Chinese brothels set to open up across country
Sunday December 13 2009
The Chinese brothels that have opened up in Dublin are set to take off across the country following a decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions not to prosecute two establishments operating in the capital.
As part of a Garda investigation, officers raided both establishments and in one found a man naked on a massage table.
Detectives traced the organisation of the two brothels in Dun Laoghaire to another brothel operating in the Fairview area of the north city. There they found a Chinese man in his 50s who had extensive operating details for the brothels which have sprung up across Dublin in the past two years. Most appear to be centrally organised and offer similar services.
However, following revelations in this newspaper, the women working in the brothels stopped openly offering their services and, it is understood, when a detective asked what services were on offer the girl in question made no reply other than "massage".
The use of the euphemism rather than the open offer of sexual services appears to be the point on which the DPP has decided that it would not be possible to prosecute the cases in court.
The three young women and middle-aged man have been informed that charges are not to be brought.
As a result it seems that the traditional laws against prostitution in Ireland have fallen and so long as prostitutes do not openly offer services directly to clients at brothels they are free to operate.
The remaining vice laws that can be used concern only the promotion and making of earnings from prostitution contained in two acts of the Oireachtas passed in 1993 and 1997. These laws were used in combination to prosecute the magazine In Dublin in 2000 after it was found to be making €400,000 a year in advertising revenue from brothels in the city.
Since then the advertising of brothels has moved to the internet, though one publication in Ireland still carries up to three pages of adverts for Chinese "massage" centres.
Ironically, the new prostitution operations in Ireland have largely pushed aside the indigenous sex workers, particularly in Dublin. A former prostitute in Dublin who spoke to the Sunday Independent said that the Government and gardai are operating a form of discrimination against Dublin street walkers, who are regularly arrested.
The offence of soliciting or importuning in a street or public place for the purposes of prostitution under the 1993 Criminal Justice (Sexual Offences) Act is still regularly prosecuted by gardai, generally resulting in fines or short terms of imprisonment.
Despite these minor cases no major prosecution appears to be under consideration into the very major organised brothel operations in Ireland which are generally controlled from abroad.
- JIM CUSACK
Sunday Independent
