Advice and Feedback Please

[BlondeBombshell 100]

I have been a companion for a while now, worked on 3 continents 5 countries and about 20 cities.

I really love my job; I have had some amazing experiences and met some great people .Problem is I have also had some not so great experiences, what makes this worse is that all of those experiences were only from the management of agencies I worked with. I have seen a lot of girls get treated very unfairly by agencies; they look at you like a product rather than a person.

Since I have a lot of experience being a working girl I use to advise other girls when they had questions or concerns, give them business advice and I felt I made a difference in many girls? lives. For me it was great, I felt it was sort of my calling but I did not realize other girls thought so too. Many of the girls I worked with suggested I open my own agency and for a while now that though has been lingering in my mind.

Unfortunately since I was not resident of the countries I visited I was not able to look into open something there. I am Canadian born and raised but I have never worked in the city I reside in (Vancouver) this is becuase I choose to travel and work to keep my job as private as I can. So not working here before leaves me with little idea of how things are run.

I want to open something that would be fair, I want to be that agency that I as a working girl would have loved to work with.

Something that would let girls work when they wanted, choose their own rates and provided services on their own terms. Somewhere they would feel safe coming to work and feel empowered by their job.

I guess what I am trying ask is advice from a legal perspective on what to do and not do and how to go about things the right way and also comments from girls; if you could work for you perfect agency what would make you happy?

I guess my legal questions would be:

I understand you need a social escort licence to run an agency and that?s just for out calls I would presume.

Do all escort agencies have these licences? What happens if you don?t get one?

Is it better for the girls to be protected by getting a licence or would it work against them by having that on their record?

What about in call? Will anyone bother you if a few girls are working out of one residence?

I would never want to put anyone at risk but I as a working girl found it was always safer to work in a place you found familiar rather than some else?s environment where there could be surprises.

My non legal questions for other working girls would be:

When you work for an agency, what did you like and not like about the experience?

What do you feel they could have done to make your work environment better?

If you could make your own choices in an agency what rules would you want to be able to make?

What is a fair pay split for you?

I have already read over several posts on this board and was happy to find that there are so many knowledgeable people contributing to these forms so any advice or feedback would be very much appreciated.

Also if any of these questions don?t seem inappropriate to post here I apologize, I don?t want to offend anyone I just wanted some advice and on parts of the business I am unfamiliar with and feedback from fellow industry workers.

Thank you:D

[mod 135640]

You should be asking a local lawyer these legal questions (you will not get information you can trust as accurate from any other source).

 

Legally you can not run an agency, some gray area's exist if you do not "hire" the ladies. If you act as a receptionist and the ladies employ you to assist them it is less illegal (but not fully legal - you need a good lawyer who knows these laws to explain this to you first hand).

 

The license in some municipalities is to run a "Dating" service (No sex) get a copy of the by-law (You will notice nothing mentions "sex" in the by-law unless it actually says sex is not permitted as some by-laws actually say that)

 

The by law is just a cash grab (A way to police the industry) and a way to make you think "escorting" as an agency is actually legal with this license so they can control how many agencies operate in the city.

 

It's actually illegal for a city to license prostitution (as that would be living off the avails of prostitution - same reason agencies are illegal)

 

If you "live off the proceeds of prostitution" and you are not the one doing the prostitution you are "living off the avails" and that is illegal in all of Canada (License or not).

 

Really the license is just a way for the city to try to control it and pay for it to be policed. If you have a license they usually don't bother you unless you get complaints but you can still be charged under the criminal code of Canada for pimping by running an agency.

 

This site has lots of info on this subject (use the search) but make a list of questions and go see a REAL LAWYER before considering doing this... and not just any lawyer you need one who specializes in criminal code laws for prostitution.

[geo007 203]

Good advice from MOD. I think your request for input is very valid and you should be getting some very useful feedback from many experienced SPs. Some of them have moved in the business of developing an agency so their experiences can surely also help you. I would think that the local area where you will be working your business will have specific rules to follow so a local lawyer will eventually be a must to at least cover the legal requirements. Setting up an agency however is much more than just the legalities as I'm sure you are aware. Good luck.

[fortunateone 156618]

Sorry, I lost the link, but this is a nice breakdown. It is from an older article, and googling escort agency bylaw license Vancouver did nothing (the same thing for Edmonton takes you directly to the bylaw requirements from the appropriate dept). The following breaks down for comparison:

 

 

The City of Vancouver has five relevant licence categories in its bylaws: escort services, dating services, massage parlours, "body-rub parlours," and "health enhancement centres." The regulations are clearly designed so that sex-for-money is restricted to two types of businesses: escort services and body-rub parlours.

A number of provisions make this clear. First, health enhancement centres (such as aromatherapy or reflexology businesses) are explicitly forbidden from engaging in or offering "an act of prostitution." And massage parlours are barred from allowing members of the opposite sex to attend on customers. But body-rub parlours face neither restriction.

The definition of a "body-rub" makes the reality clearer still: It "includes the manipulating, touching or stimulating by any means, of a person's body or part thereof, but does not include medical, therapeutic or cosmetic treatment given by a person duly licensed."

The telling difference between "dating" and "escort" services in the Vancouver by-law is the information they must record: Dating services are required to keep the names and addresses of both people they are introducing, while escort services are only required to record the names of service providers. That means only customers of escort services can remain anonymous.

Licence costs further expose the reality. A dating service licence is $104 a year; massage parlours, $172; health enhancement centres, $160. But an escort service licence is $802 a year and a body-rub licence is $6,527. In fact, the body-rub licence is the third-most expensive in Vancouver, after those for the horse track and the Pacific National Exhibition.

 

Vancouver sps can get themselves an individual license, but typically they do not. So having that on record is not something of much concern in Vancouver. That is not so in Edmonton where all sps must have a license and almost all stings are related to an indy sp having or not having a license.

 

Incalls running several people are always going to be a target. You cannot license it legally period. However, no one from bylaw enforcement will come knocking on your door as they do in Alberta, looking for unlicensed sps or similar. LE will respond to complaints (the neighbours assume drugs, so it is very important the traffic is kept quiet and to a minimum as much as possible). Normally, incalls with multiple people sharing change their locations. Most agencies are outcalls only for that reason, plus saves the cost of rent and upkeep of an apartment.

 

There are already a couple of Indepent Agency type businesses in the area. SweetVIPs specifically has one or two people do the bookings for any independent that wants to sign up. They have a website that features the sps, plus their schedules, travel dates, etc. The sps however have their own websites, do their own indy advertising, etc.. They set their own prices, hours, restrictions. They simply pitch in fees for booking and I suppose pay a fee when they need to use the shared incall space. The benefit they get from joining is attracting the attention of clients who prefer to book through an agency. The person who runs it has been operating different related businesses for several years and the clients trust her to work with sps who are reliable, reputable and honest.

 

I would suggest you look at them for suggestions; however, they are based out of Victoria,not Vancouver. The bylaw issues they have will be different. The indy sps tend to get licensed, etc, similar to Edmonton.

 

You cannot run an agency without a license. Most city businesses require licenses and you will be fined for operating without a license. It is probably dead easy to apply for and get one, though you likely have to be a registered business.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

The article quoted by fortunateone is from the Ottawa Citizen, 16 Jun 2002.

(excerpts: http://www.sexworktoronto.com/legal/citieslicense.html)

 

While this article states of Vancouver by-laws that "The regulations are clearly designed so that sex-for-money is restricted to two types of businesses: escort services and body-rub parlours", it may be worth noting that this is an interpretation of the by-laws by the journalist who wrote the article (although no doubt a correct interpretation). The by-laws themselves carefully avoid defining what an escort is, exactly, and most definitely do not explicitly mention anything about "sex-for-money":

"Social Escort" means any person who, for a fee or other form of payment, escorts or accompanies another person, but does not mean a person providing assistance to another person because of that other person's age or handicap.

 

"Social Escort Service" means any person who carries on the business of providing, or offering to provide, the services or the names of persons to act as escorts for other persons.

 

(

http://vancouver.ca/bylaws/4450c.PDF

)

Presumably, the reason that sex is not mentioned in the City's definition of "Escort" is because collecting licencing fees from Sex Workers would effectively make the City of Vancouver a pimp (living on the avails). Per the Criminal Code, Section 212, living "wholly or in part on the avails of prostitution of another person" is illegal in Canada.

 

The Federal Department of Justice is not so impolite as to use the word "pimp" when referring to the City of Vancouver, but a report prepared for them by John Lowman has stated "city councils ... arguably live on the avails", and has acknowledged the implication of the by-law: "why is the regulatory distinction of "dating" and "social escorts" necessary? Apparently its purpose is to clarify which business is involved in commercial sex." (http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/pi/rs/rep-rap/2002/rr02_9/a.html)

 

So the whole thing is a nudge-nudge, wink-wink situation. Being licensed by a City to provide an undefined service does not grant technical immunity to the provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada. As mod said, a real lawyer is called for to guide one through this legal minefield of double-speak.