Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Men who pay for sex with trafficked or pimped women could face a rape charge

More news here. On the surface this looks good. If you're trafficked or forced into prostitution any sex experienced under that arrangement will be rape. I'm glad this is being recognised.

So far as I can see the law may not explicitly charge the men with rape but it will make it illegal for a man to buy sex from a woman who is being controlled for another's gain (e.g. pimps). And ignorance will not be an excuse (so just the same as every other crime then, so far so good).

A lot of women are forced into prostitution, and as I understand it is in no way a good experience. But, I know someone who runs an escort agency and all the women working there are there by choice and are not being controlled for another's gain, though the agency takes a cut. under this ruel the men using these women would be charged. And i'm not sure that's right.

But overall, I think I approve this new law which moves the emphasis of criminality from the woman to the men (and presumably sometimes women) buying sex. God knows how the police are gonna enforce it though. It's not like they pick up pimps and hunt down sex traffickers effectively at the moment.

2 comments:

Christian Zamora said...

The law sounds a little extreme, considering that "not knowing" a woman was being trafficked just wouldn't stand in court as a defense. I mean, prostitutes should now have a sign that says "I'm a freelancer?"

Okay, I don't mean to take away the seriousness of the subject at hand, but this is one of those laws that are a little over the edge. I mean, someone getting a life sentence over this looks a little overkill to me.

Dean Wormer said...

The should face worse that that. This is more of a crime against humanity/ human rights thing. It's slavery.