Prostitution

This is a poster I created this weekend for my crim class. I have to say that I purposefully chose to highlight the prostitution part of this case, to scream out how the justice system saw this woman. Not as the mother of two she left behind or as a woman from the Sakimay Reserve near Regina, Saskatchewan where she was murdered, or even as a woman, but rather as a prostitute. The application of justice against her killers spared them a longer prison sentence, and a harsher stigma against this crime against "society" . The judicial process her murder at the hands of two white boys, involved the judge pointing out the jury, to "remember she was a prostitute" when deciding the issue surrounding the conviction between Murder or manslaughter.

This particular picture has always haunted me. I see a very beautiful woman who, in the course of her life, found prostitution.

Arguements galore surround how to solve this society ill, however, what I do not see are answers surrounding what woman have for alternatives.

Aboriginal woman in paritucular have a dual oppression, in that, the intergenerational effects of residential schools in Canada, have essentially crippled the reserve communities which many of these woman are from, and their position within that society. The family breakdown in itself is one of the reasons why, Aboriginal woman, find prostitution. Leaving this community, they would find further oppression within a society which does not afford her the same opportunities other woman have within that society. (can we say that society created this position that many Aboriginal women find themselves in, only to find that society neither cares nor assumes any guilt because of it).

This case involving Pamela George screamed out the injustices, not only within a cultural sense, but in a judicial sense, where her death, received in the course of her activities involving her "profession" of prostitition, do not afford her the same degree of justice against her killer(s).

I have found that this particular section of the Canadian Criminal Code, section 231.(5)(b), where murder in the course of committing another crime involving aggravated sexual assault or kidnapping, as what happened to Miss. George, would constitute a second degree murder charge.

Instead, and this is where the contradiction lies between enforcing this second degree murder charge against a killer(s) of a prostitute, that being the issue of consent.

The fact that consent is "assumed" with sexual interaction between a prostitute and a "client" should not afford that "client" the right to kill without receiving the same sanctions against killing a woman (or man), who does not give consent to sex.

In the case, R. v. Brown, it clearly states over a lengthy decision, that consent to sexual assault involving violence is no defence. There does not appear any clear reason in the Miss. George case why manslaughter and not second degree murder was decided. I have come to conclude that this particular section, when taking in the "procurring" laws against prostitution for sex, that the laws do not apply for second degree murder (and a longer prison term) in the course of activities involving prostitutes when death occurs. Rather, this issue of consent appears to override this particular section.

It seems to me, that as a prostitute, by challenging this profession and all it carries, you must go into it knowing that death may occur. And when it does, the death of one it's "workers" would be considered by the courts, as the ultimate cost of doing business, and a mitigating factor as to how a woman came to put herself in a position that she may be killed, therefore, not enforceable by law against the killer to the degree that section 231.(5)(b) should otherwise be metted out.