CBS News article: "Montreal residents fight prostitution online"

[URL]http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/12/08/montreal-prostitutes-hochelaga-maisonneuve.html[/URL]

Montreal residents fight prostitution online
Last Updated: Tuesday, December 8, 2009 | 1:30 PM ET
CBC News

Residents in Montreal's Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district have launched an online group to fight street prostitution.
Residents are taking pictures of sex workers in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and posting them on Facebook.Residents are taking pictures of sex workers in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and posting them on Facebook. (Facebook)

As of Tuesday, some 377 people, mostly residents in the southeast borough, had joined a group on the social networking site Facebook, where people discuss drug use and public sex they've witnessed in the area.

The Facebook group, called "Prostitution en plein jour" also features photos of prostitutes who work in the neighbourhood south of the Olympic Stadium.

Sex-trade workers have walked the streets in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve for years, says resident Frédéric Leroux, but the situation has worsened in recent months. "On the same corner, I saw a kid, waiting for a school bus, and I saw a prostitute, waiting for a client," said Leroux, who has three children.

Police are doing little to solve the problem, and that's why fed-up residents turned to the internet to take action, Leroux contends.

He said he doesn't blame the prostitutes, but rather clients, or johns, who drive the demand.

Advocates who work with prostitutes say the Facebook page is the wrong approach to solving an age-old problem.

"I think it's insane," said Émilie Laliberté, a former sex-trade worker who now does outreach for STELLA, a Montreal organization that supports people who sell sex on the streets. "It's totally [disrespectful.]"

Sex-trade workers are driven to the streets because current laws don't allow them to work anywhere else, and they "don't have the right of protection and security as any other citizen," Laliberté said.

"The fact that our work is being criminalized puts us at risk to suffer violence any time, anywhere."

Decriminalizing prostitution would allow sex trade workers to practise their trade in clean, safe areas behind closed doors, Laliberté added.

She suggested residents talk to local prostitutes about their concerns.

"If you bring your kid to the school, and the sex worker is there during the morning, you can just ask her maybe she can go to a corner more far away," she suggested. "The key is communication. It's not by bashing sex workers online that they're gonna get what they want."

The same story appeared in the French papers but from a different angle, focusing on a statement by the borough mayor to call in the police if the citizens actions do not have the desired results:

"The mayor may take action against prostitution"
[URL]http://fr.canoe.ca/infos/quebeccanada/archives/2009/12/20091207-162233.html[/URL]

What is interesting is that in the morning printed edition of 24 Heures, the first paragraph of the story includes the following statement (the English translation is mine):

[quote]The new mayor of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Réal Ménard, promises to use police repression, if mediation with community agencies does not work.[/quote]When I checked the article online tonight, the mention of police repression had been removed from the article, and the line had been changed to:

[quote]The new mayor of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Réal Ménard, promises to call in the police if mediation with community agencies does not work.[/quote]Also, if one reads the rest of the story, apparently the mayor's idea of "mediation with community agencies" includes posting pictures of prostitutes online.