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IRISH OUTREACH SERVICE Ruhama supported 109 victims of sex trafficking last year, according to its annual report released today.
The organisation – a national frontline service for women affected by prostitution and sex trafficking – provided support to total 304 women, transgender people and men last year.
The nationalities that had the highest access rate to Ruhama’s casework service were Nigerian (63 cases) and Irish (41). Overall, the service helped people from 39 nationalities.
The report detailed how Ruhama’s frontline team reported 3,022 face to face meetings and more than 23,000 telephone contacts in 2017.
Ruhama’s mobile outreach van also visited what they described “Dublin’s known red light streets” on 121 nights last year.
The van, according to the service, “provides a safe, welcoming space where women can have some of their very practical and immediate needs met, such as hot drinks, snacks, hats and gloves and health and safety supplies”.
A total of 62 women involved in street prostitution availed of this support, Ruhama said. 50% of the women reported experiencing drug and/or alcohol problems and 34% reported being either currently homeless or at risk of homelessness.
No convictions against sex buyers
The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, which came into force early last year, placed a blanket ban on the purchase of sex for the first time in Ireland.
To date, there have been no convictions under the law.
Sarah Benson, CEO of Ruhama, said: ”It was designed to erode Ireland’s sex trade by criminalising the purchase of sex, thereby reducing demand, while also decriminalising those in prostitution as vulnerable persons who should not be criminally targeted.
”We are deeply disappointed that no convictions against sex buyers have been secured under this legislation to date.
The law cannot, therefore, be said to have been fully implemented. This means that the trade continues to have a customer base operating with impunity, and therefore continues to thrive, as do the organised criminal gangs profiting from the sexual exploitation of women.
Benson said that Ruhama supported dozens of women to formally report crimes against them to An Garda Síochána last year.
“Women tell us of many incidences of physical violence, rape and sexual assault, which they have experienced at the hands of sex buyers, pimps, traffickers and opportunistic criminals alike. The long-term physical and psychological consequences of such attacks cannot be underestimated.”
Ruhama has called for decisive action from An Garda Síochána to effectively target both sex buyers and prostitution organisers using the legislation.
”The Government must also raise public awareness that it is now a crime to purchase sex in Ireland,” Benson concluded.
Criticism of law
Some sex workers have said that the new law criminalising the purchase of sex has resulted in women working on their own, depriving them of security previously available to them.
Those opposed to law, including the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland (SWAI), say that it has made the job of the worker a lot more dangerous and that demand for sex has not reduced as a result – with the exception of the Christmas holiday period.
A key component of the new law was making the purchase of sex illegal. Anyone convicted of doing this for the first time faces a maximum fine of €500, which increases to €1,000 for a second or subsequent offence.
It also fully decriminalised individuals in prostitution. It is still illegal for more than one woman to operate out of the same premises.
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Ruhama, funded by the HSE, but its not and Irish ‘service’ its a Vatican service ….
@just readin: Are they run by the same bunch who brought us the Magdalene laundries?
@Dotty Dunleary: you wont find it on their website , it was sanitized a few years ago…
‘The Good Shepherd Sisters and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity previously ran the Magdalene Laundries and now run Ruhama.’
@just readin: They released this report to coincide with and overshadow a meeting arranged by SWAIIreland tonight. I also note that the report, in and of itself, minimises the existence of the sex buyer law while they go on to use that report to demand the greater implementation that they know will plunge the most vulnerable women into certain hardship taking many of the less vulnerable with them. One more dirty tactic among many, so:
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/letter-to-chairman-of-ruhama-25-january-2018/ .
Pay particular attention to:
“Any form of abolitionism (but particularly for pay) is, in and of itself, an inappropriate conflict of interest with helping and supporting sex workers because the premise of abolitionism that “sex work must be abolished to send a message to men that wome,n are not sexual objects” makes no allowance for the human rights, welfare and needs of sex workers at all, preferring instead to objectify them and reinvent their reality to artificially support and substantiate the abolitionist agenda rather than determine and provide useful and appropriate support and resources.”
I believe this conflict of interest would hold water all the way to the European Court of human rights. I also believe shutting down Ruhama and turning over their funding to more neutral and impartial statutory services is long overdue.
@just readin: they are helping people though?
Aren’t you paying for sex if you buy a girl a drink :-) @تمام:
@just readin: TheJournal should really disclose the origins of Ruahama in articles such as this one.
@Seamus Mac: I have known Ruhama since 1989 and they have consistently done more harm than good for all that time. A huge amount of their funding goes on foreign junkets to lobby for the “Nordic Model” and boast about their “achievements”.
Bottom line, you can’t help anyone when you funding depends on lying about them and refusing to listen to them.
@John Longmore: Not if you think pure thoughts and leave her at her front door afterwards as you should ;o)
@just readin: Here is is on archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130211073123/http://www.ruhama.ie:80/page.php?intPageID=138
No convictions against any sex buyers. Not even one. So the prostitutes themselves that campaigned against this silly, unenforceable and unworkable law were right. But then we all knew that they were, even the time wasters that dreamed it up as a credible solution.
@Tweed Cap: the people who drempt this pointless unenforceable legislation are themselves wa#kers. No pun intended
@Tweed Cap: Good to see that the Gardai are practicing common sense by not enforcing this unworkable and counterproductive law that should never have been put on the statute books.
The sex trade is like an iceberg – one-fifth is visible on the surface and the rest is unseen. Sex trafficking across continents destroys the lives of thousands of vulnerable, young poorly educated girls every year. Police services can only do so much to trap culprits and rescue victims. Civil society organisations can do some discreet work behind the scenes and benefit a fraction of women caught up in menacing networks. A vigilant general public can tip off the authorities sometimes. Vice can be monitored but not suppressed.
Firstly, by supply and demand, you will always have prostitution. If 90% of escorts disappeared tomorrow, that would just drive up the price for those remaining escorts.
Secondly, everyone, be they male or female has a price. If i met a woman in a bar and offered her twenty thousand for half an hour of sex, she would more than likely say yes. This along with supply and demand will always mean prostitution exists.
Thirdly, there is violence in all systems. There is more violence in marriage than escorting, yet i dont see ruhama trying to ban marriage. In other words they pick and choose what is convenient and inconvenient to them. If they really want to end violence against the female gender, a good place to start would be to ban relationships. But they wont do that, because relationships are romantic; escorting is not.
@James Bishop: The demand and supply is not so simple. This is a predatory industry that depends on 1) women being destitute and 2) men being lonely.
Any legitimisation we give to it means that they will exert their influence to ensure that men are lonely (telling women to leave their fat, lazy, useless husbands; promoting pick up culture; promoting impossibly high standards in appearance and success so people won’t go out with the people they know) This casual attitude young people have towards partners means that they settle down far too late and therefore already spend their youth in an unnaturally sex starved state. It is creating demand for something people shouldn’t need.
@James Bishop: The latest aspect of violence to be condemend is “coercive control” Ruhama (and the Nordic Model) always have, and always will be all about using financial constraints to coerce women to engage with services against their will…but somehow that is presented as ok…
Im lost 304 or 109 received support
@Billy Connelly: 304 in total, and 109 out of those were sex trafficking victims.
@Finn H. Schoyen: Not exactly “sex trafficking victims” they are coyly phrased as “those affected by sex trafficking” – which may cover them for a multitude of creative caseworkings.
Church run organization…enough said…
@Cal-Dog: run maybe a bit strong but supported by them anyway
@Cal-Dog: Depends on the way you look at it. The laundry orders founded Ruhama and are still the trustees, even though they have been at pains to conceal that since 2014.
But apart from that, the “career feminists” that have, almost perversely, supported and promoted Ruhama since it opened are virtually the same demographic as the women who once controlled the laundry orders when a secular future was really not an option for those who did not wish to marry.
Lets make drugs illegal, that will reduce the demand for them……… oh, wait a minute
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