Calls to make buying sex a criminal offence
The call was made at the launch of a fresh initiative aimed at stamping out prostitution and associated problems such as human trafficking.
The campaign, called Turn Off The Red Light, aims to educate men about the domino effect of buying sex, including violence perpetrated against women and rampant exploitation, which is often carried out by criminal gangs.
Speaking on behalf of the campaign yesterday were representatives of the worlds of the arts, film and music, as well as senior trade union figures and Barnardos chief executive Fergus FInlay.
The campaign is being backed by musician Christy Moore, film-maker Peter Sheridan and poet Theo Dorgan.
According to data compiled from various sources over the past decade, more than 1,000 women and girls are involved in prostitution in Ireland on any given day.
Around one in 15 Irish men have or do engage in buying sex and John Cunningham, chairman of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, said sex for sale was now available in every town and village in the country.
“If there is such a demand for prostitution it means there is a very large market,” Mr Cunningham said.
“Men choose to buy sex, but women do not have the choice in the environment that they work in.”
He said websites such as punter.net actually carried “reviews” of prostitutes, many of whom have endured beatings and worse at the hands of pimps, and may have been lured to Ireland under false pretences.
“If Ireland does not deal with this issue now Ireland could become the red light district in Europe,” he said.
Mr Finlay said more legislation was required to criminalise grooming of younger people for sexual exploitation.
ICTU general secretary David Begg said about 90% of those involved in prostitution in Ireland were migrant women, often trafficked here and forced to work in the sex trade, in what he called “a modern sort of slavery”.
Echoing the central thrust of the campaign, he said legalising prostitution had not worked in Holland, where 20,000 women are involved in the Amsterdam sex trade, but criminalising the buying of sex had resulted in the number of women working in prostitution falling to just 200 in Stockholm.
Eamon Devoy, general secretary of the TEEU, said prostitution could not be defined as work and was instead an area managed by gangsters.
Peter Sheridan said the sex trade was “a form of slavery” and said “for a man to engage in it he has to suspend his normal judgment”.
Theo Dorgan said prostitution was “a toxic business and we can do without it”.
Politicians attending, such as Labour’s Justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte, said he was committed to drafting legislation that would tackle the issue.
* www.turnofftheredlight.ie
THERE has been an increase in on-street prostitution due to the impact of the recession.
Ruhama, which helps women involved in the sex trade, said it had decided against stopping a service aimed at supporting the needs of on-street prostitutes because of the growth in numbers.
The chairman of Ruhama Diarmaid Ó Corrbuí said he believed the recession had played a role in the increase in numbers, either because some people were in desperate need of money, or because it was less expensive than operating from an apartment while also allowing them to get away from the “controlled” environment of the indoor sex trade.
However, Mr Ó Corrbuí said on-street prostitution was just as dangerous for the women involved, many of whom are migrant workers who have been coerced into providing sex by their bosses.
“We have noticed a significant increase in on-street prostitution,” he said.
He said there had also been an rise in the number of Irish women working as prostitutes, but said the majority of women involved in the sex trade were foreign nationals.
Also speaking at yesterday’s launch of the Turn Off The Red Light campaign was TEEU general secretary Eamon Devoy, who claimed much of the sex trade now operating in Dublin was being managed by the Russian mafia.
Mr Ó Corrbuí agreed but said criminal gangs from across the spectrum were involved in a trade which was incredibly lucrative. The conference in Dublin yesterday heard that one woman could raise as much as €250,000 for a criminal gang through working as a prostitute.
Mr Ó Corrbuí said the failure to enforce existing legislation, as well as introducing new laws to protect women working in the sex trade including protecting them from deportation if they go to gardaí, had been “a big failure in Ireland”.
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