BDSM MEDIA NEWS!!!!
23 june 2011
Dominatrix fears she won't see end to legal battle
Source: www.torontosun.com - Toronto Sun - Canada
CANADA - TORONTO - Long after her lawyer finished his day’s argument to strike down Canada’s prostitution laws, long after the myriad of black robed counsel had left for the day, Terri-Jean Bedford sat on a park bench outside the Ontario Court of Appeal and wept.
“If you see tears in my eyes, they’re tears of joy and gratitude to Alan,” the infamous dominatrix explained. “It doesn’t matter if we win or lose, I know he tried his best.”
She’s just worried that she won’t be here for the next round.
Since 1996, Osgoode Hall professor Alan Young has been in her corner as she’s fought the prostitution laws that made it impossible for her to legally earn her living. Four years ago, he asked if she’d be willing to be one of the plaintiffs to finally challenge the laws on constitutional grounds and she happily agreed.
Last fall, they won their first victory at the lower court level, a landmark ruling in which Justice Susan Himel struck down as unconstitutional three prostitution-related charges - communicating for the purposes of prostitution, operating a common bawdy house and living off the avails - because they prevent sex workers from moving indoors and protecting themselves.
Their celebration was short-lived. As expected, the federal government appealed the decision and now they are all before Ontario’s highest court arguing their positions once again before a panel of five judges.
And once again, Young has raised the spectre of Robert Pickton. The serial killer was able to murder at least 26 prostitutes from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside because they were easy prey on the street, the lawyer said. When worried sex workers tried to bring their clients inside to a safe house instead, the police swooped in and shut it down for being a bawdy house.
“Because of the law, women (in danger of) going missing were not allowed to protect themselves,” Young argued. “The irrationality of the law leads to higher safety risks for women.”
It is only common sense that sex trade workers would feel safer operating out of a home rather than on the street. “Even if one person moves indoors and as a result doesn’t end up on a pig farm,” Young said, “then something good has happened by changing the law.”
Bedford sat in the packed courtroom, often nodding her head in agreement as he continued his legal arguments throughout the day. “Alan’s brilliant,” she declared, her tear-stained eyes turned into the warm sunshine. “He is my superhero disguised as an ordinary citizen. I hope everyone in the trade can appreciate all the hard work he’s done and he hasn’t asked for one cent.”
So why is she crying?
It’s been a long road, the former madame explains, and she’s about to publish her memoirs to detail it all. Left to fend for herself by the Children’s Aid when she was just 16, with nothing to eat and no means to buy clothes, she sold herself on the streets of Windsor. Alcohol eased the pain, so did drugs. She worked the stroll for years, suffering the violence that is endemic to working outside, before she picked up her riding crop and decided to become a dominatrix and open her own brothel.
Now instead of having to fear her clients, she had to fear the police.
Arrested in 1994 for operating the Bondage Bungalow in Thornhill, she has fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, often in her trademark black leather, curly wig and whip in hand.
This case is destined to reach there as well. But she doesn’t think she will be able to see this constitutional challenge all the way through to its inevitable argument in Ottawa. Just 51, Bedford contracted hepatitis C as a sex trade worker and it’s slowly killing her.
“I’m terminally ill,” she confesses. “If we lose it’s over for me, because I don’t think I’ll make it to the Supreme Court. That’s four years from now.”
She sighs and looks out at the gardens that stretch out before her. “I’ll probably be in a wheelchair,” she finally says. “Or dead.”
