Your cover story (Review, last week) repeats misinformation aimed at promoting new anti-trafficking laws. An unbiased look would spot that such laws would remove the requirement for the victim to give evidence against her abuser, thus enabling her immediate deportation. The use of anti-trafficking as a means for deportation was exposed in last year’s Soho […]
The Editor,At last, a vindication of the rights of Monica Coghlan, a working class woman who came to court 14 years ago and told the truth about Jeffrey Archer. Ms Coghlan like many other women in the eighties fled the poverty of the North and went into prostitution in London to support her young child.In court […]
In many countries, including Britain, governments are introducing legislation against trafficking under the guise of protecting women from violence and exploitation. Feminists have initiated or supported such moves, and few have cared to look at what their effect is on the women they are supposed to protect. Recent police and immigration raids are telling. On […]
You report claims that the Albanian Mafia has taken over Soho (“SoHopeless”, June 23rd). This is a government fabrication aimed at justifying a police clampdown on prostitute women there and laying the basis for anti trafficking legislation that would increase police powers at women’s expense. In 1999, we successfully opposed attempts by Westminster Council to […]
We condemn last week’s police and immigration raid on women working in Soho as a violation of human and legal rights (Foreign bodies, Women, G2, February 20). In the name of “protecting” women from trafficking, about 40 women, including a woman from Iraq, were arrested, detained and in some cases summarily removed from Britain. If […]
In 2000, Westminster Council attempted to close flats in Brewer and Peter Street using compulsory purchase orders claiming that the premises were not used for residential purposes.Determined not to be thrown out of the flats where they lived and worked, women organised a petition which was signed by thousands of people, held a press conference […]
Heather Mills Home Affairs CorrespondentTwo women who brought the first private prosecution for rape and indecent assault after the Crown Prosecution Service dropped their cases saw their attacker jailed for 14 years yesterday.Coming the week after a London family – in another private prosecution – succeeded in committing for trial two men accused of killing […]
A young teen-age girl compelled Kay Mellor to write “Band of Gold,” a six-hour miniseries from Britain’s Granada Television about a group of prostitutes and how their lives change after one of them is brutally murdered.The adult thriller starring Geraldine James (“The Jewel in the Crown”) and Cathy Tyson (“Mona Lisa”) makes its American TV […]
Prostitutes succeed with prosecution after CPS refuses to pursue attacker for lack of evidence Sally Weale TWO prostitutes made legal history yesterday when a man who attacked them in separate incidents was convicted in the first private prosecution for rape in an English court. The Crown Prosecution Service had refused to pursue the case on […]
In the past few years toleration zones have been put forward as a form of legalisation which can be introduced without changing the law. Although such a proposal may be a reflection of growing public concern for prostitute women’s legal and civil rights, toleration zones would do little to protect these rights.Where toleration zones exist, […]