Ireland’s religious anti sex work organisation, Ruhama, were in party spirits on Saturday night, gleefully tweeting tabloid journalist Eamon Dillon to let him know how much they were looking forward to his article about ‘the sex worker internet campaign backed by a convicted pimp’. And as the Sunday World was published this morning with a spiteful and untrue article about Turn Off the Blue Light (TOBL) in it, Ruhama could not contain their jubilation and went into a tweeting frenzy denigrating TOBL.
As far as we are aware, the article in question is not currently available online, though according to Eamon Dillon on twitter this morning it will be on the Sunday World website tomorrow. If it is not, fear not, Ruhama will scan it in and make it available on their website.
We know that there are at least two different versions of this article, presumably as there are different editions of the Sunday World with slightly different content in them, but the full extent of the accusations made about TOBL within these articles is, to the best of our knowledge, as follows:
[1] The headline of the article is ‘Vice king’s bid to get his hookers legalised’, or alternatively ‘Sleaze to meet you’, and both versions of the article that we have seen name and picture a convicted brothel keeper and go on to claim that TOBL was set up and is backed by this individual.
[2] Referring to the recent article TOBL published about brothel keeping, it is alleged that TOBL ‘conveniently’ left a number of named convicted brothel keepers out of the research therein.
As we have always clearly stated, TOBL started out of discussions between a number of people on an escort website — a place where sex workers talk — in February 2011, and our association of independent sex workers was formed and took over the Turn Off the Blue Light campaign from that website on 23 March 2011. To go from this to saying TOBL was set up by a convicted brothel keeper and is backed by a convicted brothel keeper is perverse.
You can connect TOBL with the convicted brothel keeper at hand if you jump from TOBL to the escort website TOBL started out on, then a company linked with that website, then a person previously linked to that company. This is what has been done here for the purposes of attempting to discredit TOBL by associating it with a convicted brothel keeper.
It’s rather like a game of ‘5 clicks to Jesus’. If you haven’t heard of this game, it is played on Wikipedia, and based on the popular hypothesis — known as ‘six degrees of separation’ — holding that any two people in the world are separated by a chain of no more than six acquaintances. If you want to try it go to thewikigame.com/5-clicks-to-jesus and see if you can get from a random Wikipedia page selected for you to the Jesus Wikipedia page in 5 links or less.
If journalism is reduced to a game of ‘5 clicks to Jesus’ then TOBL can surely be linked to many people. Perhaps next week Eamon Dillon could hop from men who buy sex are bad people, to convicted rapist and suspected serial killer Larry Murphy is a bad person, to all men who buy sex are as dangerous as serial killers. Oh wait actually, somebody else already got that scoop.
We could probably have some fun playing ‘5 clicks to Jesus’ on Ruhama, but we have more integrity than to stoop to that level, which brings us to the second allegation made, the accusation that TOBL deliberately left a number of named convicted brothel keepers out of some recent research we conducted in order to draw false conclusions. We strongly refute this allegation.
Our recent article on brothel keeping looked at the criminal offence of brothel keeping , Central Statistics Office Ireland (CSO) crime statistics for this offence, and also included our own research into people convicted of brothel keeping offences. As clearly stated, we restricted our own research to cases where the year the offence would have been recorded was 2008 – 2011 (to 27 July).
Depending on the version of the Sunday World article you read, it is alleged that we ‘conveniently’ left 3 or 5 persons convicted of brothel keeping out of our research. These people were named as M.M., M.S., T.J.C., T.L. and C.O’L. (In line with our original article, we are only naming people by initial. The reason for this is that, as a sex worker organisation, not causing harm to sex workers is integral to us, and as most of the persons in the research were sex workers and being named in the public domain can cause harm to sex workers, we decided to only refer to all persons by initials.)
M.M., T.L. and C.O’L were all not included in our research as their offences were recorded prior to 2008.
T.J.C. was not included because the offence was recorded in Wales, not Ireland.
M.S. was included in our research.
A point that may cause confusion is that, sometimes, the year an offence is recorded and the year a conviction for that offence is obtained is not the same, due to the time it has taken for the case to go through the legal system. An offence of brothel keeping can be recorded one year, but a conviction may not be obtained until the following year or even years later. In compiling our research we found cases like this and decided to base our research on the year offences were recorded, both because we wanted to look at the most recent cases, and also because, to the best of our understanding and following communications with the CSO, this is how the CSO publishes it’s statistics.
The allegation that TOBL conveniently left some persons out of the research at hand is wholly untrue.
It is a shame that sex workers cannot speak up without being attacked like this by nasty bullies who are determined to try to stop sex workers having any voice.
It is no surprise to us that Ruhama are attacking us. Ruhama is a religious organisation, the founders and trustees of which are the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters, two religious orders who have a very long history of causing harm to sex workers whilst outwardly claiming to be helping them. Of course sex workers speaking up for themselves upsets Ruhama.
Eamon Dillon is a tabloid journalist and a good ally of Ruhama’s. In 2009 Ruhama awarded Eamon Dillon the one and only ever ‘Ruhama Award in Journalism’ to thank him. There is a photo of Sister Gerardine Rowley of the Good Shepherd Sisters, who is Communications & Policy Manager for Ruhama, handing Eamon Dillon the award here.
