Prostitution cannot be separated from abuse and violence

In his opinion piece on prostitution (November 11) Mick Wallace claims that the Turn off the Red Light campaign makes a number of false assertions and assumptions. Ironically, it is Mr Wallace who has made a number of ill-informed and misguided assertions and assumptions.

From the outset he chooses to conflate adult consensual sex and prostitution. As a researcher who has interviewed numerous survivors of the Irish sex trade, I would suggest that the prostitution contract is better defined as the payment of money to a person to perform unwanted sexual acts for the gratification of another person. This cannot be equated with a mutual, reciprocal, sexual encounter and, I believe, meaningful consent is never obtained by exploiting vulnerability through financial power.

Mr Wallace further conflates and distorts issues of sexual consent when he suggests that the role of the State in policing an exploitative, dangerous sex trade is the same as previous laws in Ireland, which sought to police private, consensual, homosexual acts. Yes, prostitution sex is a private act which for the most part occurs in hotels, apartments and homes in every part of Ireland, but like so many other forms of sexual abuse and sexual violence, the privatisation of commercial sexual exploitation should not protect it from public scrutiny and criminal justice.