Prostitution charges dismissed against owners of escort service – TheRecord.com

It advertised salaries of up to $5,000 per week, paid vacations, full health and dental insurance, and tuition subsidies for student employees. The agency advertised online and at London bus stops.

It had a code of ethics for clients and banned unsavoury clients. Customers paid by cash or credit and the agency kept half the gross revenue generated by the escort.

McKay, of the Ontario Court of Justice, released his ruling Friday after a 10-day trial that concluded last June. The case began in London and concluded in Kitchener after McKay was reassigned to a new courthouse.

He found that sex workers on the street are most at risk of violence, that sex work is safer when it moves indoors, and that sex workers are safer when clients are screened, security staff are hired, and their trade is professionally managed.

McKay found that advertising makes prostitution safer by opening up channels of communication, minimizing the risks of violence, and helping sex workers get off the street.

He found that banning advertising and banning people from managing the sex work of others "without coercion" violates the Charter because it increases the risk of injury or death, criminalizes helpful behaviour, and is "grossly disproportionate in its effects on liberty and security of the person."

The ruling dismays an advocate who argues Canada is properly taking aim at prostitution.

"It's astounding," said John Cassells, director of a group called Men Ending Trafficking. "We have a situation now in Ontario where we're protecting pimps, and their Charter rights apparently supersede the rights of victims and vulnerable women and girls to be protected."

Lockyer disagrees that the ruling encourages pimps to traffick vulnerable females.

"This ruling has nothing to do with permitting exploitation. On the contrary. It prevents exploitation by enabling legitimate relationships to be set up that are not explotive," he said.

While police can still lay prostitution charges against escort services, they should seek good advice from a prosecutor before doing so, Lockyer said.

Prosecutors are reviewing the ruling. The Ministry of the Attorney General could not say Friday if it will be appealed.

McKay found that defence experts relied on evidence while prosecution experts were "committed advocates for the abolition of the sex industry." He gave prosecution experts no weight in his ruling.

Defence lawyer Jack Gemmell hopes the ruling persuades the Liberal government to reconsider the prostitution law.

The ruling surprised Osgoode Hall law professor Debra Haak, who earned a PhD studying the role of law in prostitution.

"What it tells me is that this law is complicated, and that this law opens up really important questions about the intersection between people's individual rights under our Charter, and the rights of groups under our Charter," she said.

She said she expects the prostitution law will need to be tested at an appeal court and at the Supreme Court of Canada.

"I imagine in the next week or two there will be a lot of people pointing to this decision and claiming that it stands for certain things," Haak said.

Parliament enacted the law after the Supreme Court found the previous prostitution law unconstitutional in 2013.

jouthit@therecord.com

Twitter: @OuthitRecord

jouthit@therecord.com

Twitter: @OuthitRecord

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Prostitution charges dismissed against owners of escort service - TheRecord.com