental institutions , direct provision etc.

[Davidontour]

As an update, it's been confirmed today that NONE of the three suspected trafficking cases in NI are for prostitution.

So that means in 2014, not ONE even suspected case of sex trafficking happened in Northern Ireland.

The question for Lord Morrow and his chums is this -- how do you gauge the success of a law which had zero examples in the year it was passed?

[Mr Cuddles]

A huge problem and something which I didn't realise until this issue arose in Stormont, is that while a court of law requires proof, the process of making law doesnt.

You really have got to the heart of the problem. I'm sure that if any member of the public read this, they would agree that it was wrong.
is it possible to challenge a law on the grounds that the law was created on false assumptions ?

[Davidontour]

You really have got to the heart of the problem. I'm sure that if any member of the public read this, they would agree that it was wrong.
is it possible to challenge a law on the grounds that the law was created on false assumptions ?

I'm no legal expert but I very much doubt it, otherwise politicians would need to be much more careful. Morrow's inspiration for his bill was largely the testimony of one woman who approached him directly with her story of kidnap and sex slavery in Ireland. Certain issues have been raised regarding her testimony but it's fair to say that Morrow in particular seems to have accepted every aspect of her account without question.

There have been several high profile cases of fabricated stories regarding sex work recently and while I'm by no means saying it is the case here, it would be extremely unlikely to affect the legality of the bill if it were. Effectively it is a means to an end and the fact that most sex workers are there by choice is very deliberately ignored.

A good comparison I read recently would be attempting to ban air travel by only listening to plane crash survivors and those with a fear of flying who had been forced to do so.

To be honest I thnk an argument against sex work based solely on moral grounds would have still won the debate in a still deeply conservative country like Ireland, but it's the dishonesty of playing the trafficking card that is the issue here.

It may however come back to bite Morrow on the bum. If there were no sex trafficking victims in the year his bill was introduced, any increase at all in future years will indicate failure. The best he can hope is that the figure stays the same, in which case it will merely have been pointless.