Good afternoon.
My name is Rose Sullivan. I am a survivor of prostitution and a CLES activist. I am actively involved in building a support network for women who are victims of sexual exploitation and want a way out.
I was a prostitute for three long years. And I tried to conduct my business as safely as possible because I want to live, for my children among other reasons. What I learned from my time as a prostitute is that it's impossible to engage in prostitution safely. When I started out, I was pro-sex work, but over time, I became a staunch abolitionist, in addition to being completely beaten down. Things are better now.
I am an active champion of abolishing prostitution. And that is why I support Bill C-36 wholeheartedly. There is, however, one aspect of the bill that disturbs me: the fact that some provisions continue to criminalize women. As I see it, to ensure the safety of female prostitutes and to genuinely support their exit from prostitution, it is imperative that they not be criminalized. Even though the criminalization of prostitutes represents a small component of the bill, it negates all the other provisions. If there is any possible way to lay the criminal blame on prostitutes, pimps and the various groups that benefit from prostitution will still have the tools they need to scare, manipulate, blackmail and keep these women in prostitution. They must not be criminalized in any way.
To call us victims in some situations and criminals in others makes absolutely no sense. In my view, this part of the bill could lead to more prostitution in places where children are present, even though the opposite is intended. It enables pimps to keep their control over the women. No matter where these women are—quote unquote—pimped out, they will be breaking the law and that will allow pimps to exploit them. The bill will do absolutely nothing to reduce prostitution in the locations desired, in other words, near children and churches.
As a mother of three, I would say that women who prostitute themselves in their homes, while their children are in the room or the apartment next door, are probably the women with the fewest choices. They are the most vulnerable ones of all. This is utterly the wrong way to help them; criminalizing them even more than women who are fortunate enough to carry out their business in other circumstances is just wrong.
Regardless, children can be anywhere. That part of the bill is extremely arbitrary. Police and municipalities will still be able to freely abuse their power and continue to criminalize far too many women.
When I was a prostitute, apart from being assaulted—something that happened to me quite early on—my biggest fears were losing custody of my children and having a criminal record. And those were the fears that the individuals who pimped me out played upon to control me. That is how they scared me and made me stay in prostitution much longer than I had originally intended.
Once, a client of mine became violent with me, and I wanted to stop seeing him. And my pimp used these scare tactics to force me to keep seeing that client. He said he was going to call children's aid and the police. I was scared so I kept seeing the client. And when the day finally came that I just couldn't take the violence any more and I actually called the police, I got no help because the law was too ambiguous and the police didn't really know how to help me even though they knew I needed assistance.
There can no longer be any grey areas in the law. All prostitution legislation must be clear, specific and easy to enforce in order to adequately protect women and give those who want to exit prostitution the help they need to do so.