A B.C. Supreme Court justice made crucial errors when he ruled an ex-call girl had no legal right to challenge existing prostitution laws, the provincial court of appeals heard Thursday.
Attorney Joseph Arvay argued plaintiff Sheri Kiselbach, representing Sex Workers United Against Violence, should be allowed to move forward in her challenge to strike three prostitution-related laws as survival sex workers suffered from extraordinary problems, such as addiction and mental illness, and could not bring legal action alone.
"To think that they could be a witness as easily as a plaintiff doesn't ring true," he said. "Sex workers expressed to Pivot advocacy and participation couldn't be done unless some degree of privacy and security is guaranteed."
Pivot Legal Society LLP collected 91 affidavits from women in the Downtown Eastside, who asked for anonymity, and told of unsafe and violent conditions.
In a December 2008 ruling Mr. Justice William Ehrcke reasoned Kiselbach could not stand for DTES sex workers before the courts because her past experiences were irrelevant.
He also rejected evidence of SWUAV members' inability to come forward out of fear of reprisal or being outted in their community.
Justice Ehrcke added if active sex workers were witnesses in Kiselbech's case they could also be plaintiffs in other legal actions, or that other prostitutes currently before the courts could launch a similar charter challenge in their defense.
Arvay argued prostitutes who worked indoors or in safer conditions could not accurately represent the experiences of DTES women.
The appeal continues on Friday. A decision from the three-member appellate court could be months away.
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Sketch
- Reporter
- Dharm Makwana currently serves as a web editor at The Province, British Columbia's best read daily newspaper. For more than four years he wrote on issues affecting the Lower Mainland for the province's third largest daily newspaper Vancouver 24 hours. Before arriving in Vancouver in January 2007, Dharm won the John Lott Scholarship for outstanding journalism at Centennial College. Since then Dharm has developed an interest in municipal and provincial politics, crime and policing and social issues including immigration, prostitution and trafficking. He is currently working on a series of stories involving Vancouver's sex workers.
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