Session 6: Rethinking Sex Law and Responses to Sexual Violence

1st Global Conference

Monday 4th May 2009 – Thursday 7th May 2009
Budapest, Hungary

American Sex Tort Law
Deana Pollard Sacks
Department of Law, Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas

Americans’ sexual norms have changed considerably over the past century, particularly over the past few decades.  Contemporary American sexual norms are a threat to America’s economic, cultural, and physical wellbeing. America has the highest sexual disease transmission rate in the industrialized world, a rate estimated to be 50 to 100 times that of other industrialized countries. The estimated direct health care costs are $16 Billion per year, and growing.  The emotional injury associated with sexual misconduct is impossible to quantify, particularly when sexual disease is transmitted.

Reforming American Sex Tort Law proposes that fundamental changes to American sex tort law over the past century have been counterproductive to socially desirable sexual norms and public health, and probably played a role in creating the current sexual disease epidemic through the law’s expressive function. Reforming American Sex Tort Law suggests doctrinal changes to tort law to encourage honest and responsible sexual behavior that could lead to healthier sexual relations, both physically and emotionally. Specifically, Reforming American Sex Tort Law proposes: 1) shifting from a negligence-based liability paradigm in disease transmission cases to a strict liability analysis; and 2) analyzing sexual consent in accordance with civil battery jurisprudence.  These changes to sex tort law could deter misappropriation of others’ sexual prerogatives and sexual disease transmission through the law’s expressive, deterrent, and norm-regulating functions. The proposed sex tort law reform could be one part of a comprehensive effort to reverse the current trend of sexual disease proliferation in America.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

SWAT: Sex Workers Addressing Treatment – Innovative Support for Sex Workers: A Look Beyond Substance Abuse
Kathryn Jones
Macewan University, Canada

The sale of sex between consenting adults is legal in Canada. That said, the life of sex trade workers is fraught with adversity.  Like actors, sex trade workers play many roles and wear many masks to satisfy the needs and demands of their clients. They often feel that their only identity as a person is based on their work in the sex trade so insecurity, fear, and depression are problems which must be overcome if there is any hope for them to leave the industry. This is complicated often by drug and alcohol addiction. Most women working in the trade want to leave it but feel helpless and lack the skills and knowledge to do so.  Many sex workers are addicted to work in the sex industry and are unable to succeed in standard treatment programs as the unique issues pertaining to working in the sex industry are not openly addressed.

In the spring of 2008, the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton (PAAFE), Edmonton, Alberta, developed “Project Hope” -a multifaceted outreach program of services to past and present sex trade workers. A major component of Project Hope is an innovative counseling program “Sex Worker’s Addressing Treatment” (SWAT). The first of its kind, this novel program based on an addictions model, has been developed specifically for sex workers by sex workers.  SWAT has been carefully customized to speak to the issues that sex workers have identified as essential to their transitions and growth.

This presentation will provide a comprehensive review of the innovative SWAT program. The intent of the presentation is to increase awareness regarding the facilitators and barriers to successful transition out of the sex trade and share best practices regarding improved access to services and support for women involved in survival sex work.

Download Conference Paper (pdf)

An Investigation of the Prevalence of Client-Perpetrated Sexual Violence against Male Sex Workers in the Commercial Male Sex Industry
Joanna Jamel, Ray Bull & Lorraine Sheridan
University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

This paper examines the prevalence of the rape of male sex workers by their male clients predominantly focused within the commercial male sex industry in London. Male sex workers in the UK are a heavily under-researched population and the research which has been conducted is predominantly epidemiological. The approach taken by this paper is to take an action research approach by (i) identifying whether there is a similar problem of client-perpetrated sexual violence against male sex workers as reported by their female counterparts, and (ii) if this was found then recommendations by male sex workers themselves regarding gaps in services provisions would be invited and fed back to the relevant service providers.  The focus was on male escorts working from off-street locations (facilitated by the use of mobile telephones and more recently the Internet). Male escorts were contacted through a number of means, such as via outreach websites and organisations and magazines (e.g. the Gay Times). Male escorts either completed web-based questionnaires or were interviewed face-to-face or over the telephone. As this was a hard-to-reach sexual community, the resultant sample was small but where feasible an adapted form of grounded theory (see Braun & Clark, 1996) was employed.   The findings of this research suggest that client-perpetrated sexual violence against male sex workers is quite a rare phenomenon which is in stark contrast to the prevalence found within sectors of the female sex work industry. It was also noteworthy that the explanation suggested by the male escorts was that (i) it was due to the fact that their male clients were gay and thus non-confrontational or that (ii) their married clients would not wish to attract attention to their clandestine lifestyle.