By Wency Leung, WeNews correspondent
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sex workers in Canada are challenging the country’s ban on activities associated with prostitution, arguing it conflicts with their constitutional rights. Opponents say decriminalization of sex work would increase sex trafficking.
VANCOUVER, Canada (WOMENSENEWS)–Amy Lebovitch has been a sex worker for roughly 12 years. She’s offered sex for money on the streets of Montreal. She’s worked for a proprietor of an illegal brothel. And now, she quietly plies her trade from her Vancouver home.
Working indoors allows her to screen her clients over the phone or Internet before meeting them, instead of furtively negotiating deals in strangers’ cars, said Lebovitch, 30. It also offers her peace of mind to work in a familiar environment.
But the sense of security is relative, she said.
Although she now feels reasonably protected from the threat of violence she encountered on the streets, she worries that at any time authorities could charge her under a Canadian law that prohibits keeping a bawdy house and could seize her bank accounts and take away her possessions.
“Although I say, ‘yes I feel safe,’ there’s another side to it, which is I don’t feel safe (from) the police,” she said, noting that she knows of many sex workers who have been charged under the country’s prostitution laws. “It’s very scary to think that you’re not hurting anyone, you’re working, you’re making money . . . and in an instant, your life can be turned upside down.”
Arguing for decriminalization, Lebovitch, Terri-Jean Bedford and Valerie Scott, two other sex workers, have brought their complaints before the courts.
In October, they appeared at the Superior Court of Ontario to challenge sections of the country’s criminal laws that they say violate their constitutionally protected right to liberty and security. The sections in question prohibit keeping a bawdy house, soliciting sexual services in a public place and living off the proceeds of prostitution. The women are challenging all three sections.
They expect a court ruling in mid-2010.