Western Australia takes a big step. Read the whole article at The Sydney Morning Herald…

Western Australia to legalise prostitution

Western Australia is set to legalise prostitution in a bid to improve health standards and keep brothels out of residential areas.

Hundreds of suburban brothels are expected to close when WA Attorney-General Christian Porter ends decades of “turning a blind eye” and starts regulating the sex industry next year.

Prostitution is illegal in WA but police rarely lay charges unless they are related to underage sex or unsafe practices.

Under the new legislation, brothels will be licensed and confined to designated commercial and industrial areas, and police will be given powers to investigate and forcibly close those which fail to comply.

Sex businesses will need to follow health and safety standards to obtain and maintain their licences.

Individual sex workers will need to register with a central agency and will undergo compulsory health and blood checks.

They may also be required to carry ID cards.

Mr Porter said suburban operators would be given a grace period from next year to either close or move to a licensed area.

Applications for brothels would first be put to local councils and then assessed by state regulators.

Mr Porter said the new regulations would limit problems in non-residential areas.

WA brothel madams welcomed the move over the weekend but feared the bid to register individual prostitutes would drive some underground.

The working girls descending on South Africa for some World Cup antics are finding things tough.

Read more at The Star…

No ‘boom boom’ for Joburg’s sex workers
By Thabiso Thakali and Candice Bailey

There’s just no “boom boom” in Joburg’s sex industry. Sex workers hoping to turn a quick buck when thousands of horny soccer fans descended on the city for the World Cup say they have been disappointed.

And while some upmarket strip clubs say business has been good, others have been forced to cancel shows.

Even metered taxi drivers delivering girls to tourists say business has died down.

In the months leading up to the World Cup, there was mounting expectation that prostitution would peak.

Reports suggested that up to 40,000 sex workers would be brought into the country to satisfy the demand for sex.

But last year, during the Confederations Cup, prostitution suffered a hammer blow when a theft from the Egyptian team’s hotel room at the Protea Wanderers in Illovo was blamed on prostitutes.

Initial reports suggested that there had been prostitutes in the players’ room, but the police later ruled this out.

Nevertheless, since then, hotels have begun clamping down on sex workers.

On the streets this week, the winter chill and increased police visibility meant fewer sex workers on the strip.

Visits during peak cruising hours, around 9pm, to the traditional red-light areas of Oxford Street, Illovo and Sandton found fewer than 10 sex workers roaming around in skimpy skirts.

Those who had braved the low temperatures to lure clients dived into bushes whenever the police patrolled.

One sex worker, in her seventh year on the streets, said the tourists were “boring”.

A sobering opinion piece offering data about the world’s oldest profession. The author, Christine Bott Schmuker, is a psychotherapist and coordinator of the Adult Survivors of Childhood Trauma Program with Center for Child & Family Services.

Read the complete essay at The Virginia Gazette…

ESSAY: Prostitution victims
By Christine Bott

Over the last few weeks the subject of prostitution has been front and center on the Williamsburg stage. The High Street apartment arrest has illuminated the underbelly of what many call the world’s oldest profession.

Most people would not be surprised to find prostitution sprinkled within Richmond, Norfolk, Newport News or Hampton. But Williamsburg? It certainly does not seem to fit Williamsburg’s quaint, historically charmed persona. Or does it?

The Gazette article stated how much the alleged High Street prostitute charges, that she was not willing to surrender her list of male clientele to police, and that neighbors report males combing through the apartment complex at differing times of day.

Her name was printed on the front page of the paper twice in two weeks. Will the paper provide comparable transparency to the male client list that police will find on her computer?

While I in no way condone her behavior, I do want to illuminate the underreported, misunderstood and tragic other side of the debate.

Here are the facts (Farley, M., 2004, Prostitution, Trafficking, & Traumatic Stress):

• Nine out of 10 prostitutes were sexually assaulted as children.
• Nine out of 10 will be beaten physically during encounters with their men clients.
• Two out of 10 will be tortured during such encounters.
• One in 10 will die prostituting within their first three years.
• Eight out of 10 are teenage runaways.
• Nine out of 10 had no father or father-figure living at home.
• Eight out of 10 make contact with men online first.
• Eight out of 10 use drugs and alcohol.

This is less about prostitution and more about untreated childhood sexual trauma.

There is hope. I run a program at the Center for Child & Family Services called the Adult Survivors Program.

The heat is on in Pasco! Read more at The Pasco Tribune…

Prostitution sting in Pasco nets 11 arrests

An undercover operation run by the New Port Richey Police Department and the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office netted 11 prostitution arrests Friday.

The sting, which ran from noon to 8 p.m., targeted people soliciting prostitution on the west side of Pasco County, according to a news release.

All were charged with solicitation of prostitution.

An ‘anonymous tip’ leads police to an alleged working girl trying to get by. Read more at The Virginia Gazette…

Charge filed in prostitution case
By Amanda Kerr

Police have filed an arrest warrant against the 27-year-old woman implicated last week in a months-long prostitution investigation at a High Street apartment.

The woman has been charged with one misdemeanor count of prostitution. Police have not yet served the warrant on the woman, who has agreed to turn herself in to police on Saturday. She is expected to be released on a summons.

Police began investigating possible prostitution activities at her apartment in the Sterling Manor apartment complex in February after receiving an anonymous tip. According to a search warrant, the woman, during an interview with police last month, admitted to engaging in prostitution activities at her home.

All sorts of fun going on at a local Asian Spa. Read more at GoErie.com…

2 charged with prostitution at Tokyo Spa near Meadville
By TIM HAHN

Two people were arrested, and police confiscated items from a Vernon Township business.

Two employees were charged with prostitution when Pennsylvania State Police vice officers were asked to check out the business.

Township officials now plan to take a closer look at the Tokyo Spa in the wake of Wednesday’s police activity at the nearly year-old business, which is at the busy intersection of Routes 19, 98 and 322.

Two employees of the business remained in the Crawford County Correctional Facility on Thursday on third-degree misdemeanor counts of prostitution and related offenses.

Both were arraigned before Vernon Township District Judge Michael Rossi at 5:15 p.m. Wednesday, hours after state police allege that the women had illegal sexual contact with two undercover troopers.

The arrests came three months into an investigation that was launched in March, when Vernon Township police contacted the state police Troop E vice unit about suspected prostitution activity, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed with a search warrant that police obtained for the business on Wednesday.

Vernon Police Chief Randy Detzel said Thursday that township Manager David Stone had received numerous complaints about the Tokyo Spa from neighboring businesses. They included complaints of used condoms in their parking lots, police said.

Crossing the line in Idaho.   Read the whole article at The Coeur d’Alene Press…

Billboards outrage parents
Some say message crosses morality line
By BRIAN WALKER

Pitted faces and rotted teeth are one thing.

But the latest billboard ads in the Idaho Meth Project’s drive to curb teen use of the drug cross the lines of morality and should be taken down, say some area parents outraged over the messages.

One controversial ad that went up this week and seen from northbound Spokane Street between the Spokane River and Interstate 90 shows a boyfriend and girlfriend in their teens stating, “My girlfriend will do anything for me … so I made her sell her body.”

“I have two children who can read and the other is learning and now I have to explain to my young, innocent children what selling your body means,” said Tim Gardner, a Post Falls parent who lives south of the river. “I am tired of these disturbing images being forced upon my family and I.”

Gardner said he realizes meth is a serious issue and believes it needs to be stopped even if it takes graphic ads, “but the latest to be erected is an offense against public morality.”

…

Megan Ronk, executive director of the meth project supported by first lady Lori Otter, said the ads over the past two years showing the bodily effects meth can cause have run their course and the latest wave takes the campaign to the next level of educating how the drug leads to risky behavior.

Now, that’s what I call ‘day care!’ Read more at The Naperville Sun…

Day-care operator faces prostitution charge
Woman, two others used Internet, north-side hotels, police say

By SUSAN FRICK CARLMAN, BILL BIRD AND JOSH LARSEN

Officials of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services on Friday initiated action to shutter a Naperville day-care home operated by a woman now facing trial for prostitution.

“We are in the process of shutting down this day-care home,” DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe said of the ABC & TLC Home Daycare business at 61 Bunting Lane in central Naperville.

The home’s operator has a state license that is in effect through Sept. 22, 2012, but “she will not be allowed to operate (the business) while the criminal case is pending,” Marlowe said.

“A conviction for prostitution would serve as a bar to holding a day-care license,” Marlowe said. Should the woman be found guilty of that charge, it would be “impossible for her to get a license,” he said.

Marlowe added the home will be formally closed early next week. It does not operate on weekends.

The 42-year-old woman and two other women were arrested Thursday at hotels on Naperville’s north side as part of an ongoing anti-vice effort by Naperville police.

Marlowe said that since July 5, 2006, the woman has had a state license to operate a day-care home, which differs from a day-care center based on the number of children for which each business provides care. The business “is licensed to care for a maximum of seven children,” Marlowe said.

…

Reached at her home Friday morning, the woman declined to discuss the arrests. A handwritten sign on her front door read, “Daycare is closed. Family emergency,” and provided the telephone number of an employee. The woman reached at that phone number said she had no information about the incident.

Police Cmdr, Mike Anders said Friday investigators “have not been at (Thoren’s) house at all as part of this investigation. We have nothing to indicate any children were placed in any harm.”

In a prepared statement, police Sgt. John McAnally related Thursday how members of the department’s Special Operations Group “conducted an investigation into subjects engaging in acts of prostitution through various Internet sites at hotels and motels on Naperville’s far north side.” Police have conducted similar investigations in recent months that have ended in other arrests.

The women “posted various services on the Internet and agreed to meet their customers at various hotels and perform sexual acts in exchange for money.” They were met in the hotels by police officers working undercover, he said.

The statement did not identify the hotels where the women were arrested. McAnally in the past has declined to name them because their owners and employees have cooperated in the police investigations.

Now, that’s what I call ‘day care!’ Read more at The Naperville Sun…

Day-care operator faces prostitution charge
Woman, two others used Internet, north-side hotels, police say

By SUSAN FRICK CARLMAN, BILL BIRD AND JOSH LARSEN

Officials of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services on Friday initiated action to shutter a Naperville day-care home operated by a woman now facing trial for prostitution.

“We are in the process of shutting down this day-care home,” DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe said of the ABC & TLC Home Daycare business at 61 Bunting Lane in central Naperville.

The home’s operator has a state license that is in effect through Sept. 22, 2012, but “she will not be allowed to operate (the business) while the criminal case is pending,” Marlowe said.

“A conviction for prostitution would serve as a bar to holding a day-care license,” Marlowe said. Should the woman be found guilty of that charge, it would be “impossible for her to get a license,” he said.

Marlowe added the home will be formally closed early next week. It does not operate on weekends.

The 42-year-old woman and two other women were arrested Thursday at hotels on Naperville’s north side as part of an ongoing anti-vice effort by Naperville police.

Marlowe said that since July 5, 2006, the woman has had a state license to operate a day-care home, which differs from a day-care center based on the number of children for which each business provides care. The business “is licensed to care for a maximum of seven children,” Marlowe said.

…

Reached at her home Friday morning, the woman declined to discuss the arrests. A handwritten sign on her front door read, “Daycare is closed. Family emergency,” and provided the telephone number of an employee. The woman reached at that phone number said she had no information about the incident.

Police Cmdr, Mike Anders said Friday investigators “have not been at (Thoren’s) house at all as part of this investigation. We have nothing to indicate any children were placed in any harm.”

In a prepared statement, police Sgt. John McAnally related Thursday how members of the department’s Special Operations Group “conducted an investigation into subjects engaging in acts of prostitution through various Internet sites at hotels and motels on Naperville’s far north side.” Police have conducted similar investigations in recent months that have ended in other arrests.

The women “posted various services on the Internet and agreed to meet their customers at various hotels and perform sexual acts in exchange for money.” They were met in the hotels by police officers working undercover, he said.

The statement did not identify the hotels where the women were arrested. McAnally in the past has declined to name them because their owners and employees have cooperated in the police investigations.

Another nominee for ‘Mother of the Year. Read more at The Intelligencer…

Mother Charged For Sex With Girl
Woman accused of prostituting daughter

A 46-year-old mother has been charged with prostituting her 14-year-old daughter, said Wells Township Police Capt. Sean Norman.

Norman said police became aware that a 21-year-old man had posted items on the Internet saying he loved the girl.

When officers interviewed the man, he admitted to having sex with the girl and that the mother had demanded cash for the sexual relations, Norman said.

Norman said the man was living at the Rayland home with the mother and daughter.

The mother admitted to police it wasn’t the first time she had sold her daughter for sex, Norman said.

The mother told police she caught her 42-year-old boyfriend about four years ago having sex with her daughter, who was then 10-years old, Norman said. The mother said she allowed the sex to continue in exchange for crack cocaine, he said.

“She allowed it to happen and never reported it,” Norman said.

Norman noted there is a third man who said he gave the mother crack cocaine in exchange for sex with the daughter.

The mother’s name is not being printed to protect the child’s identity.

The woman has been charged with compelling prostitution of a minor and complicity to unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.