OLIVER MOORE, The Globe and Mail
March 21st 2007
Canada’s prostitution laws are the focus of a court challenge to be launched today by current and former sex-trade workers.
The applicants are targeting specific Criminal Code provisions — those dealing with keeping a bawdy house, living off the avails of prostitution and communicating for the purposes of prostitution — that they say put sex workers in danger.
Valerie Scott and Amy Lebovitch, both part of the group Sex Professionals of Canada, and former Bondage Bungalow dominatrix Terri Jean Bedford point to the dozens of women who have disappeared in Vancouver and Edmonton as a sign of how dangerous streetwalking is.
“These three provisions violate s.7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by depriving sex workers of their right to liberty and security,” they argued in a statement released yesterday.
“Yet even as the body count continues to rise, nothing is done.”
The details of their application to the Ontario Superior Court will be revealed this morning by a legal team that includes Osgoode Hall Law School associate professor Alan Young.
Valerie Scott and Amy Lebovitch, both part of the group Sex Professionals of Canada, and former Bondage Bungalow dominatrix Terri Jean Bedford point to the dozens of women who have disappeared in Vancouver and Edmonton as a sign of how dangerous streetwalking is.
“These three provisions violate s.7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by depriving sex workers of their right to liberty and security,” they argued in a statement released yesterday.