Sex worker decision -˜preposterous’

The magistrate who jailed an HIV-positive sex worker this week has been labelled as out of touch by Australia’s peak sex worker advocacy group.

Magistrate John Burns sentenced Canberra sex worker Hector Scott to 10 weeks’ imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to operating a commercial sex service while being HIV-positive.

Scott also pleaded guilty to not registering as a sex worker, for which he received a two-year good behaviour bond.

Scarlet Alliance CEO Janelle Fawkes denounced the decision as preposterous before pointing out that the same activity was completely legal across the border in NSW.

There are serious public health implications from this case, Fawkes warned.

The underlying message sent by this decision is that having sex with an HIV-positive person is dangerous and this simply is not true. When safe sex equipment is used the risk is negligible.

Sex workers are well-known to be experts at implementing safer sex practices in their workplaces and as a result, sex with sex workers is not risky.

ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell has already announced a review of the law under which Scott was sentenced in line with a Scarlet Alliance report, The National Needs Assessment Of Sex Workers Who Live With HIV.

The paper strongly urged state and territory governments to decriminalise commercial sex for HIV-positive people in the ACT, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland, in an effort to develop nationally consistent legislation.

This law is left over from a time when there was much hysteria and misinformation about the risk of transmission, Fawkes said.

We have learnt a lot in Australia from the epidemic and one of the main lessons has been that criminalisation of HIV-positive people is not the answer.

A jail sentence for being a sex worker who is HIV-positive goes against our internationally recognised public health approaches. This decision is in opposition to those approaches and will have consequences.