Prison for English brothel owner
March 22nd 2006, 13:17 Jeff Sela
A man in England has been sentenced to a year in prison for running a brothel. Apparently it was staffed by Lithuanian girls, but this wasn't another case of ‘human trafficking’. The women were there voluntarily, free to come and go as they pleased.
This is very different from recent attempts to close brothels that were forcing foreign women into prostitution (e.g., in Birmingham and South Wales).
The legal standing of prostitution in the UK is a bit odd. While selling sex itself is legal, there are enough laws against related activities to make it very difficult for prostitutes to stay within the law. Running a brothel and pimping are illegal, so prostitutes have to work alone.
Isn't it about time we made prostitution safer for sex workers? The government chickened out with their strategy for prostitution, choosing to see it as something that had to be defeated. Does anyone really believe that can work?
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