SPCS

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

Sex trade links to Christchurch youth charity [Te Poaka Tipua Charitable Trust]

by Leave a Comment

An investigation has exposed links between the sex industry and a charitable trust apparently set up to help vulnerable youth.

It also reveals the involvement of a former political figure convicted for giving cash and cigarettes to a teenage boy in exchange for sex.

Christchurch-based Te Poaka Tipua Charitable Trust, which operates out of an old office block on Buckleys Rd, Linwood, was incorporated in September.

Its paperwork shows it was established to help poverty-stricken youths, particularly those in the eastern suburbs.

* Former Mana Party organiser Nicholas Kayne Nitro, 36, also known as Nikora, helped establish Te Poaka Tipua Charitable Trust. In 2012, Nitro was convicted of receiving commercial sexual services from a 16-year-old boy. The age limit is 18 under the Prostitution Reform Act.

* Te Poaka Tipua chairperson Veronica Rongomairatahi Stuart, 55, has convictions for fraud and previously operated a male sex club called The Closet with Nitro at a site on Ferry Rd. The pair were both directors of a company called Closet Holdings.

* A website continues to advertise a male sex club [“Mens Cruise Club”] called The Backroom at Te Poaka Tipua’s Buckleys Rd headquarters.

* Former sex workers frequent the site.

After learning details of the investigation, Christchurch East MP Poto Williams called on community leaders to “look seriously at what alternatives we can put in place”.

“If what you’re saying proves to be true, it’s extraordinarily concerning for our young people,” Williams said.

“It is not . . . healthy in the long term for . . people with significant and quite disturbing histories like that to be setting up services for young people. Now that it’s on my radar, I’m certainly going to be making some inquiries.”

Christchurch City councillor Paul Lonsdale said he was “horrified” to learn about the backgrounds of those involved with Te Poaka Tipua.

“There’s no question it’s a recipe for disaster,” he said.

For full story see: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/65621090/sex-trade-links-to-christchurch-youth-charity

Ex-prostitutes call for law change saying decriminalisation of industry has failed them

by Leave a Comment

Ex-prostitutes call for law change.

Former prostitutes and their advocates are calling for clients of sex workers to be prosecuted, saying the decriminalisation of the industry has failed them.

Freedom from Sexual Exploitation director Elizabeth Subritzky told Parliament’s justice and electoral committee the only solution to the damage that prostitution caused, and the violence it created, was to prosecute buyers of sexual services through a reform of prostitution laws. [Read more…]

Parents [in Manukau City – Auckland] ‘put teens into sex work’

by Leave a Comment

Just as the Society (SPCS) predicted when it presented its written and oral submissions to the Justice and Electoral Seclect Committee considering the Prostitution Reform Bill back in 2001-2003; the decriminalisation of prostitution has indeed led to a growth in under- age girls working as prostitutes on city streets, in some cases even supported by their parents acting as pimps. With the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act (PRA), which the Society so vigorously and publicly opposed at the time, prostitution (including pimping, living off the earnings of prostitution and street soliciting for sex) in effect became legal.

 As the New Zealand Herald reported today, girls as young as 13 are regularly working as prostitutes, supported in some cases by their parent(s), to pay for drug habits in Manukau City. Soliciting by under-age girls has also been documented in other New Zealand cities.

To address this problem, exacerbated by the passing of the PRA, the Manukau City (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill is being considered by politicians and Councillors.

See Parents ‘put teens into sex work’. By Andrew Koubaridis.

“Teenagers in South Auckland are being sent to work as prostitutes by their parents to pay for drugs, says an Auckland Council member…”

 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10691979

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

by Leave a Comment

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…]