Press Releases

Media Release Embargo: Immediate release Date: 2016-05-19 Enquiries: Vaughan Luck Cell: 078 748 9884 Office: 032 481 5550 Email: [email protected] South Africa seems to be going in the opposite direction to the rest of the world on the issue of decriminalizing prostitution, meanwhile in South Africa it seems to be gaining momentum and the question Doctors For Life International would like to ask is… “Why?” Billboards put up by the Department of Health in Gauteng a few months ago said “I like to give my clients pleasure, not HIV”. This implies that being a prostitute is a joyful, meaningful experience, given by a lady wanting to provide an all-important service to her client. Isn’t prostitution illegal in South Africa? DFL urgently appeals to the government take a more official and visible stance towards the total abolition of prostitution in order to ensure that our teenagers from the most impoverished communities that flock to Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg and other cities, seeking out a better life don’t see prostitution as a viable option of employment. Why would a government that is supposed to have the best interests of its people at heart want to make it acceptable to sell themselves, for sex, on a street corner or under the control of a ruthless pimp in a brothel; to make sexual exploitation, violence and paid rape legal. DFL recommends that a few MP’s from government put themselves in the prostitute’s shoes before making any decisions on whether it should be an option as a profession. The Deputy President said not so long ago that the government wants to start a program to hand out condoms to prostitutes. There is no “condom” for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Condoms are already freely available. This is not going to protect sex workers from physical violence, rape or mental conditions. Numerous studies have shown that programs to promote safe sex practices are notorious for failing in their objectives; 1. There are many STD’s that are transferred by skin contact not body fluids alone. 2. Poor mental health and self-esteem as well as drug habits may actually undermine their motivation and ability to adopt safer sex behaviours. If you feel worthless why bother to protect and look after yourself. 3. Decriminalizing prostitution creates a buyer’s market rather than a seller’s market. Competition for customer’s increases. Consequently, sex workers desperate for cash would be open to offers of more money for unsafe sex practises. There is a reason why more prostitutes suffer with PTSD than war veterans returning home from war (80{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4} compared to 69{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4}) and it is not because of the “perks of the job” that’s for sure. Buying a slave a mattress so the slave doesn’t have to sleep on the floor does not take away the fact that the slave is still a slave. No wonder people worked so hard for the total abolition of slavery. Prostitution is illegal in over 90{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4} of the world. Those countries where it has been decriminalized are seeing increases in child sex trafficking and HIV rates and are now pushing for the abolishment of prostitution completely. Germany, for example, has over 400 000 sex workers now, more than half of these workers are from other countries and are there illegally. This is a dramatic increase compared to before it was legal. South Africa has over 150 000 adult sex workers and over 38 000 child prostitutes according to the 19th edition of the South African Health Review. France recently made the buying of sex illegal in an effort to abolish the selling/trafficking of women into sexual slavery. It is just one of a list of countries making prostitution illegal. Pro-decriminalization groups see SA as an easy target, due to the lawless perception we are portraying to the rest of the world. Bribery and corruption seem to have become pillars of South African society. In New South Wales (Australia) where prostitution is legal it is reported that about 10{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4} of the total incidences of STI’s was prostitution derived. This is in a state where less than 0.06{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4} of the females were regularly employed as prostitutes and only 4-5{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4} of the male population were regular customers. This indicates a considerable impact. If you translate those figures to SA where prostitution is rife it demonstrates how making prostitution legal will only help in the further spread of HIV and Aids. To say that by decriminalizing prostitution you are helping is a paradox. The violence against women will not stop, rape will not stop, being held as a sex slave by a pimp will not stop, as can be seen in the comprehensive study; “Prostitution and Trafficking in 9 Countries-An update on Violence and PTSD”. All decriminalization does is say that this now becomes part of the job description. There is a big difference to being able to report rape and stopping it from happening all together. The only way to protect our women and children from prostitution is to stop prostitution from becoming acceptable as a career choice, after all none of us would ever want our children to come home and say; Mommy, Daddy I want to be a prostitute when I grow up.

Doctors For Life International is an association of more than 1600 specialists and medical doctors. Doctors For Life endeavours to promote public health by upholding sound science in the medical profession. For more information, please visit… www.doctorsforlife.co.za

in order to bring respect and dignity to them and protect their human rights. In the first place DFL does not see it as the duty or the right of individual members of government to reprimand the police for maintaining law and order. That kind of behaviour would fit in with an autocratic form of government, something of which South Africans have become extremely aware of recently. We would also encourage Mr Ramaphosa to consult with all role players that will represent the whole spectrum of opinions on the matter, before starting to make public statements that create the impression of nullifying existing legislation and create the impression that he is being led by the nose by one or two pressure groups. Keep in mind that The Constitutional Court in S v Jordan and Others in 2002 (6) SA 642 decided that the criminalization of prostitution does not amount to unfair discrimination. It would seem that Mr. Ramaphosa does not trust the findings of the constitutional court. Policy shapers would do well to keep in mind that there are certain “rights” that no decent society would allow individuals to exercise e.g. the right to sell yourself into slavery or the right to sell your organs. The reason being that we do not want to create a society where the poor can be accused of not having tried their best to get out of poverty because they have not yet sold themselves or any of their organs. No wonder, Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen stated: “Almost five years after the lifting of the brothel ban, we have to acknowledge that the aims of the law have not been reached.” Instead we find ourselves “in the midst of modern slavery”. In the past 10 years that DFL have been helping women to exit prostitution and provide them with skills training, we have found the reality of prostitution to be very different from the picture Mr Ramaphosa may have. Poverty is by far the most common cause why girls from rural areas are flocking to the cities and selling themselves to ruthless pimps and madams and clients who exploit them. Starting off with R500 per client and soon selling themselves for R10 per client. Once a woman has reached that point they will do anything to make money because they have no other skill and are often addicted to drugs. A client just need to offer R20 for unprotected sex and they will jump for it even if they have a dozen condoms in their pockets. Most of these girls anyway know by then exactly at which filling stations or other public places they can get access to free condoms. PTSD is the most serious mental disorder that psychologists can measure in a human. Numerous studies have come out over the last few decades that demonstrate a relationship between Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and prostitution. The prevalence off PTSD furthermore remains consistently between 60{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4} and 86{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4} whether prostitution is practiced in a legal or illegal setting, with Columbia, one of the countries where it is legal, leading the pack at 86{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4}. (Compare this to the prevalence amongst war veterans of maximum 67{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4}) Linda Fairstein, a Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor, mentioned that studies characterize the violence that emanates from prostitution as “brutal, extreme, common, stunning, normative, and ever-present…”. Indeed, physical and sexual violence across prostitution types is pervasive—whether one is prostituting in Chennai or Chicago, indoors or outdoors, for drugs or to pay the rent, on a street corner, in a car, back alley, brothel, massage parlour, or strip club—both the threat of, as well as actual violence, permeate everyday existence in the zone. As long as this violence is contained within the context of the sex trade, where women and other prostituting persons become public sexual property, their trauma is commonly and conveniently reduced to an “occupational health issue” or “workplace violence.” This is a cruel and unjust euphemism. Imagine what would happen if 25{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4}, 50{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4}, or 89{01b0879e117dd7326006b2e84bcaac7e8fa1509c5c67baf2c9eb498fe06caff4} of the females working in schools, financial or medical institutions, at your local supermarket, or favourite restaurant were subject to the same kinds of violence. Would the world tolerate the phenomenon, tell women that the violence was merely an on-the job hazard, describe their rape as theft of their sexual services or thrust the responsibility for the violence on them by coaching them on a myriad of methods to reduce the risk of violence? Such a response is unimaginable for women outside the zone of prostitution, but for women and others inside the commercial sex trade such perversity is the stuff of daily life. Without question, the vast majority of physical and sexual violence inflicted on those in the sex trade is perpetrated by those purchasing persons for sex— the sex buyers. While sex buyers may be the principle perpetrators of this savagery, in many cases their exercise of violence is given license by institutions, societies, and governments that establish and endorse various regimes of legal and decriminalized prostitution. Full decriminalization of prostitution, in which the laws regulating the activities of pimps, sex buyers and sellers are eliminated, represents the most egregious and shocking response to the commercial sex trade. Such an approach transforms pimps into entrepreneurs and sex buyers into mere customers. While decriminalization may redefine deviant and criminal behaviour, it is incapable of transforming pimps into caring individuals who have the best interests of prostituting persons at heart, or metamorphosing sex buyers into sensitive, thoughtful, and giving sexual partners. Decriminalization of prostitution is powerless to change the essential, exploitive nature of commercial sex, and tragically grants it free rein. Legalizing sex work as a “job” or a “business” only benefits brothel owners and customers seeking sex making their work easier and granting them a veneer of legitimacy. It will give them “full license” to condone violence, sexual abuse — including rape — and verbal abuse that is commonly perpetuated on vulnerable people. Many women’s rights advocates propose instead a stiffening of penalties for johns and pimps. One wonders whether the handing out of condoms to women caught up in the modern day slavery of prostitution might not be compared to providing slaves with light-weight chains in order to diminish the harm caused by their heavy metal chains. Would it not be more appropriate to get to the condom issue after having dealt thoroughly with the hundreds of thousands of poor rural girls being trafficked daily for sex and having commended and encouraged the police to more vigorously enforce the existing legislation or brought in heavier fines for pimps, madams and clients that are buying sex from these vulnerable girls.   Doctors For Life International is an association of more than 1600 specialists and medical doctors. Doctors For Life endeavors to promote public health by upholding sound science in the medical profession. For more information, please visit www.doctorsforlife.co.za]]>

1) it is a gift to pimps and sex buyers allowing them to carry out their activities as mere “sex business operators” and “customers,” 2) it normalizes sexual violence and exploitation as a “job.” If approved, Amnesty’s support of decriminalized prostitution will undermine the human rights of persons in the sex trade (the majority of whom are females), and give impunity to perpetrators of sexploitation. Amnesty International has betrayed the cause of human rights through its looming policy in favor of decriminalizing prostitution. Decriminalizing prostitution is a gift to pimps, sex traffickers, and sex buyers that confers a right to buy and sell other human beings. Such policies would not protect the persons in prostitution, but rather guarantee that their exploitation will continue. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation is now launching a new campaign entitled No Amnesty For Pimps to oppose Amnesty’s policy and to educate the public about how prostitution is an inherently exploitive system that requires Abolition, not social sanction.]]>