Yes, absolutely.
We know that sex workers do not report most instances of violence to police. At Stella we have a bad client and aggressor list that we've been running for 25 years. Sex workers report to us incidents of violence so that we can share that information with the community and protect ourselves. We know that since the change of law in 2014, it's even harder to denounce anything to police, and we know that police won't necessarily help.
It's also important to point out that, in terms of women who are incarcerated, a large proportion of incarcerated women are sex workers, former sex workers or future sex workers. We're very concerned about this general anti-sex work sentiment that's coming out of the investigations into this murder and about the effects this will have on women who are also coming out on parole and might be punished if they engage in sex work if there's this big anti-sex work attitude.
As you said, the vast majority of offenders are not violent and are not a threat to sex workers. This man was a threat to sex workers, not because he liked to purchase sex but because he was a violent man who targeted women in a very specific way. As sex workers, we need clients. We like the clients, and any attempt to restrict good clients from accessing our services only puts us in a situation where we have fewer good clients and more need for money, and we end up having to make compromises on our health and safety.