Righto Fairfax. Lets get this “story” straight. A stalkercreepyguy/vexatious litigant trying to sue a sex worker gets his just desserts by a judge and tossed out of court, and about time too.
Not happy with just that on its own, a chief reporter somewhere clearly told one of his/her staff to give a law professor talking head a call and ask her if prostitutes could ‘technically’ be sued – despite knowing the pretty awful facts of this case – to manufacture a story!!! Leading story most of the day!! Congrats Fairfax – you created your own story and called it ‘news’, with no social conscience whatsoever. Did it cross your minds it would be more in the public interest to have an investigative piece into the surprisingly common stalkercreepyguys like this one that sex workers have to endure, who you have just emboldened? No. Of course not.
Ok then – I will. Let me tell you about stalkercreepyguys. They can be clients – or even worse – a ‘minder’ (puke). And they will do ANYTHING to get what they want out of a girl. I was one of those don’t you even try mucking me about looking ladies, so these examples are mostly what I witnessed, what other girls have shared with me, or what I’ve seen on social media & websites.
There was a guy, who rang every day. He only wanted to know if there were new girls. Why did he want new girls? So he could get away with disgusting stuff because he was their first client. And the brothel manager giggled every time she sent each precious soul in there with him, as if it was some kind of initiation ceremony. Sickening.
There are the guys who rip their condom off halfway through, threatening the sex worker with telling the manager she had sex with him without a condom (a breach of the PRA and a ‘fireable offence’) so they get away with it. It’s his word against hers. He wins. So does his STI’s, his Hep C, his HIV and his sperm.
There are the guys who threaten sex workers with bad online reviews on sex work sites if they don’t perform to their demanding expectations. While I disagree with many of this bloggers posts, this one is very relevant.
There are the guys who wheedle a real name out of you, or what school your child goes to, or any other kind of identifying information. A sex worker I knew was threatened and blackmailed into a corner with him showing up outside her son’s school, and who hung around her house, after developing a fixation with her. Love notes were left on the wiper of her car. He stalked her everywhere. She moved cities.
I had a long term client, one I thought I could trust, but when our paid-for-relationship was over, I started finding him in his car, parked across the street from my house, apparently just ‘wanting to be near’ me. Great.
Another sex worker had a client who was a work friend of her brothers. He figured out who she was, and blackmailed her for several sessions by telling her he would tell everyone at the factory she was a whore. She did what he wanted.
There are the guys like this one, who develop such a fixation and loss of reality they endlessly use any system possible to wreck your life – CYF, WINZ, IRD, the courts, whatever it takes to get their insane ‘vengeance’ or attention.
There are the guys who find very vulnerable sex workers and promise them money after sex, keeping on promising, promising…. and an hour later throw them out of the car without a cent.
There are the sex work website owner guys who do things like set up sexiest girl on the site competitions – the prize? Having sex with the highest bidder for her services. But she wouldn’t get the money until afterwards, from him, once he got word she had fulfilled this client’s every wish. When she said no, he threatened to blacklist her around the area where she worked and from other sex work sites. Thank goodness she was savvy enough to tell him where to jump.
There are the ‘minders’ who throw a brand new sex worker in the deep end, not telling her how to go about getting the cash properly – and when the guy runs out without paying, they tell her that’s her tough luck for being naive and stupid, she still owes a shift fee and she needs to pay up. Or give him a blowjob. Either or….
There are the guys who bombard you with emails describing all the things they want to do to you.
There are the guys who text you pretending to be different people every time you have an ad in the paper. The texters of disgusting comments. The texters leading you on for hours. The ones who ring and hang up, ring and hang up….. there is a reason most escort ads say no texts!!
There is a LOT of manipulation, blackmail, violence, threatening behaviour, stalking, harassing, imbalance of power, misogynist behaviour, coercion, victimisation etc experienced in the sex industry. Now, courtesy of Fairfax, NZ’s stalkercreepyguys have a new threat to victimise sex workers with.
I can sue you under the Consumer Guarantee’s Act if you don’t do what I want.
Awesome, Fairfax. Nice work.
If you wanted to write a balanced, accurate piece, you would have also talked about this in the Prostitution Reform Act:
Refusal to provide commercial sexual services
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(1) Despite anything in a contract for the provision of commercial sexual services, a person may, at any time, refuse to provide, or to continue to provide, a commercial sexual service to any other person.
(2) The fact that a person has entered into a contract to provide commercial sexual services does not of itself constitute consent for the purposes of the criminal law if he or she does not consent, or withdraws his or her consent, to providing a commercial sexual service.
Whilst I sympathise with what you are stating here I don’t understand what you are advocating for. Do you want Fairfax to censor their reporting of this case?
No, I am advocating yet again for responsible, balanced and accurate reporting on sex work issues.
As Caren said below, they have empowered the stalkercreepyguys, and made no mention of the PRA, which clearly states that a sex worker has the legal right to stop doing, or choose not to do what a client asked for. So according to Fairfax, ‘technically’ sex workers have no rights, when in fact they have many. If they wanted to be socially responsible, they would have reported on the rights of sex workers too.
I can’t agree with that assessment.
The last few lines of the article you mention state the following
“Justice Peter Woodhouse struck out each claim, labelling Mr N’s persistent legal proceedings a “sinister use of the court’s processes”.
“Not only am I satisfied the proceedings are frivolous but I also believe they are vexatious,” the judge said.
The judgment continued that the proceeding should be struck out because it was an abuse of process and a further attempt to victimise and harass Ms M through litigation. ”
The article highlights that the justice system came down heavily against the litigant and that the judge regarded the approach taken by that person as having no merit. Admittedly the sort of person you are discussing probably doesn’t comprehend or take much notice of the niceties of legal judgments but it seems pretty clear that taking the same approach as this man won’t achieve anything.
I’m not discussing that article. I’m discussing the one printed yesterday morning. Which only showed one side of the law. You’re also completely missing the point – which is not a slew of clients taking sex workers to court – it is yet another coercive threat for clients to use against sex workers – legitimised by a one-sided ‘story’.
It is an interesting aside to the main story and is technically accurate. I agree that a sex worker has got the right to decide not to offer sex at any stage. What they could be sued for is if they accepted money for a sex act and then without reason refused and then did not refund the money. It is this last point which means they are subject to the same sorts of rules as other commercial service providers. In that sense the law professor is accurate. You can’t accept money for a service, refuse the service and keep the money. If they refunded the money (which I believe was similar to what happened in this case) then there is no case to be made in my mind.
Gosman, you could simply have said in your March 27, 2014 at 1:41 pm post that you understand Rachel’s position on the issue.
Instead, you’ve ignored her points and went of on a tanjeant.
That is why most people ignore your endless, inane questions. You’re not in the slightest bit interested in anything except hearing the sound of your own voice.
“You’re also completely missing the point…”
This would be Gosman’s specialty.
I can’t believe they didn’t ask the law professor quoted about the Prostitution Reform Act, which includes very clear provisions saying that a sex worker can refuse to provide – or to continue providing – sexual services at any time.
The more I read Rachael’s posts, the more I am convinced that legalising prostitution was a bad idea. My idea is to criminalize paying for sex rather than receiving it. Let the prostitutes go free and the disgusting sleazebag johns end up in court.
It wasn’t a bad idea. The PRA needs some work. There needs to be more education given to new sex workers. There needs to be actual enforcement of the law by police. There needs to be access granted to the NZPC, no exceptions, no blocks by owners and minders. There needs to be a culture change in NZ where sex workers are valued alongside every other member of society.
Seems to me that, like bar room gropers, the problem is the guys that are doing it. The only difference with prostitution is that people who patronize prostitutes rarely do so openly. I can’t say I know of any man who I know to have visited a prostitute, and anyone in my social circle who admitted it would be branded a loser and a creep.
After all why would you need to pay a woman unless you were a woman repelling creep or wanted to do things that no self respecting woman would tolerate?
I can think of several reasons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asociality
Just in town for the night
Just broke up with the girlfriend and isn’t interested in another relationship
Can’t be bothered with the effort of chatting someone into a one night stand
And there’s probably more that I can’t think of right off hand.
Good call Draco.
There are indeed many legitimate reasons people hire sex workers.
If only the funny side of prostitution was a political issue. Because it’s really only the downside that needs change. There are a lot of awesome clients and a lot of hilarious stories.
Tom, the criminalisation of the client is, in my opinion, just one more way in which legislators try to control women’s bodies. You may or may not find this article interesting:
http://www.cliterati.co.uk/2014/03/habitable-room/
brilliant link, chilling conclusions about the abuse of power as sanctified by current superstitions/memes.
Moving on to 2014, on one side the bare-ass gratis media sexualisation of everything from a Girl Guide biscuit to a toilet roll, and on the other this obsessive creepy surveillo/law hash up designed to trip, trap and traumatise the large majority of people affected by this programming.
Tom it’s problematic to call those who pay for the services of sex workers as ‘disgusting sleazebags’…because then what does that make the sex workers?
It’s a job. Sure there are some sensitive issues with it and it’s open to all sorts of exploitation, but making it a moral issue is so 1950s. Stigmatising people isn’t going to help at all. In fact stigmatising sex work is just going to make the exploitation and problems more difficult to stop, and therefore the industry becomes more dangerous.
I’d rather stigmatise the moralists who want to turn it back fully to the criminal underground
This makes sense, but doesn’t the CGA require that a refund be given if the good or service is not fit for purpose or was misdescribed (e.g. she told me her boobs were real, but….).
I find the very idea of people having consumers’ rights over sex a bit creepy (really gross), but it is treated as a legal service.
We are talking about ONE law professor who seems to have trouble with real world cases. It is only her opinion and a very dubious one at that.
Each case would be treated on an individual basis. For her to claim otherwise puts workers in real danger, and it fails to consider the hiring of a prostitutes “time”. In other worlds you could be hired for an hour of company and not consent to sex regardless of the other parties expectations around sex.
Thanks Rachel for blogging such an honest and eye-opening account of some of the day-to-day realities sex workers face.
It isn’t only sex workers who fall victim to such creepy stalker perverts. And even women in “respectable” professions can find themselves subject to further scrutiny and harassment if they try to broach the topic with police . Especially if the perpetator is rich and/or powerful.
Some men are just predators and they will prey on anyone that they perceive as weaker or more vulnerable. All for their own sick gratification. I think the cruelty and sense of power and control, is as much a thrill for them as whatever sexual perversion they can coerce an unwilling partner into.
Law, politics and finance are less respectable occupations than prostitution.
I know, right?
If anyone on the campaign trail tries to take issue with my past, my usual reaction is to smile and acknowledge that I have actually slipped in the trust ratings since changing profession….
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