Presentation of Dennis St Aubin to the Subcommittee on Solicitation laws (2002) Good afternoon. First off I would like to express my appreciation to the subcommittee for inviting me to speak today. For my presentation I would like to focus on the other victims of street level solicitation, the residents of communities who are forced to deal with the existence of sex trade workers on their streets, parks and school grounds. For the last 4 1/2 years I have been a member of the Dickens Community Group, which was formed in Oct 2000 when our community became inundated with sex trade workers. I am also a past board member of the Cedar Cottage Community Policing office and the Vancouver Association of Community Policing centres. I am also a presenter at the Prostitute Offender Program (the John School) which is run by the John Howard Society in co- operation with the Vancouver Police Department. In these sessions I talk about the impact of prostitution on communities. As I mentioned, we named our group the Dickens Group. We named ourselves after the Dickens Elementary school in our community when we
learned that many of the sex trade workers were taking their customers to the school grounds, ostensibly because it was dark and quiet at night. We were told by the vice principal of the school that this was a growing problem and school staff had taken to scouring the school grounds before children arrived looking for needles and condoms left behind by prostitutes and their clients. In fact when we later organized a community clean up and found several dozen condoms and a dozen needles in our neighbourhood the largest concentration was in and around the elementary school grounds. The influx of sex trade workers has led to numerous other incidences which have alarmed the parents in our community. I recall one morning seeing young children and their mother standing at the red light waiting to cross the main street on their way to school, besides them stood a sex trade worker, dressed for business and soliciting customers while they stood beside her. On another occasion we saw a sex trade worker smoking crack in a doorway near the school, only minutes before children would be walking past on their way to school. When told to get out of there. She replied that we could F - Off, as she had every right to be there. She continued smoking crack until we called 911and the police arrived. There have been many more incidences, one involved a sex trade worker, stripping and washing herself in the girl’s washroom at the local children’s playground, in the middle of the day. Others involve people being spat at,
threatened by the girls and their boyfriends and finding condoms deliberately draped on side view mirrors. In response to this threat we organized community meetings in which over 200 people showed up to express their anger and frustration. We also held a rally which attracted another 200 people. More importantly, about 40 residents volunteered to form nightly Community Crime Prevention patrols which were sanctioned and trained by the Vancouver Police Department through the local Community Crime Prevention Office. To this day we have continued with our patrols, making our presence felt, calling in sex trade workers and drug dealers to 911. We also file reports with the Community Policing Office: • detailing their activities, • Noting the plates of vehicles that pick up the working girls • Reporting other suspicious activity throughout the community. We also feel that our mere presence, the act of taking back our streets from the working girls and their criminal associates has had a significant impact on all criminal activity in our neighbourhood, dramatically reducing the sex and drug trade to the point where, in the last two years we occasionally go weeks without seeing any significant activity.
Our community has followed the progress of this subcommittee for some time now. In the past we have met with Libby Davies to express our deep concerns. She has sought to reassure us, telling us that she understood our concerns and that the intent of this subcommittee is not to victimize communities by making them more vulnerable to the dangers inherent to street level prostitution. It is important to us that all of our hard work is not undone by changes to the law that would allow sex trade workers to engage in this high-risk behavior; without regard to the dangers they pose to residents and children. In fact we would ask that any reform of the solicitation laws include strong, enforceable measures, ones that the working girls and ‘johns’ will understand and abide by, aimed at insuring that the sex trade will not be conducted in residential communities, near elementary schools, high schools or children’s playgrounds. In preparing for my presentation I spent some time reading some of the other presentations made to this committee. I realize that many academics and professionals have preceded me and discussed the various issues facing the committee in great detail. It concerns me to read that many of the experts indicate that legalization or decriminalization of prostitution in other countries simple did not work, that in many countries where prostitution is legal, illegal prostitution continues to flourish with a majority of working girls choosing not to register with the
authorities or to work in residential areas that were not designated as ‘red light’ districts. I also understand that legalization has lead to an increase in the amount of prostitution in many of these countries without any significant improvement in the conditions under which the prostitutes work. These facts are consistent with what I have been told by the professionals and educators involved with the Prostitute Offender Program. It is my greatest fear that legalization or decriminalization of prostitution: • Will not increase the level of safety for the sex trade workers • Will eliminate or significantly reduce the effectiveness of any controls over where and when the sex trade workers choose to operate • Will make communities such as mine less safe for families • Will increase the amount of other criminal behavior (drug dealing, petty crime) which goes hand-in-hand with the increase in prostitution Please understand, we do want some change in the law, people in my community do support • Increased security for the sex trade workers to reduce the abuse. • Greater focus on resources aimed at helping them get off the street • Greater focus on resources aimed at helping high-risk youths • More effective prosecution of pimps • Greater focus on the ‘Johns’, insuring it continues to be illegal for them to pick-up prostitutes in residential areas
• Greater support for alternatives such as the Prostitution Offender Program But if you choose to proceed with some of the changes that have been previously discussed then I would strongly suggest that rather than simply legalizing all forms of prostitution that you look at precedence such as the ‘safe injection site’ and the ‘heroin trials’. Neither of these has required us to legalize drugs, but they allow us to experiment with possible solutions before committing to irrevocable change. o Should you decide to permit ‘bawdy houses’, then there must be regulations that would allow neighbours to decide whether or not their presence is acceptable in their community. They should at the very least be subject to the same rules and scrutiny as licensed drinking establishments. o Should you decide to permit ‘red-light districts’, then they must also have the approval of the community in which they are established. You can’t just foist this onto a community without their input. o If red light districts are permitted then other communities must be protected. Both the sex trade workers and the customers must be subject to significant penalties if they choose to operate outside the permitted areas. Should they choose to conduct business near schools or playgrounds the penalties should be even more severe.
In closing I note that in previous committee hearings the impact of prostitution on communities is generally referred to in terms of ‘nuisance’ to the community. For me, • Someone playing music too loud, • Partying late into the night or • Driving a car or motorcycle badly in need of a muffler These are nuisances. • Condoms and needles around schools • Residents afraid to walk around their community at night for fear of being propositioned or assaulted • Concerns for the safety of children These things are much, much more than mere ‘nuisances’ to residents in communities where street level prostitution moves in. You cannot ask people to risk the safety of their families so that complete strangers, engaged in high-risk activities, can do so in better lit, more comfortable surroundings. Any changes you propose to the solicitation laws must effectively respond to not only the needs of sex trade workers, but also to the needs and concerns of the citizens who are forced to deal with this problem. Otherwise, I firmly believe that you will have little hope of getting the support of average citizens for your proposed reforms. Thank You
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