Massage Parlour article from Vue Magazine in Edmonton

A 2008 Massage Parlour article from Vue Magazine in Edmonton
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The business of the world’s oldest profession
Does city licensing of prostitution makes sex trade workers safe?

BRYAN SAUNDERS / bryansaunders@vueweekly.com
Earlier this month, Thomas Svekla was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Theresa Innes—one of the two prostitutes he was accused of killing. While the sentence brought closure to some, others were left asking why Svekla is only the first person to have been convicted in the death of one of the nearly 30 women whose bodies have been found in and around Edmonton over the past 25 years.

Days after the Svekla verdict, police were alerted to the remains of yet another woman found just outside of Edmonton, in Strathcona County. Indications are that this woman was likely—as were many found before her—a prostitute who may have been the victim of violence.

With so few charges being laid in connection with this epidemic of slayings and the ongoing occurrence of such murders, it is perhaps time to ask what, if anything, the City of Edmonton is doing to prevent such tragedies. What is the city doing to get these women off the street, before they end up dead?

Over the years, one approach the city has taken is to move prostitution off the streets and indoors by granting business licenses to escort agencies, massage parlours and strip joints.

On its official website the city feigns ignorance to the fact that it´s granting business licenses to prostitution rings. According to the city, an escort agency is nothing more than a business that provides an “introduction.”

A quick flip through a phonebook or newspaper, however, reveals escort ads that promise “erotic companionship” and “3somes” [sic]. Massage parlours promise “sensual massages” that “always have a happy ending.”

But by granting these business permits to these establishments, is the city encouraging prostitution? More importantly, is prostitution behind closed doors any safer for the women involved than prostitution happening on the street?

JoAnn McCartney is a retired police officer who spent 10 years investigating escort agencies, massage parlours and the like as part of Edmonton Police Service’s (EPS) vice unit. She is now a counsellor with the Prostitution Awareness & Action Foundation of Edmonton (PAAFE) and created the organization’s diversion program, which helps women get off the street.

One thing that licensing does, McCartney explains, is allow the city to understand and to have some control over who is getting a license. Anyone with a criminal history of violence can’t typically get a license for prostitution-related businesses.

“So, the head guy from the Hell’s Angels can’t get a license to [own] a massage clinic,” she notes.

As it turns out, while it was intended to do so, licensing doesn’t always keep violent criminals from operating these businesses.

The minutes from city council meetings from as far back as 1997 reveal that criminal organizations found a way around the rules a long time ago, stating: “the Hell’s Angels are about to move into Alberta by means of the absorption of the Grim Reapers and Rebels’ Motorcycle Clubs. These Clubs apparently control a number of so-called ‘legitimate’ businesses, such as escort agencies and various automotive businesses.”

McCartney points out that licensing also assures that children aren’t working in these dangerous massage parlours or escort agencies, because one must be 18 to get a license.

However, there are few things preventing these same children from working on the streets instead. Estimates vary, but some organizations estimate that as many as one-third of Edmonton’s 400 to 500 prostitutes are under 18, or became involved in the profession before that age.

Interestingly, the licensing fee for an escort agency is nearly 30 times higher than the fee for most other businesses ($4539 compared to $172). McCartney explains the higher cost is because more resources are required to investigate an escort agency than, say, a restaurant.

“In order for [the city] to check on a massage clinic or an escort agency, [police] actually have to conduct an undercover operation,” McCartney says.

“[Police are required] because if a bylaw enforcement guy walks into a massage clinic and says, ‘Let’s see your license,’ the people who don’t have licenses will say ‘I’m the receptionist,’” McCartney continues. “They’ll go in there and there will be four receptionists working, apparently, and no [masseuses].”

However, there are no guarantees that the large amounts of money from escort licensing fees actually go to EPS’s budget to pay for what are often lengthy and very costly investigations.

“Any type of licensing fee goes in the same direction,” explains a worker with the city’s permit and licensing department. That direction is the city’s general revenue fund, which means that the money from escort licensing fees could be used for anything, even to pave the very streets that Edmonton’s prostitutes walk at night.

Even when EPS does find that an infraction is being committed in an escort agency, the result is often nothing more than a fine, which Dean Parthenis, the media relations supervisor with EPS, explains also ends up in the city’s general revenue.

With these apparent shortcomings in the licensing bylaws, it’s no surprise that in 2000 then-city councillor Allan Bolstad asked for a report to examine if the city’s escort agency bylaw was serving its purpose.

Bolstad asked if the bylaw had helped reduce the number of prostitutes and, specifically, minors on the streets, if it helped police in their criminal investigations and if it helped social agencies in getting prostitutes off the street.

The answer to these inquiries wasn’t exactly a resounding “yes,” and a new and improved bylaw was introduced later that year. In late 2007, though, questions about the effectiveness of the licensing bylaws were still being asked, this time in a report titled “Working Together to Address Sexual Exploitation in Edmonton.”

Some critics have charged that the licensing bylaws have done nothing but move prostitution indoors—where it is less visible and less irritating to the community—allowing the violent criminal activities associated with it to continue to thrive.

The kind of hostility that sex trade workers encounter indoors is different though, McCartney counters. The dominance or violence inside a massage parlour is usually psychological or financial in nature, and is not nearly so often fatal.

“You’re more likely to be beaten on the street, and perhaps raped and left out in the country somewhere,” McCartney explains, but admits there are exceptions.

“When you’re an escort you can still be raped. There was a woman from a massage clinic in Edmonton who was working her shift and the next morning, when the next person came in, they found her murdered in her massage clinic.”

McCartney does see some areas in which the city could improve its policies on prostitution. She would, for instance, like it if the money generated from prostitution-related fines was directed towards organizations like PAAFE, which work to get women off the street, instead of into the city’s general revenue fund.

“That’s what happens with the legislation that seizes johns’ vehicles. The vehicles are sold and the money goes to these places that try to get women off the street,” she points out.

Ultimately though, McCartney says the biggest and most important change would have to come at a federal level. She wants the Criminal Code of Canada to be changed to target the johns who buy sex, and she wants the punishments for them to be harsher.

“In Sweden, they legislated that if you buy another human being or you sell another human being for a sexual purpose, [that’s] big time illegal. You’re going to jail—because it’s slavery.

“Their prostitution dropped 80 per cent the first year,” McCartney says excitedly. More conservative estimates actually peg the drop to be closer to 40 per cent, but the exact numbers and the success of the Swedish law has been the subject of hot debate between proponents and critics of the legislation who say that even this approach may have just moved much of the prostitution to more private or discreet locations.

McCartney prefers Sweden’s abolitionist approach, but others point to the Dutch “Red Light District” model. However, McCartney says that the significant amount of violent crime that takes place in the Red Light District is often overlooked by supporters of such a model.

While no clear solution presents itself as being the one to end the ongoing violence against Edmonton women, cases like the Svekla trial point to the need to do more.

“Sweden defines prostitution as violence against women and children,” McCartney concludes. “And I do too.”

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I had not heard of the MP murder before