SPCS

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

The real harms of prostitution – MercatorNet

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Why would we legalise what women who have experienced it call ‘paid rape’ and voluntary slavery’?

What is prostitution really like for the person in it? Recently The Economist ran a debate online about legalising prostitution. Putting the case against was San Francisco psychologist Melissa Farley, who is also the founder of Prostitution Research and Education. In view of the relentless campaign to legalise prostitution on the ground that it would then be essentially harmless and a matter of choice, MercatorNet invited Dr Farley to set out the facts of the matter as she knows them from 15 years of research and dealings with prostituted and trafficked women.

Source: MercatorNet 18 October 2010 http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_real_harms_of_prostitution

[Note. One of the Society’s objectives is: “To focus attention on the harmful nature and consequence of sexual promiscuity, obscenity, pornograhy and violence.” Society members have analysed the extensive publications of Dr Melissa Farley relating to prostitution in preparing submissions over the last few years to City Councils on proposed by-law changes relating to the control of prostitution].

Michael and John Chow: “Gutted” – Sex Palace demolition – “God’s Wrath at Prostitution”?

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Two Wellington sex entrepreneurs, whose 125-year old Palace Hotel (also known as Aurora Tavern) in central Auckland was in the process of being transformed into a brothel, are “gutted” that the Auckland City Council has demolished it.

Michael and John Chow’s property company, which purchased the Victorian- style building in 2008 for $3.3 million, had hoped to have it operating as a brothel by January next year, just ahead of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. But when dangerous cracks appeared in the facade of the category B – Historic Place Trust protected  building on Thursday afternoon and an urgent investigation by Council officers and independent consultant engineers had concluded that the three-storey building could collapse, it was demolished that night.

Michael Chow is reported as saying:

“We have invested millions and millions on the property. I feel gutted, I feel they came to my home and they pulled it down. It was just a little bit of a crack“. [Emphasis added]

The decriminalising of prostitution under the Prostitution Reform Act 2003, opened up more than a little bit of a crack in the legal framework that had previously protected women to some degree from the exploitation and moral debasement – associated with prostitution. [Read more…]

Terrorism and money laundering – Guidance for Charities

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The Charities Commission has produced a very helpful guide explaining how those involved in the charity sector can, among other things, identify and guard against money launderers who aim to legitimise money sourced in illegal activities, by chanelling it through charities. It also explains how charity funds have been siphoned off to finance terrorism – whereby charities operate as mere fronts for money laundering operations.  Illegal activities generating funding sources for terrorism can include the pornography industry (an exploitative and morally bankrupt multi-billion dollar sleaze industry world-wide) and its close bed mates prostitution and illegal drug trafficking. It can also involve those in the property development industry, for example company directors who set up a complex convoluted quagmire of company networks designed to avoid tax, confound enforcement agencies and safeguard their own financial interests, as opposed to those of their investors and secured and unsecured creditors, in situations where the companies become insolvent and are placed into liquidation or receivership. False residential addresses, bogus shareholding listings, NZ – based “virtual offices” run from overseas and multiple addresses listed across many companies for the same individual can be pointers for enforcement agencies in the direction of money laundering and even links to terrorism and/or illegal arms trading etc.

See: http://www.charities.govt.nz/news/fact_sheets/new%20info%20sheets/HOW-TERROR.pdf

Submission re Draft Brothels Bylaws Amendment 2008

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Submission to Upper Hutt City Council dated 8 December 2008

Background

The Society strongly opposed the Prostitution Reform Bill when it came before the Justice and Electoral Select Committee following its first reading in parliament in October 2000. It made both written and oral submissions to the committee and was one of the leading opponents of the bill. The Prostitution Reform Act 2005 (PRA) was passed by parliament on 26 June 2003 by a majority of only one vote (there was one abstention).

A number of Society executive members addressed the Upper Hutt City Council when it first embarked on a consultation process that led to the current bylaws governing the operation of brothels in the district. The Society strongly supported Mayor Wayne Guppy JP and his councillors who worked towards restrictions being imposed to limit the operation of brothels within the CBD and residential areas. [Read more…]