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‘This is a victory for the safety of the sex industry’
IT has been hailed as a victory for Soho’s sex industry.
Some go as far as calling Wednesday’s decision a landmark in the area’s 350-year history as a centre for the world’s oldest profession.
Among the maids and campaigners outside the court-room – who came from a range of countries including Kosovo and Albania – the talk was about safety, women’s rights and why there shouldn’t be a moral dilemma about prostitution.
One of the maids who works at the flats, who was once a teenage prostitute, said she hoped people would begin to see them as human beings.
She said: “It’s such a relief. None of us chose to be prostitutes. I didn’t suddenly get to 15 and say ‘Mummy I want to be a prostitute’.
“But it’s not a bad business. It’s just a transaction and I honestly think we’ve saved quite a lot of marriages doing what we do. There has been some progress made today.”
Michelle, a Romanian sex worker at the flat, said: “We do this because it pays a lot better than a job cleaning. If we have a problem the maid sorts it out. We feel safe there.”
Under British law prostitution itself is not illegal, but several activities surrounding it – including pimping, kerb crawling and operating a brothel – are outlawed.
The law makes much of Soho’s night-time economy a grey area, and police have been accused of using anti-social legislation to eradicate the sex industry through “the back door”.
Niki Adams from the English Collective of Prostitutes thinks the police got it wrong with 61 Dean Street.
“This decision was a victory for women’s safety,” she said.
“Many of these cases have simply been nodded through. But there are important issues at stake here. Women are 10 times more likely to be attacked on the streets than in a flat.”
But for many, the case raises some pressing questions for the police and law makers.
When asked, under cross examination from the police, for the identity of the landlord at 61 Dean Street or how he gets paid, the respondent’s solicitor Richard Barca said it was “not relevant” and a matter of “client confidentiality”.
Police say the property is owned by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands and that it has most likely been sub-let countless times.
And then there is the question of who the girls work for, and how they ended up in Soho in the first place.
The court heard that Mr Barca lives in the flat above the two prostitutes’ flats, and has to walk through one of them to get to his entrance door.
Mr Barca told the court how he had to call 999 to gain entry to his flat when the doors were boarded up following the raid.
He has represented other Soho sex establishments including two clubs, Twilights, in Rupert Street and the Soho Cabaret, in Great Windmill Street, which were shut down using the same powers just before Christmas.
In the late 1990s there was an outbreak of gang warfare in Soho reportedly over the control of the industry, with younger mobsters muscling in on turf once the preserve of “gentlemen gangsters”.
Since then, police and Westminster Council have waged a successful war on clip joints, with just a handful remaining. But the “walk up” flats continue to flourish.
Police say the owners of the property are under investigation, and they are “monitoring” the situation at 61 Dean Street.
A police source said: “Ultimately, whoever owns the property is profiting from immoral business.
“It would be very easy just to go round and close all these places down but then all we would end up doing is pushing the girls underground or onto the street. We have to strike a balance.” |
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