The US Navy avoids a black eye. Read more at Yahoo News…

US sailor cleared of assaulting Sydney prostitute

A U.S. Navy serviceman was found not guilty Monday of sexually assaulting a prostitute at a brothel while on shore leave in Australia’s biggest city.

A New South Wales District Court jury cleared the Petty Officer of a charge of sexual intercourse without consent, with the aggravating factor of causing the woman actual bodily harm. The charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

The man was one of 3,000 Marines and Navy personnel on shore leave in Sydney after the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu and guided missile destroyer USS Halsey arrived in the port in October, 2008.

The woman told the court she had protected, consensual sex with the sailor at the brothel where she worked, but said he became aggressive when she told him his time was up and forced her to have unprotected sex. The jury was shown police photographs of scratches on the woman.

The man denied forcing the woman to have sex, but admitted in court that he used a “lock down maneuver” to pin her to the bed when she said she wanted to stop. He told the court he backed off when she kicked him, though he said he muffled her mouth with his hand when she began to scream after he demanded his money back.

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.

I’ve said this for over a decade, now. Making legal prostitution an option won’t undermine most prostitution operations. Legality means regulations, rules, standards, taxes, etc.

Many working girls don’t want to deal with it, and most clients don’t want to deal with it. It’s not a difficult concept, but most advocates for legalization prefer to insist that denial is a river in Egypt.

Read more at The News-Mail…

Only 10% of Queensland prostitution legal

TEN years after brothels became legal in Queensland, 90 per cent of prostitution in the state occurs outside the law, university research shows.

The University of Queensland’s Human Trafficking Working Group said Queensland’s attempts to regulate prostitution have clearly failed.

Associate professor Andreas Schloenhardt (Schloenhardt) said current legislation was very restricted.

It is limited to legal brothels and to services offered by sole operators outside public spaces.

“This accounts for only 10 per cent of Queensland’s prostitution industry and does not include escort agencies, street prostitution or unlicensed brothels,” Prof Schloenhardt said.

“These activities, some 90 per cent of the prostitution industry, remain either unregulated or illegal.”

He said legalising some parts of the industry had not eliminated the demand for illegal sex services.

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.

Not in our neighborhood!  Read more at The Herald Sun…

Sex bars banned near family homes in Elsternwick
by Keith Moor

ECSTATIC residents have won separate victories over a strip club businessman and a banned brothel owner.

They have just stopped John Trimble and Graham Harvey from opening neighbouring sex-related bars near family homes in Elsternwick.

Sex industry magnate Mr Trimble changed his name from Trimbole and Harvey was banned from operating brothels in Victoria after being convicted of child prostitution offences.

Mr Trimble, 62, is the nephew of the late Italian organised crime czar Robert Trimbole, who was one of Australia’s biggest marijuana and heroin dealers during the 1970s and ’80s.

Mr Trimble had applied for a liquor licence for the building next door to the Daily Planet brothel in Horne St, Elsternwick.

He is the chief executive of Planet Platinum, which owns the $5 million Daily Planet site and runs the Showgirls Bar 20 table-top dancing club in King St, Melbourne.

A detailed study into the sex industry is coming, courtesy of our friend Down Under. Read the whole article at The Northern Star…

New study to examine sex industry
by Miles Godfrey

Wanted: Men who pay for sex – kinky fetishes optional.

In an Australian first, men who visit prostitutes in NSW are being sought for a major study of the sex industry.

University of NSW criminologist Philip Birch hopes to destroy some of the myths surrounding prostitution and learn more about the motives of men who pay women for sex.

He is also keen to question women who accept payment from men.

“I don’t want to pre-empt the results, but I firmly believe it will turn out that the men who visit prostitutes are very ordinary, decent hard-working people,” Mr Birch told AAP.

He hopes to quiz men about some of their most intimate desires.

“We want people to be honest with us about their motivation and learn about some of the contexts and settings,” Mr Birch continued.

Read more at The Sydney Morning Herald…

Prostitute’s bite mark was sex play not death struggle, court told

A bite mark on the arm of a murdered Sydney prostitute that matches the dental records of a commercial diver might have been inflicted during intercourse, his lawyer says.

But prosecutors argue Rachael Campbell was bitten as the pair struggled over the knife that killed her, the NSW Supreme Court has been told.

The 29-year-old sex worker’s body was found with multiple stab wounds in the grounds of St Joseph’s Church at Rosebery on November 7, 1998.

Richard Edward Dorrough, 32, was extradicted from Perth to Sydney in January this year after DNA evidence linked him to the death.

Two used condoms, a vaginal swab, DNA on the sheet Ms Campbell’s body was wrapped in and teeth marks matching Dorrough’s dental records placed him at the scene.

As his bail application was heard in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday, barrister Ertunc Ozen said his client had hired the prostitute for sex, but denies he had anything to do with her death.

“Obviously [the DNA] proves not only some contact with the deceased, but contact of a very specific nature – sexual contact,” Mr Ozen told the court.

“It would not of itself tend to suggest … that the applicant must have been the one to murder this woman.”

The bite mark on her arm – if it was proved to belong to Dorrough – could be explained by sex play, he said.

“There are a number of ways in which a bite mark could be occasioned which have nothing to do with getting a knife,” he said.

Read the entire interesting look at a young call girl’s personal odyssey at The West…

Perth philosophy student tells of life as sex worker
10th July 2009, 6:00 WST

Sitting in a Perth café dressed in a demure suit and with a cappuccino in front of her, Sara appears no different from any other office worker.

Well educated and passionate about human rights, the 29-year-old works for a health advocacy group while studying philosophy at university and is in a serious relationship.

But in a different setting she becomes Erin – an outgoing, confident sex worker who feels completely at home in stilettos and lingerie who offers a “girlfriend” service for up to $250 an hour from an anonymous hotel room.

As debate over legalising or decriminalising prostitution reignites in the wake of the Government’s moves to ban sex workers outside designated zones, Sara said it was important not to treat all prostitutes as “victims” and to look at the real issues affecting their profession.

In WA, prostitution is legal but living off its earnings is illegal and Attorney-General Christian Porter is working towards delivering the Government’s election promise after dumping the former Labor government’s plans to regulate 38 existing brothels.

Sara, not her real name, said while her friends and family were supportive of her chosen profession, the stigma and confusing quagmire of legislation surrounding the industry meant many sex workers felt isolated and were unable to access basic rights covering safe workplace practices or professional support.

She said decriminalisation was the first step in empowering sex workers in bad situations to seek help.

“We are so busy defending justifying our existence that the real issues such as health and safety, industrial rights or inclusion under anti-discrimination legislation cannot be addressed,” she said.