Sex for sale: The long shadow of crime, power and violence that hangs over women

At the height of his political battle on the Egrant affair in May 2017, just a month away from re-election, Joseph Muscat announced his new legislature would regulate prostitution in a bid to fight sex trafficking. Always armed with his deceptive power of self-awareness, Muscat suggested his bold proposal “could cost [him]” at the polls (he had unassailable trust ratings). But early in the day, women’s groups seemed in agreement that legalising prostitution would increase trafficking.

That position has changed little. Most women’s rights groups and similar advocates for vulnerable people do not want sex buyers to be decriminalised, and this week, a large coalition of NGOs accused a prostitution reform technical committee of being without experts in the field they were consulting on.

The coalition of grassroots women’s organisations, experts who have worked with people in prostitution, as well as former President of the Republic Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, said they had been completely disregarded. The flashpoint were comments by equality secretary Rosianne Cutajar, who said Cabinet will be asked to consider a decriminalisation of sex buying, keeping brothels and pimping illegal, with harsher laws to stop them. The Labour administration’s diffidence of the ‘Nordic mode’ – which punishes buyers of sexual services – remained intact, with Cutajar saying it was at odds with the decriminalisation of sex work.

But the coalition was clear that the proposal assumes that prostitutes have the agency to choose when the reality is that they are either coerced or enslaved by pimps. “Sex trafficking is indivisible from prostitution, and the two can never be tackled separately… Legalising prostitution will further encourage the exploitation and abuse towards individuals caught up in prostitution whilst facilitating the control that pimps, traffickers, and johns will have on those prostituted.”

A reality of violent dependence

But it was Malta’s equality commission, the NCPE, that provided the most concise and emphatic analysis of the problem at hand: the patriarchal control of the prostitution industry.

“Prostitution is a form of exploitation rife with physical and psychological violence. It is also, primarily, an exercise in power and control of men over women, since the absolute majority of prostitutes are women, while the absolute majority of pimps and clients are men,” the NCPE said this week.

“While prostitutes should not be punished for suffering exploitation, sex-buyers should be penalised. This disrupts the exploitative sex market and sends a strong message in favour of gender equality.”

Clearly the problem at hand is the enormous gulf between an industry as it stands today with women under the control of criminals, whose lives and even those of their families are held ransom by violent men; and the impression that prostitutes can – by the stroke of the legislator’s pen – enter into a world of legality, breaking their chains of violent dependence to become “self-employed” sex workers.

And the leap from a world of violence and dependence, to one where prostitutes are imbued with full autonomy and agency to deliver a sex ‘service’, is huge one indeed.

“The discussion surrounding prostitution reform must focus on the behaviour of clients, mostly men, and the existing patriarchal structures of inequality that lead many men to objectify women and buy their bodies,” Equality Commissioner René Laiviera said this week.

“The prostitution reform should embrace efforts to promote gender equality in society and fight gender stereotypes, as well as devise a strategy for a crackdown on pimps and traffickers.”

As things stand, the tide is not in favour of the liberalisation plans started under the former Muscat administration.

The equality commission insists sex-buyers should be penalised. If they won’t be, the normalisation of demand will only increase the supply of prostitutes and women trafficked to Malta. It says that, like Sweden when it criminalised the purchase of sexual services, this would shrink the sex industry and reduce human trafficking.  “Less demand, less supply,” Laiviera said.

The Malta Women’s Lobby, with whom Laiviera was once an activist prior to her appointment, also took aim at the technical committee’s apparent lack of experts and professionals working along prostituted and trafficked individuals. 

Dr Marie Therese Cuschieri said any decriminalisation of prostitution would send out a clear message that women and girls are viewed as commodities. “If legalisation of prostitution occurs, the government would be giving the green light to those who abuse, exploit, and control prostituted individuals. The idea that ‘consent’ exists amongst adult individuals is false, as it is well known that individuals caught in prostitution are generally forced or trapped by this horrendous exploitative industry.”

Malta’s anti-trafficking problem

It is Malta’s own issues with rule-of-law matters and criminal prosecution that is troubling many of the NGOs and experts who have come out in force against premature plans to decriminalise prostitution.

By decriminalising sex work and the buyer, there is no guarantee that this legitimised space of prostitution can extricate women who already lack agency, from their dependence on a pimp.

Or in the case of trafficked women, from a transnational criminal gang with influence both in Malta and in her country of origin, where threats to her family might take place.

“Prostitution and sex trafficking operate in parallel, and as such they should never be separated, but tackled collectively. Unless appropriate laws are in place, Malta risks in becoming a hub for sex tourism and trafficking,” Cuschieri said.

The Malta Women’s Lobby fears that when prostitution is turned into a job, a legal front is opened for the men who control the prostitutes.

An analogy – even though it does not deal with humans turned into commodities – can be found in Malta’s gaming industry. It is one of the most highly-regulated industries attracting big names of quality employers, but it has proven to be permeable to interests from the Sicilian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta and the Camorra. It takes time for the law to catch up with the work of organised criminality inside these industries, but until then, the proceeds of criminal activities are used to set up companies and finance remote gambling operations. The normalisation of gambling itself allows a legal outlet for criminals to channel funds. And some companies can employ corporate social responsibility initiatives to further obfuscate a murky image.

It is arguable that the criminalisation of gambling does not stop the existence of illegal gambling. Indeed it furthers it.

But with women stuck in a cycle of dependence and violence, the sanitisation of sex work could normalise prostitution without an equal effort to fight trafficking or slavery.

“Such a term assists in grooming cultural norms of prostitution, as it is not only sanitising the sex industry, but also promoting it,” Cuschieri said earlier in the week. “Within the ‘safe sex’ narrative… rape, child prostitution, sex trafficking, post-traumatic stress, and even murder, are rendered invisible to a society which is taught to turn a blind eye to the realities which are experienced by those (adults and children alike) who are caught up in prostitution.” 

A case in point are prostitutes who also support drug habits.

A study conducted 10 years ago by the psychologist Mariella Balzan Dimech and her colleagues, had described the dangers, difficulties and abuse drug addicts endure in prostitution. “In order to keep their habits, and in order to appease their dealers, who are often also the pimps, they prostitute themselves. As another studies, it shows that within this environment there is a greater risk of violence, abuse, low socio-economic status, lack of education and lack of skills to be a healthy part of society. And this is just one cluster of persons in prostitution.”

A Sherpa for women

The dangers of ushering in such prostitutes into a world of legality was further amplified by the anti-trafficking coalition of NGOs, who fear the dark side of tourism it would generate as normalised demand fuels supply.

A new raft of questions come into focus: Does prostitution get zoned in red-light or entertainment districts alone or is it allowed to thrive in residential neighbourhoods? Can it take place outside a permitted establishment? How will the State tackle the people who control prostitutes or take cuts of their income – pimps, property owners, and other criminal associates seeking to get a foothold in this legal avenue?

“Prostitution does not stand alone,” Balzan Dimech says. “Whilst it is a positive move to legalise prostitution with the aim of creating a safe and supportive environment for persons working within this sphere, one must understand the persons who choose, are coerced or feel they have no option but to become prostitutes.”

Indeed there is a missing link between the government’s desire to take prostitutes out of illegality: where are the women themselves who can shepherd prostitutes into a world of legality with the agency to take control of their own lives? Easier said than done. State-funded unions such as the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective (NZPC) are inexistent here to support sex workers’ rights and educates prostitutes about minimizing the risks of the job.

“You need to ensure realistic support,” Balzan Dimech says. “Persons who are involved in prostitution need to have a voice, and a platform to inform the lawmakers what they are experiencing, and what they really need. More often than not besides legalising prostitution, one needs to address the social, educational, mental and emotional needs of the prostitute and very often, their children.

“If a person is suffering from an addiction, mental illness, poverty, and other serious social and psychological issues he or she may not really be able to benefit from the support being suggested. Just like abused persons within a household or workplace endure many years of abuse so will prostitutes not know how to leave their ‘job’ should they wish to do so.”