Greater Boston sex workers and their allies are raising questions about the handling of the local brothel ring case now making its way through the court system and urging lawmakers to consider legislation that would, among other things, remove penalties for the buying and selling of sex.
“We are hopeful that this can be a time to raise awareness among legislators around sex workers’ needs,” said Jessica Van Meir, co-founder of the Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective, or BSWAC.
Van Meir said she and the group fear that public attention on the brothel case will lead to poorly formed bills from lawmakers facing pressure to increase penalties on people who purchase sex.
In a statement released Thursday, the group also said they oppose the public naming of brothel clients as was done in the case involving brothels in Cambridge, Watertown, and Washington, D.C., claiming that the public shaming over consensual sex does not reduce trafficking.
“Instead, it makes clients less likely to report to the police if they witness a case of trafficking or exploitation and less willing to provide the screening information that sex workers use for safety,” the group’s statement said.
The statement comes as the public learns about more of the nearly 30 clients who patronized the high-end brothel ring. The revelations have prompted public discussions about the value and impact of outing the identities of people who purchase sex.
Advocates for those who voluntarily sell sex, like Ariela Moscowitz of the national advocacy group Decriminalize Sex Work, argue that clients are less likely to provide information to sex workers in a climate where they fear being outed.
“ [That] means that bad actors could be posing as clients to abuse, exploit” and cause violence, Moscowitz said.
“Where and when sex work is criminalized, it actually forces sex workers — and therefore makes them more vulnerable to trafficking —to rely on potentially dangerous third parties to find their clients instead of just being able to meet their own clients and screen them the way they choose to,” she said.
Moscowitz added that her group supports the three bills BSWAC is pressing Massachusetts legislators to consider.
One of the bills, sponsored by Leominster Rep. Natalie Higgins, would add selling sex to the list of crimes for which a person receives immunity from prosecution when they report other crimes, enabling both consensual sex workers and those being trafficked to come forward without fear of being charged.
“Often, the way that the laws are written right now endanger sex workers because they can’t remove the context in which they found out that information,” said Rep. Higgins, a former rape crisis counselor and co-chair of the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators’ task force on sexual violence. “We want to make sure that anyone who experiences a crime or sees a crime is able to be able to report that to law enforcement without fear of being detained themselves.”
Buying sex would still be illegal under Higgins’ bill.
Other proposals from BSWAC include one sponsored by Clinton Rep. Meghan Kilcoyne that would create an interagency committee similar to one recently convened in Rhode Island to study decriminalizing sex work.
“Many individuals engage in sex work and by creating a commission to examine the effects of decriminalization, we can gain a clearer understanding of whether this approach will lead to better public health outcomes and enhance public safety,” said Kilcoyne in a statement Thursday.
Another related bill sponsored by Northampton Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa would repeal a law against “soliciting for a prostitute” and another law that sets minimum sentences for people convicted of “being a common night walker” for a third time.
BSWAC’s advocacy raises questions about the legal status and the social stigmatization of the purchase and sale of sex and highlights what they say is an often-missed distinction between consensual sex workers and those who are trafficked or coerced.
In its Thursday statement, the group called for public testimony from the sex workers at the center of the brothel ring case and warned against the assumption that each person found working in a brothel does so as a result of trafficking.
“These women’s voices have so far been absent from the details provided to the public, making it difficult to ascertain whether this was a case of sex trafficking or of consensual sex work,” the coalition said in its 'sstatement, adding that victims might be feeling pressure to testify to being trafficked in order to avoid prosecution or deportation.
“We need to hear testimony from the women themselves in order to know whether they were working under free or exploitative conditions,” the coalition said.
Prosecutors in the case have said the unidentified women who worked in the brothels were considered victims and were not criminally charged.
Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, which investigated and prosecuted the case, did not immediately respond to GBH News’ request for comments.
Jamie Sabino, an attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, noted that asking for the women at the center of the case to testify could cause more harm or trauma.
“Whether or not they’re trafficked or pressured is a very fine line and I’m not sure how some group of people feel that they can make that determination,” Sabino said. “In our society, [the job of making that determination] does seem to be a role we assigned to law enforcement and prosecutors, and it may be we need to question that at times, but I’m not sure this is the right way to go about doing it.”
“I think we need to acknowledge that there are a lot of issues at play here and it’s neither one or the other in many situations.”
