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A TOTAL OF 36 people were stopped and questioned by gardaí as part of an intelligence-led operation targeting the demand for prostitution and the purchasing of sexual services over the past few days.
Gardaí said they carried out operations in six divisions last weekend, from Friday to Sunday, aimed at enforcing the provisions of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017.
The recently introduced act criminalises the purchase of sexual services and the soliciting or purchasing of sex from a trafficked person. They came into effect early in 2017.
The Act prosecutes a person who “pays, gives, offers or promises to pay or give a person (including a prostitute) money” or any other kind of remuneration to engage in sexual activity. Advertising sex work has been prohibited since 1994.
The new laws gained support from a number of advocacy groups, but were criticised by others – like the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland (SWAI) – who claimed that they made life more dangerous for sex workers.
According to court reports, the first person to be convicted under the act was in January. He was fined €200.
Gardaí said that it carried out operations in DMR North, DMR East, DMR South Central, Wexford, Louth and Kildare.
A total of 36 individuals were stopped and spoken to by gardaí over suspicion of having purchased sexual services from an individual involved in prostitution.
A number of files are now being prepared for forwarding to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP will then decide if any criminal proceedings should be initiated.
Gardaí said that the operation reinforces their “commitment to target the demand for prostitution and to protect vulnerable persons, including victims of human trafficking involved in prostitution”.
With reporting from Aoife Walsh
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Well done on completing the film. Will seek it out.
The unfortunate thing is, politicians only pretend to care what people think at one time. Election time. The rest of the time, people are an annoyance to be kept at a distance. They have police keeping the public well away from the public servants and a media to keep them dumb. No amount of protest was going to stop that, or any other war. As long as there’s profit to be made, the march of war will continue.
It didn’t make a blind bit of difference which shows that it is a mirage of democKracy that those who we ‘elect’ to be in charge or ‘represent’ our view are not in charge at all. It is the military-industrial might that is and it doesn’t give a tinker’s curse about civilisation.
That was the first protest I took any of my children. It felt like a special day. If it didn’t stop the war, it did help people understand that public mobilisation in large scale is possible, and it helped unmask the true interests of politicians, which are not the same as the public’s.
It’s people like this that allow groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda to grow with their attitudes of appeasement.
More like a continuous cosying up to the wrong type of dictator, interfering in internal conflict and arming the wrong sides, making ‘Hitlers’ out of local bullies and waging illegitimate wars and continuously bombing a region for it’s natural resources facilitates organisations like ISIS or Al Qaeda to warp alienated and confused people into committing atrocities.
Anti-War = Pro-ISIS ?? Good one Darryl..
Nah, I prefer to remember staying up all night watching shock & awe rock Baghdad. Nothing special about a bunch of crusties and easily swayed people gathering in one large group.
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