Texas Says It's OK to Shoot an Escort If She Won't Have Sex With You

A jury in Bexar County, Texas just acquitted Ezekiel Gilbert of charges that he murdered a 23-year-old Craigslist escort—agreeing that because he was attempting to retrieve the $150 he'd paid to Lenora Ivie Frago, who wouldn't have sex with him, his actions were justified.

Gilbert had admitted to shooting Frago in the neck on Christmas Eve 2009, when she accepted $150 from Gilbert and left his home without having sex with him. Frago, who was paralyzed by the shooting, died several months later.

Gilbert's defense argued that the shooting wasn't meant to kill, and that Gilbert's actions were justified, because he believed that sex was included as part of the fee. Texas law allows people "to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft."

The 30-year-old hugged his defense attorneys after the "not guilty" verdict was read by the judge. If convicted, he could have faced life in prison. He thanked God, his lawyers, and the jury for being able to "see what wasn't the truth."

This post was edited by Deleted Member at June 9, 2013 8:12:00 AM EDT

Sex workers march to make prostitution legal
By Maryam Shah, QMI Agency

TORONTO -- Around 100 sex workers and their supporters chanted, "No bad whores, only bad laws!" as they called for the decriminalization of prostitution in Canada in a march on Saturday.

The rally was one of several across Canada and comes days before a June 13 Supreme Court hearing on the federal government's appeal of an Ontario Superior Court ruling that would make brothels legal.

The battle to reform prostitution laws began four years ago as a constitutional challenge brought by three women.

One of them, dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, argues sex workers should be allowed to protect themselves legally.

Corbella: Allowing brothels will make things worse for prostitutes


BY LICIA CORBELLA, CALGARY HERALD JUNE 8, 2013

Dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford is accustomed to getting her way. That’s plainly obvious by the black leather, sado-masochistic outfit she parades around in, including a riding crop.

But many former prostitutes and those who counsel them, really hope Bedford does not get her way at the Supreme Court of Canada. The court will begin hearing the federal government’s appeal of two lower court rulings on Wednesday that struck down sections of Canada’s anti-prostitution laws.

Bedford, along with two other prostitutes — Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott — have seen some considerable success so far in Canadian courts.

On Sept. 28, 2010, Ontario Superior Court Justice Susan Himel struck down three sections of Canada’s prostitution laws because they exposed sex-trade workers to unreasonable risk.

Himel ruled that communicating for the purposes of prostitution, living on the avails of prostitution and keeping a common bawdy house force sex-trade workers from the safety of their homes and onto the streets, where they are more vulnerable to violence.

The Criminal Code provisions, wrote Himel in her 131-page ruling, “force prostitutes to choose between their liberty interest and their security of the person as protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Himel’s ruling was upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court is the end of the line in terms of ensuring that these Criminal Code provisions are not discarded — thus legalizing brothels, pimping and potentially even the bold kind of soliciting made so infamous in Amsterdam’s red-light district.

Natasha Falle, who calls herself a sex-trade survivor, says “women like me don’t think the way to protect women is behind legislated doors.”

Speaking at Servants Anonymous’ Cry of the Streets — Evening of Freedom fundraising event May 30 in Calgary, Falle says more women will be enslaved by human traffickers if those laws are deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Looking much younger than her 40 years, Falle is the founder of Sextrade 101 — a public awareness organization and an instructor of police foundations at Humber College in Toronto.

She intends to show up at the Supreme Court next week holding a “pimp stick” — an unravelled coat hanger that her pimp would often heat up on the stove and then use to whip her. Other former sex trade survivors will show up with other torture tools commonly used by pimps, such as curling irons and belts.

The daughter of a former Calgary police officer who, ironically, worked in the vice department, and a mother who worked in a bridal salon, Falle says she turned her first trick in Calgary’s Chinatown when she was 14 with a man with rotten teeth.

Her parents had split up and her family life fell apart. Falle started sleeping on friends’ couches until she wound up on the sofa of four young prostitutes whose pimp was out of town. Pretty soon, Falle followed their lead. At least they had a place to live and food to eat.

“I was trafficked across the country by the man who recruited me and who made false white-picket-fence intimacy promises,” Falle told the crowd.

“I made a lot of money. I bought my pimp a Mercedes. I had a Mustang, we lived in a penthouse, but I was still subjected to all of the violence,” she said. “He broke my arms, my ribs; my nose has been broken three times.”

Her point? This happened indoors. Not on the streets. The former prostitute says the worst beating she ever got was in a common bawdy house she shared with four other teens, so the idea that there’s safety in numbers is a myth.

Falle asks Canadians to consider what will happen to young women and girls should those prostitution laws be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Prostitution will become a licensed business, pimps will be legitimate business people, billboards advertising brothels could start appearing on roadsides and “a brothel could open up in the apartment next to yours or in the house next to yours,” Falle says.

While prostitution is legal in Canada, running a bawdy house, living off of the avails and soliciting for the purposes of prostitution are not.

“If we legalize these three areas, will brothels be allowed to set up a booth at the high school job fair?” she asks.

Just last month, two men were arrested in the Toronto area after recruiting a teenage Windsor girl to work in a strip club. They then took her to Toronto, where they forced her to prostitute herself.

“I think many well-meaning Canadians support Bedford’s challenge against Canada’s prostitution laws because they believe it will help vulnerable women,” Falle says. “But they are mistaken. It will make things much worse. It will legitimize pimping and human trafficking. It will enslave more women and girls.”

Calgary police vice detective Paul Rubner says if the Supreme Court strikes down the prostitution laws, his job will be made “significantly more challenging.”

Marina Giacomin, executive director of Servants Anonymous Society of Calgary, says of the more than 100 women and children her agency helps annually to shelter and transition out of the sex trade, none wants to see prostitution legitimized.

“In Holland and Germany, where prostitution is fully legalized, they’re realizing organized crime is growing as a result. Young Eastern European women are lured by promises of a job as a nanny and are tricked into a life of violence and servitude,” Giacomin says.

Falle states the obvious: “It’s not Canada’s laws that make prostitution unsafe, it’s the nature of the business — the johns who are raping and abusing the women and their pimps.”

Here’s hoping the Supreme Court will not be fooled into lending legitimacy to the oldest oppression in the world.

Licia Corbella is a columnist and the editorial page editor. lcorbella@calgaryherald.com



Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Corbella+Allowing+brothels+will+make+things+worse+prostitutes/8495891/story.html#ixzz2VlcCXo3

This post was edited by Deleted Member at June 9, 2013 8:04:57 PM EDT

I don't believe the legitimize pimping and human trafficking.

You will always find woman that gravitate to "pimps" or he isn't my pimp he is my boyfriend.

 

When there is money involved and especially cash, there is always someone around to trying to take it 

from you.

 

When I started a man would talk to me every day, then came his pitch, he was home on disability and 

would be my trainer, no experience, didn't happen.

 

Another gentleman I befriended was going to help me by arranging my pictures, hotels if needed, I.D. for hotels,

advertising, every thing I do now and charge me, call it what you may, that to is a pimp.

 

There are more independent women entering the profession.  

Woman that were not abused, but older woman who choose to do this for their own reasons, basically money.

 

But I do see a trend with the younger girls, they enter not because of abuse, but self worth, a great number of 

them have learning disabilities, they didn't get the testing and help they needed in school and feel this is the 

only thing they can do.

 

If prostitution does become legal "pimps will be legitimate business people", now that is just a stupid statement.

This reminds me of the "Rock and Roll" debates in the 50's, it's the Devil's Music, and look what happened to that!

Anyone that uses violence to control another person should be locked up for life but that won't happen in Canada.

Having spent way too much time in court rooms  in the last 11 years and another summer of nasty court just starting next week

, I have learned how badly our legal system is broken. Our laws are more prone to special interest groups and are seldom

based upon common sense or proper research. Violent and controlling pimps need to be removed from the picture if there is 

to any safety for sex workers. The old laws were wrong because a sex worker working from her home could not have a live in

boyfreind for protection. He would be charged as "" living off the avails of prostitution"' even if he had his own job and paid his own way.

Pimps must be removed from the system if there is to be any sex worker safety.

 That may be a lot harder than it sounds if not immposible.  Some women are drawn to abusive and sometimes brutal men. Some

Sex workers see a pimp as protection even if he beats them and takes their money. Sex workers are real people and  

can fall prey to ""Battered Womens Syndrome"' under the abusive control of a violent pimp.

It is a very complex issue with no easy fixes given the nature of some of the people involved.

There are also many too police officers and polititians that consider sex workers to be less than human and deserve what they get

if they are beaten by a pimp or a client. I have seen that first hand in Hamilton's Barton St area. That is changing but it

still happens with some poorly trained police officers.

It may be the worlds oldest profession but we still don't have common sense laws or systems in place to protect sex workers.

It is long over due that the drafting of sex workers laws include the opinions and expereinces  of sex workers themselves

 That wasn't possible in the past when it was illegal to be a part of the sex trade. There is also a huge differnce between a high priced                                 escort working for herself in posh hotels and a street corner crack addict under control of her abusive drug addict boyfreind.

Very complex indeed with so many variables involved. Just getting the public and the courts to recognize that sex workers are real

 real people with real feeling and real rights to protection is still very difficult.

 

This post was edited by firebird at June 30, 2013 5:12:39 AM EDT