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The outline for deleting a criminal record for 'prostitution survivors' - truth or illusion?

The President of the State and the former Minister of Justice have announced an outline for deleting a criminal record and encouraging exit from the cycle of feeds, but the reality is more complex and there are many holes in this plan that require correction.

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• prostitution

Adv. Moshe Tuvia

Wednesday, 03 February 2021, 08:41

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The road to pardon is long and far (Photo: ShutterStock)

"All a child needs is one adult to believe in him," said Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

So are the women who are fighting for their lives and their exit from the cycle of prostitution in Israel, whose whole desire is to return to a normative social circle and receive equal treatment in Israeli society.

As part of the process of assimilating the war on prostitution consumers and the Prostitution Prohibition Law in Israel, President Reuven Rivlin and (former) Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn announced an outline for deleting criminal records and encouraging exit from the prostitution circle and planted hopes in the hearts of thousands of women.

However, after examining the terms of the outline, one must ask whether this was what the honorable president and former minister prayed for, or whether it is a matter of returning the "miss" tension program to our lives at the expense of weak women.

The State of Israel for its 73 years has not been able to define the "profession" of prostitution as a criminal act, and in doing so paved the way for thousands of hard-working women to sell their bodies for as much as possible for the purpose of surviving.

The big mistake that was not taken into account is the exploitation of those women, both in their body trade and in the drug trade that dulls their senses and "facilitates" their "work".

A small turn in the streets near the central bus station in Tel Aviv is enough to see and understand the results of the country's collapse.

On the other hand, the State of Israel has defined any person who receives sexual compensation for payment or is at a place where sexual trafficking is carried out for payment as having committed an offense.

The payment is not always monetary - there are situations where a drug dose is worth more than money for these women.

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It turns out that in every arrest made by the Israel Police, the women who "work" in the prostitution industry are arrested.

They are taken to the nearest police station, "interrogated", stamp their finger in ink on a white paper and a criminal case is opened against them for various and odd counts, such as public undressing, disturbing public order and other negligible counts.

At best, those women are prosecuted and convicted and at worst (in light of the outline), they return as they came to the industry, with another page in their pocket indicating one criminal record or another and meaningless to them.

Luckily for some of the women, over the years, aid associations have been set up for women who want to change the course of their lives and are looking for a new way outside the circle of prostitution.

These women are defined as 'survivors of prostitution', and it should be said to the credit of those associations that they are doing everything in their power to help prostitutes survive to rebuild their lives.

But after the difficult initial rehabilitation, the daily war of the survivors begins - the integration into Israeli society without the stigma and without remnants of their previous lives.

Survivors find it difficult to find quality work, rent apartments and in general they become transparent to Israeli society, which excels in criticizing the weak.

Today, after the announcement of the welcome outline (which still has some improvements to be made), it turns out that the percentage of women who leave the circle of prostitution and are pardoned by the president stands at less than a standard deviation of an election poll and more precisely only 2% and why?

Adv. Moshe Tuvia (Photo: PR, Erez Ozir)

The answer is that this is the percentage of women who have been tried in court for offenses related to their occupation in the past, but have not been sentenced to actual imprisonment on the one hand, and on the other hand they have been tried and not left with only a criminal record.

Survivors of the second type (criminal record only) are referred to the mercy of the Israel Police and the conditions for deleting a criminal record, which includes a statute of limitations for the offense + a deletion period, periods that are counted one after the other and, God forbid, overlap.

On the day the outline was announced, the president said that "the law banning the consumption of prostitution seeks to convey a message to the public in Israel, men and women, girls and boys. A message that women's bodies are not goods. Women's souls are not goods and sexual services are not sex. Sex services are exploitative relationships. And they have no place in our society, a society that upholds the values ​​of equality and respect - for every man and every woman, from all genders and from all sectors. "

The president added that "in a special pardon outline for deleting the criminal record of offenses committed against the background of life in the prostitution circle. Along with the ban on prostitution, our duty, as a state, as a society, is to rehabilitate women in prostitution and prevent populations at risk." That you will find within yourself the powers to trust and hold the outstretched hand of the state. "

In light of the conditions set out in the outline and the things said by the president and former justice minister, the questions arise as to whether the outline does not trade in the bodies of those survivors after they recovered, and why not relieve all women who have come a long way? State? The

writer is an attorney who deals with traffic and criminals

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