Barely illegal: New prostitution laws may drive sex work underground

[Guest Lo***si*****e]

[B]Barely illegal: New prostitution laws may drive sex work underground â?? but can it stop it?
[/B]

National Post | May 7, 2015 | Last Updated: May 8 10:21 PM ET

Barely illegal: Canadaâ??s vice laws have undergone radical change in the last few years â?? but it hasnâ??t necessarily affected how Canadians, and the police, behave. In a two-part package, National Post looks at enforcement (or the lack thereof) around marijuana and prostitution and what it means for the future.

â??Ravenâ? sells herself online as â??classy, genuine and discreet.â? She takes â??donationsâ? for her time: $160 for 30 minutes or $220 for a full hour. She can be a â??sweet innocent girl,â? she wrote in a recent posting, â??or the one to fulfill all your fantasies.â? But if you donâ??t like tattoos, she added, sheâ??s not the one for you.

Raven, a name she uses professionally, started selling sex in Winnipeg about a year ago. â??Itâ??s something I enjoy,â? she says. She isnâ??t trafficked. She wasnâ??t forced into it. SShe likes the people she meets. â??Thereâ??s nothing wrong with it,â? she says. â??Iâ??m not hurting anybody.â?

In the last several months, though, Raven, 33, has noticed small changes cropping up in her industry. Clients are becoming more cautious, she believes, and advertising more discreet. Online posts â?? once quite explicit â?? are slipping into euphemism. â??Everything has a to be a lot more quiet now and underground,â? she says. â??People are worried about being busted.â?

Four months after the federal government brought into force new laws aimed at ending prostitution in this country, the vast grey market for sexual services in Canada remains, unsurprisingly, intact. From Halifax to Victoria and everywhere in between, sex is still being bought and sold in Canada, according to sex workers, police departments, researchers, and common sense.

But that doesnâ??t mean the industry itself hasnâ??t shifted in response to the laws. More importantly, it doesnâ??t mean the problems that prompted the legal change in the first place have gone away.

In interviews with the National Post, sex workers in five cities across Canada, all contacted through a popular sexual services website and identified here by their work names, said uncertainty over the new regulations has pushed some clients away and made business harder for them in other ways.

â??Whatâ??s changed is that weâ??re not getting new customers,â? says â??Nicole,â? 39, who sells sex from her apartment in Toronto. â??I used to make quite a bit of money, less now because I think a lot of clients are afraid to call us.â?

. . .

Continue reading at the National Post

[url]http://news.nationalpost.com/news/barely-illegal-new-prostitution-laws-may-drive-sex-work-underground-but-can-it-stop-it[/url]