HRW: Sex workers in China subject to police abuse

BEIJING (AP) — Police in China frequently beat, torture and arbitrarily detain suspected sex workers, often with little or no evidence that they engaged in prostitution, Human Rights Watch said in a report Tuesday calling on the government to discipline abusive officers.

Officers sometimes detain women only on the basis of their carrying condoms, thus deterring their use among sex workers and increasing the risk of spreading HIV, the group said.

The government officially views prostitution as an "ugly social phenomenon" and the solicitation, sale and purchase of sex in China are illegal. However, despite frequent government crackdowns, prostitution remains rampant and sexual services are openly offered in massage parlors, karaoke bars and nightclubs.

Human Rights Watch says they interviewed women who told of violence by police and of being detained following sex with undercover police officers. One anonymous woman cited in the report said she and two colleagues were assaulted by police who "attached us to trees, threw freezing cold water on us, and then proceeded to beat us."

Other problems are arbitrary detention of sex workers and discrimination by law enforcement officials when sex workers try to report crimes or abuse, the report said. It focused on women primarily in Beijing who engage in sex work on the streets, in public places such as parks, and in massage parlors and hair salons. While Chinese law treats most sex work-related offences as administrative violations, punishable by fines and short periods of police custody or detention, it allows for administrative detention of up to two years for repeat offenders.

In most of East Asia, prostitution is embedded in a business and political culture of entertaining clients and partners in karaoke bars and nightclubs. Prostitution also is illegal in Japan, but legal gray areas still allow it to flourish. South Korea toughened its anti-prostitution laws in 2004, driving thousands of prostitutes and pimps out of business, although the industry there remains widespread. Still, the level of police abuse against sex workers is deemed lower in those two countries in part because of a stronger rule of law.

"There is a much more robust legal system in both Japan and South Korea so this offers in the first place a greater protection for women who engage in sex work," said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Of course you don't have the kind of limitations on right to expression and right to assembly and so on that you face in China, which is also contributing to this climate enabling these abuses."

Human Rights Watch says that police in China frequently detain sex workers without the evidence required by law that sexual services were provided in exchange for money or property, and that officers have extensive powers to take suspects into custody for periods ranging from several days to several months.

The group said arrests based merely on condom possession boosted the country's risk of spreading HIV. At the same time, the group also condemned forced HIV testing of sex workers by public health agencies and the disclosure of the results to third parties.

Human Rights Watch called on the government to publicly commit to strict nationwide enforcement of provisions that prohibit arbitrary arrests and detentions, police brutality, coerced confessions, and torture, and ensure swift prosecution of abusive police officers. It also called on it to enact legislation to remove criminal and administrative sanctions against voluntary, consensual sex and related offenses, such as solicitation.

"In China, the police often act as if by engaging in sex work, women had forfeited their rights," Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement accompanying the report. "The government must abandon its repressive laws against sex workers, discipline abusive police, and end the suppression of sex workers rights advocates."

The rights group interviewed sex workers, clients, police, public health officials, academic specialists and members of international and domestic nongovernmental organizations between 2008 and 2012. It focused on interviews with 75 women sex workers in Beijing, including 20 detailed interviews with women between the ages of 20 and 63.

All the sex workers they spoke with said they had voluntarily chosen sex work. Factors included poverty, job loss, divorce and lack of economic and educational opportunities for women — particularly in the countryside.

View the original article here

Abuse victims want pope to open Argentina files

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — A U.S. group that tracks clergy abuse called on Pope Francis to apologize Tuesday for what it called the Argentine church's protection of two priests who were eventually convicted of abusing children.

The Bishop Accountability group cites the case of Father Julio Cesar Grassi, who ran the "Happy Children" foundation and was convicted of pedophilia in 2008, and Father Napoleon Sasso, convicted in 2007 of abusing girls at a soup kitchen in suburban Buenos Aires. Sasso had been moved to the kitchen by church authorities after he got into trouble for pedophilia in remote San Juan province.

Jorge Bergoglio, who became Argentina's cardinal in 2001, wasn't directly involved in any sex abuse scandals or coverups, but he failed to remove priests accused of sexually abusing their faithful, and refused to meet with the victims, their attorney Ernesto Moreau told The Associated Press.

"Bergoglio has been the strongest man in the Argentine church since the beginning of this century," Moreau said, and yet "the leadership of the church has never done anything to remove these people from these places, and neither has it done anything to relieve the pain of the victims."

Now Grassi is free on appeal, thanks in part to the church's report. Before he was convicted, he thanked Bergoglio for "never abandoning him."

Bishop Accountability co-director Anne Doyle says this shows Bergoglio was behind the curve in the Catholic church's global struggle to deal with sex abuse by its priests, which began in 2002 after thousands of cases became public in the United States and around the world.

"We would be alarmed if the archbishop Bergoglio had done this in the '60s or '70s. That would be sad and disturbing. But the fact that he did this just five years ago, when other bishops in other countries were meeting victims and implementing tough reporting laws, it puts him behind some of his American counterparts, that's for sure," Doyle told the AP.

The group said that to send a message of zero tolerance, Francis should tell the Buenos Aires archdiocese to release the complete files on these two cases; publicly identify any priests who are "credibly accused"; publicly endorse the mandatory reporting by church officials to law enforcement of any suspected abuse; admit that he was wrong to defend abusive priests; apologize to the victims of Grassi and Sasso; and offer to meet with the victims now.

Doyle noted that The Washington Post reported on these cases just as Francis was being installed as pope in a Vatican ceremony seen around the world.

"The victims of these two priests are the very children of God about whom he was speaking in his homily today," she said. "They are the most vulnerable of the poor. We hope that Francis will seize this as a priority and reach out to the victims and rectify his terrible insensitivity to them when he was archbishop."

Messages left by phone and email by the AP seeking comment from the Buenos Aires archbishopric's press office were not immediately returned Tuesday.

View the original article here

Brazilian priest investigated for alleged abuse

SAO PAULO (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest is being investigated for allegations of sexual abuse of three young girls in his parish in southeastern Brazil, police said Wednesday.

A police spokeswoman said Father Emilson Soares Correa is under investigation for committing the alleged abuse in Niteroi, a city across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro. She declined to be identified in accordance with department policy.

The Archdiocese of Niteroi said on its website it was conducting its own investigation and that Correa has been temporarily suspended from his priestly duties.

The spokeswoman said one of the girls, now a 19-year-old woman, claims the abuse started when she was 13.

She told police Correa gave her "expensive gifts and paid for repairs that had to be done in her home," the spokeswoman said.

She said that last year the woman and a 15-year-old friend videotaped a man they said was the priest having sexual intercourse with them. The woman's father gave her the camera to film an encounter and use the tape as evidence, she added.

Part of the video aired by the Globo TV network showed a man identified as the priest naked from the waist up, kissing and embracing the woman and her friend.

The priest's attorney, Roberto Vitagliano, told Globo TV that the woman's father tried to use the tape to "blackmail Correa but when he refused to pay money for it he took it to the police."

The spokeswoman said the father is being investigated for alleged extortion.

Correa is also being investigated for allegedly sexually fondling the woman's now 10-year-old sister three years ago.

"When questioned, he acknowledged he maintained consensual sexual relations with the woman and her 15-year-old friend, but denied he committed any kind of abuse with the 10-year-old girl," the spokeswoman said.

View the original article here