Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law

by Alison Bass

Foxy Lady and Cadillac Lounge, two well-known strip clubs in downtown Providence, also hire retired Providence police to work as security. “So if we go in there undercover, they’re going to know about it,” he says.

  When Sauro became head of the vice squad two years ago, he started cracking down on the spas more aggressively than his predecessor had. He was soon told to dial it down. Last year, his department executed 157 search warrants, but only 3 or 4 of them involved venues of prostitution, he says. Most of the warrants were for drug searches. Sauro says his squad doesn’t have the resources to go after independent escorts or high-end escort services. He himself thinks adult consensual prostitution should be decriminalized. “We’re not really stopping it,” he says. “If we [decriminalized it], we could focus on trafficking. It’s just like marijuana. Marijuana [under a certain amount] is decriminalized in Rhode Island.”

  At the same time, however, his department is under greater pressure to eradicate trafficking. “We get a lot of people asking what we’re doing about trafficking,” he says. “A lot of pressure is coming down on us.”

  All of which explains why shortly after 1:30 that afternoon, I find myself sitting with Sauro in his unmarked Passat in a small private parking lot on Waverly Street in Providence, a few houses up from a run-down Victorian that apparently houses a brothel catering largely to Guatemalan immigrants. The brothel is in the West End, a poor, largely minority neighborhood, and Sauro wants to close it down because it’s in a family neighborhood. “You’ve got kids biking up and down this street,” he says.

  The Providence police have raided this particular brothel before, but it always seems to reopen for business after a short hiatus. If the city passes the “Bodyworks” law requiring spas to obtain licenses to operate, Sauro says, city officials could make sure these places don’t open up in family neighborhoods. Police could revoke the licenses and shut down the establishments if they found evidence of prostitution or other illegal activities.

  A few yards in either direction on Waverly sit two large unmarked SUVs, one white, one black, with tinted glass. Inside are four men from Sauro’s vice squad and two women from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The women are part of the stakeout, Sauro explains, because the feds sometimes prosecute cases of trafficking across state lines. Sauro had introduced me to the four men and two women when we gathered, before the stakeout, in the parking lot of a nearby police garage. All six officers were out of uniform, dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts, and from their jokes and nonchalant attitudes, it seemed clear they were old hands at this kind of thing. Even so, before getting back into their SUVs, they all (with the exception of Sauro and myself) donned bullet-proof black vests with “POLICE” emblazoned in big white letters across the front of their vests.

  All six were carrying handguns, and I could see one or two semiautomatics in the back of one SUV. The game plan was to wait for a customer to walk into the brothel and catch him and a sex worker in the act. As Leo Pichs, one of the undercover cops and the only Spanish-speaking member of the stakeout crew, explained, “We’re going to wait till we get a couple of bodies in there, and then we just fucking whack it.”

  Ten minutes into the stakeout, Pichs’s voice crackles over the walkie-talkie: “Two guys going in. Looks good. We’ll give it a few minutes.”

  Five minutes pass, and Sauro speaks into his walkie-talkie: “Okay, Leo, let’s go.” He wheels out of the parking lot in time for me to see the two SUVs pull up in front of the brothel. The four men and two women jump out and run down the driveway into the back of the building, hands on their guns. Sauro pulls into the driveway after them. “I’d be rushing in with them, but I don’t want to leave you,” he says. A minute later, he gets a hand signal (which must mean everything’s under control) and runs in after them, instructing me to stay in the car. A few minutes later, Sauro comes back and says I can come in.

  Inside, two men sit handcuffed in the small spare living room, a stocky Guatemalan immigrant (the unlucky john) and a skinny older man wearing a BOSS T-shirt and a golfing cap who Sauro says is the trafficker, or pimp. Two women (who are not handcuffed) sit on chairs in different rooms, one in a bedroom, the other in what must have once been the dining room. The walls of the first-floor apartment are dirty and bare; rough gray mats are duct-taped to the hardwood floor, and there is a cockroach in the kitchen. A soda bottle lies on its side on a small table, spilling Mountain Dew over a box of Newport cigarettes, in front of a TV that is still tuned to the Spanish channel. One of the undercover cops says the pimp knocked the soda over in his haste to get away.

  If this is a brothel, it is a big step down from the establishment that Julie runs in New York City and a world away from the upscale fantasies sold by Sheri’s Ranch in Nevada. And yet, the woman who sits on a chair near the spilled bottle, a towel wrapped around her bikini underwear, is pretty and slim, with streaked blonde hair, immaculate French nails, and big green eyes, carefully made up. Her name is Juanita Delacruz; she’s twenty-eight, and she comes from the Dominican Republic. She says she is an exotic dancer in New York City and came up to Providence on her own volition, to earn money to pay her rent. She can make $3,000 in five days here, she tells one of the cops.

  The women from Homeland Security have rifled through Juanita’s purse in the other bedroom and emerge with a fistful of cash and some blue poker chips. They want to know what’s with the poker chips, but Juanita doesn’t understand what they’re asking. Pichs comes over and asks her a few questions in Spanish. He then translates what she says: “They’re tips. They are each worth $5, and they are like an IOU from clients who will come back to pay her in cash and retrieve the chips.”

  The other woman, dark-haired and stockier, sits in a nearby bedroom, next to a tousled queen-size bed that takes up most of the room. On the bureau opposite the bed sits her bag, clothing spilling out, paper towels, makeup, lubricating liquid, the tools of her trade. A pair of fake-diamond–studded high heels lie discarded on the floor. The woman, who says she is from Mexico, is wearing capri pants and a low-cut tank top. She doesn’t appear to understand much English. When I look in the room a few minutes later, she is slumped over, her head in her hands.

  One of the undercover cops, a wiry young man named Greg Scion, announces, “We have one stain and one condom.” Sauro laughs and adds, “He’s also got a timer. We can use that as evidence as well.”

  Sauro takes me aside and says that they don’t plan to arrest the women. “We treat them as victims,” he says. But he adds that they may be taken down to the police station so that detectives can try to get information out of them about the pimps who operate the brothel. Pichs briefly talks in Spanish to both women and then asks the female officers from Homeland Security to take Juanita into the other bedroom so she can get dressed.

  While all of this is going on, two other young men saunter into the back of the apartment. They have no idea they’ve just walked into a raid. “What’s going on?” asks one of them, smiling. Scion and another undercover cop quickly usher them outside and demand their IDs. The men, who are also Guatemalan, deny that they are here to see prostitutes, but it is clear they are lying. Scion reassures them, “As long as you’re not wanted, you’re fine. No problem.”

  A few minutes later, the word comes back: they’re not on any Homeland Security databases. Expressions of pure relief sweep across their faces, and without another word, they disappear. “They’re illegals; they work in a restaurant in East Providence,” Scion says. “They weren’t wanted, so we let them go.”

  Back inside, Pichs reappears in the living room, holding a sack. “We’ve got the money, the ledgers, photographs, we just have to get the girls downtown.” The two handcuffed men are ushered out by two uniformed policemen who were summoned after the raid, and the two women from Homeland Security take the girls outside.

  As Sauro and I get back in his car and drive off, he says, “We still have a lot of investigating to do. We’re trying to find out who’s running the
operation.”

  When I ask if raids like this one are the best use of police resources, he responds, “It’s a quality-of-life issue. It’s in a neighborhood where kids are riding bikes.” Even though Sauro readily acknowledges that both of the sex workers in the brothel came to Providence voluntarily, he says that sometimes trafficking is involved.

  A few days later, Sauro tells me that the Dominican sex worker was not arrested. But the Mexican woman was found to be an illegal immigrant, so the Providence police turned her over to the immigration authorities. Her name is Edith Palacio Miguel; she is thirty-five, and she was deported a couple of years ago, only to slip across the border again a short time later.

  By the time I catch up with Sauro again a few months later, he says the city of Providence has passed the “Bodyworks” law, enabling police to shut down a number of Asian spas, including the one on North Main Street. Meanwhile, the john arrested in the brothel raid has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor prostitution charge and is back at work. The pimp in the BOSS T-shirt is still sitting in a jail cell in Rhode Island, charged with trafficking and other prostitution-related charges. Sauro says he is awaiting trial.

  The Mexican sex worker who Sauro originally said would be treated as a victim has been deported. As for the brothel on Waverly Street, it remains closed — for now.

  Sex Work Overseas

  PROHIBITION IN SWEDEN VERSUS LEGALIZATION IN NEW ZEALAND AND THE NETHERLANDS

  It is after 7 p.m. on a sweltering July evening in Las Vegas, and the pool party at the Desiree Alliance conference is well under way. Dozens of sex workers in bathing suits and sarongs are clustered around one of the outdoor pools at the Alexis Park Resort, chatting and splashing in the bath-warm waters. Michelle Christy, the forty-four-year-old escort I met earlier in the day, beckons me over. “I have someone I think you should meet,” she says, and gestures toward a pretty blond woman in a tank top and shorts, sitting by the side of the pool, her legs dangling in the water. The woman looks young, in her late twenties perhaps, and her light blond hair is bound into a single braid behind her back. Another sex worker, I assume.

  “This is Ida Kock,” Michelle says. “She’s from Sweden, and she’s doing some very interesting research.” Kock, as it turns out, is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnology (the study of races and peoples) at Umea University in northern Sweden, and she is studying a very distinct group of people: sex workers in Sweden. I am curious about the impact of Sweden’s 1999 law, which prohibits the purchase of sex (criminalizing clients) but not the actual sale of sex by individual sex workers. (Known as the Nordic model, the Swedish approach has since been adopted in Norway, Iceland, and most recently, Canada.)

  Kock says the Swedish law, which was designed to protect sex workers from predatory men, has actually had the opposite effect, making their work less safe. I am eager to hear more, but since I haven’t brought my notebook to the party, we agree to talk tomorrow. I am thus caught off guard the next morning, when shortly after the conference kicks off, around 10:30 a.m., Ida Kock skips up the steps to the stage. (As conferences go, Desiree’s daily kick-off is on the late side, but one of the organizers tells me, “A lot of our attendees are working after hours, so we have to keep them in mind.” From talking to conference participants, I discover that a number of the sex workers who have flown into Las Vegas from around the country do indeed have dates with regular clients who just happen to be in Sin City this week as well.)

  Leaning into the microphone and speaking in excellent English, Kock announces that she would like to give a short testimonial to a friend of hers, “Jasmine,” a one-time sex worker in Sweden who was recently killed by her ex-boyfriend.

  “Due to the fact that she was a former sex worker, Jasmine was deemed an unfit parent and her ex-boyfriend received custody of the children, even though he had several convictions for drugs and other crimes,” Kock says. “He was deemed to be a more fit parent than she was, so even a criminal is considered a better parent than a sex worker.”

  After Kock finishes speaking, there is a moment of silence to honor Jasmine’s memory, and then the audience erupts into wild applause. The Swedish ethnographer later gives me a fuller account of her friend’s tragic story. Jasmine, whose real name was Eva-Marree Kullander Smith, had a troubled childhood and spent much of her adolescence in state care (foster homes). She became pregnant with her first child, a girl, when she was twenty-one. A year later, when she was pregnant with her second child, a boy, she decided to leave their father, Joel Kabagambe, a Uganda émigré who had a history of substance abuse and was physically abusive toward her.

  Kabagambe also had a criminal record, a conviction for drug possession and another one for assault. Eva-Marree and Joel agreed to share joint custody of their children, but he wouldn’t help her financially. To support herself and her one-year-old daughter and infant son, Eva-Marree began working as an escort in Stockholm, meeting clients discreetly in hotels there. In 2009, her ex-boyfriend lodged a complaint with the state social services, claiming that their son, then only six months old, had a burn on his arm and that his mother had deliberately harmed him. A Swedish social services agency took the kids away from her, and shortly after that, a cousin of Eva-Marree called the agency to report that she was working as a sex worker.

  “The cousin claimed that she was selling sex from the apartment while the kids were there, which wasn’t true,” Kock says. The social services agency investigated and found that there was no merit to the father’s complaint, but by then he had been granted temporary custody of the children and was suing for full custody.

  Kabagambe, furious that Eva-Marree was doing sex work, refused to let her see the children, even though she had joint custody. “He was fined for that, but he kept denying her access to the kids,” Kock says. And this is where “social services started to get weird,” Kock says. “They questioned her ability to parent and accused her of having a self-harming behavior, even though she had stopped selling sex.”

  To Kock, the reaction of the state agency in Eva-Marree’s custody battle is intrinsically bound up with the Swedish government’s moralistic approach to prostitution. The government views sex workers as victims of male violence and patriarchal oppression1 and thus does not explicitly penalize them for selling sex. Instead, anyone who obtains or attempts to obtain sex in exchange for payment can be charged with an offense punishable by either a fine or imprisonment for up to one year.

  “The Swedish law is very connected to the idea of selling sex as male violence toward women,” Kock explains. “People who sell sex aren’t doing anything illegal whatsoever. Yet if they sell sex, it’s considered a self-harming behavior.” This approach essentially treats women as children who must be protected from themselves at all costs, Kock says.

  At the same time, other Swedish laws criminalize those who “promote” or “improperly financially exploit” sex work. Such legislation effectively criminalizes sex work indoors (unless the sex worker owns the space in which he or she works). Since it is illegal to share any income derived from sex work, sex workers are often forced to live and work alone (which makes them more vulnerable to violence from clients.) It also forces them to lie, in order to rent the premises in which they work.2

  While the 1999 Swedish Purchasing Act was intended to protect sex workers, it has actually harmed them, research shows. Streetwalkers have reported increased violence, in part because regular clients avoid them for fear of arrest and have turned instead to the Internet and indoor venues for sex. The clients who remain on the street are more likely to be drunk and violent, and they often demand unprotected sex.3 As two Swedish researchers, Susanne Dodillet and Petra Östergren, found in a recent study, when clients are in a hurry and frightened of being arrested, it is more difficult for the sex worker to assess whether they might be dangerous.4

  Since the passage of the law, Swedish police have also become more aggressive toward sex workers. In their study, Dodillet and Östergren found that instead of police bei
ng a source of protection for sex workers (as the law intended), many women feel hunted by them and are subject to invasive searches and questioning.5 More intensive police patrols have resulted in the disbanding of informal networks that sex workers had formed to protect themselves.6 Some sex workers say that police have reported them to their landlords, causing them to be evicted, according to a 2014 study. In other cases, police have informed hotels that sex workers were selling sex on their promises, leading to the deportation of migrant workers. As the researchers of this 2014 study note, “Such reports are strikingly at odds with government claims that ‘the women . . . who are victims of prostitution and trafficking do not risk any legal repercussions.’ ”7

  The Swedish National Police Board, which examined the new law after it was implemented, also found that clients are no longer willing to assist in cases against profiteers who exploit sex workers. Previously, legal cases against traffickers or pimps could sometimes be supported by the testimony of sex buyers, the police report noted, but that is no longer happening because clients fear being arrested themselves.8

  Despite more aggressive policing, the 1999 law has not put much of a dent in the Swedish sex industry; all it’s done is displace streetwalkers, forcing them into more isolated, dangerous spaces, researchers have found.9 In the meantime, the number of convictions for purchasing sex has remained low, amounting to around 500 in the ten years since the law was enacted.10 The majority of police investigations against clients are discontinued because of insufficient evidence, according to several studies.11 Fear of arrest and prosecution has also resulted in clients’ being unwilling to give sex workers their contact information, making it more difficult for workers to screen their clients, according to the 2014 Swedish study.12

  Nor is there evidence that the Nordic model has reduced trafficking in the region. Indeed, since the Swedish law was passed, the total number of foreign prostitutes in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden has increased, according to a 2010 report by the Swedish government. After the Swedish law went into effect, the number of women from Nigeria who were being trafficked in Norway (which borders Sweden to the east) rose dramatically. After Norway passed a similar law against purchasing sex, in 2009, Gothenburg, a Swedish city close to Norway, experienced a dramatic increase in trafficked prostitutes from Nigeria. The Swedish government’s report acknowledged that the total number of foreign prostitutes in all three Scandinavian countries has increased since the Swedish law was first passed.13