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.

Prostitution, however, is not only a private act; it is also an institution maintained by organised crime which the State has a responsibility to address.

Mr Wallace also seems to be unaware of the overwhelming evidence of the interconnectedness between trafficking for sexual exploitation and the sex industries of destination countries. Two recent papers by international experts demonstrate a very clear correlation between the scale of prostitution and the number of victims of trafficking with a ratio varying from 10% to 24%.

The progressive law introduced over a decade ago in Sweden regards the demand to have any person available to purchase for sex as unacceptable and a form of sexual exploitation that should be criminalised.

In recognition of the coercive and circumscribed personal and economically deprived circumstances in which girls and young women ‘choose’ to enter the sex trade, whether they are trafficked or not, those selling sex are de-criminalised.

It is critical that we consider the overwhelming evidence that it is not possible to make prostitution safe, harmless or free from abuse and sexual violence.

Monica O’Connor

Parnell Rd

Bray

Co Wicklow