Read more at The Courier-Mail…

Illegal prostitution racket cracked

AN illegal prostitution racket on the Gold Coast has been cracked in a series of police raids, resulting in 16 people being charged.

Police carried out the raids over four days, targeting organised illegal prostitution activities operating under the guise of legal massage services.

Five search warrants were executed at business and residential premises located in Broadbeach, Surfers Paradise, Mermaid Beach and Clear Island Waters.

Police seized cash and property totalling $20,990, and charged 16 people on 38 prostitution-related offences.

Read more at The Sydney-Morning Herald…

Police charge 10 after brothel raids

Ten people have been charged after police raided a number of illegal brothels in Brisbane, seizing cash and mobile phones.

A police spokesman said the raids were carried out on Wednesday and Thursday in northern and southern suburbs of the city, as part of two operations codenamed Hotel Grail and Hotel Radical.

The operations targeted illegal prostitution organised under the guise of sole independent operators and escort services.

The 10 people were charged with 22 offences including prostitution, proceeds of crime and money laundering offences.

Four women, aged between 23 and 32, and six men, aged between 22 and 40, will appear in court over the coming weeks.

Police also seized just over $3,000 in cash, documents and mobile phones.

Detective Acting Superintendent Darryl Charleson said the two networks targeted by the raids were well organised.

I like this guy’s style – arguing in court that a prostitute who had his baby was in breech of some kind of implied contract.  Too bad the Judge didn’t agree.  Read more about this amazing story in The Daily Telegraph…

Father ordered to pay for child by prostitute
By Fiona Hudson

A MAN who fathered a baby with a prostitute has taken legal action to stop the woman seeking child support payments from him for the child’s upbringing.

The married man argues the child is potentially a breach of the Trade Practices Act as there was an implied term of “contract” between clients and sex workers that women would take measures to avoid pregnancy.

The man – who can only be referred to by the pseudonym “Mr Lilley” – told Federal Magistrate Grant Riethmuller he shouldn’t have to pay for the inadvertent offspring given the circumstances of the conception.

The man told the court, sitting in Melbourne, he’d had “a consumer transaction” with the child’s mother.

Mr Riethmuller heard Mr Lilley initially contributed an amount toward the infant’s upkeep under an informal arrangement with the prostitute.

The matter spilled into court in June after he lost his $140,000-a-year job and fell behind in the payments.

Read the whole story at The Courier Mail…

Prostitution laws fail to rein in illegal sex trade
by Margaret Wenham and Michael Madigan

ILLEGAL brothels and sex worker rings are running rampant outside Queensland’s prostitution regulatory regime which has been in force for 10 years.

According to new research by the University of Queensland’s Human Trafficking Working Group, 90 per cent of the state’s prostitution industry is being effectively regulated by the 1999 Prostitution Act.

Joint author of the research paper, Dr Andreas Schloenhardt, said yesterday that the decade-old law had produced a “highly and well controlled” system monitoring Queensland’s 25 legal brothels.

But the working group’s study had found most prostitution functioned outside that system in the form of sole operators or pooled escort services that were illegal.

Dr Schloenhardt, who will be presenting his “Happy Birthday Brothels” paper at a public lecture at UQ on September 21, said few sex workers would operate alone.

“Most of them work through agencies where you have a person taking the calls and directing workers to jobs,” he said.

Other areas of concern were street prostitution, sex services obtained through strip and exotic dancing clubs and the trafficking of women.

Read the whole story at The Courier Mail…

Brisbane strip clubs caught breaking adult entertainment laws
by Patrick Lion

STRIP clubs are being caught breaking adult entertainment laws against a backdrop of sexual assaults on dancers and prostitution claims.

The Courier-Mail can reveal venues are being regularly busted for failing to supervise lap dances, failing to produce the permits allowing the nude entertainment and serving minors on premises.

But tougher measures are being called for after clubs mostly escaped with little more than a warning letter or minimum fines for more serious offences.

The cases are revealed in Liquor Licensing reports obtained under Freedom of Information laws and expose the seedy side of Queensland the Bligh Government rarely talks about.

The incidents at clubs from Cairns to the Gold Coast come two decades after the Fitzgerald Inquiry exposed the thriving illegal practices of brothels and strip clubs centred around Fortitude Valley.

Brisbane CBD club Showgirls faces losing its permit after a raft of incidents, including dancers getting too close to patrons and the alleged rape of a dancer in a VIP room during a performance.

An investigation at The Club of Mount Isa Hotel last April resulted in about $6000 in fines from 16 breaches after dancers were caught brazenly offering sex, using drugs and dodging supervision. “This is the best time as no controllers are out the back to look so anything goes, even maybe full sex,” a Polish dancer called Maria told an inspector.

But industry group EROS Australia admits the cases are likely to be only the tip of the iceberg as Liquor Licensing inspected the 26 venues holding permits only once every seven weeks last year, down from five weeks previously.

Treasurer Andrew Fraser yesterday defended his department’s enforcement, saying many “cowboy outfits” had been removed in recent years.

Mr Fraser said more serious cases were referred to police. “(But we) can only act on incidents that have been reported or uncovered during inspections conducted by either officers or the police,” he said.

“An inspection rate of one visit every seven weeks represents significant enforcement action.”