Rose Alliance

03/09/2022

Seriously!? Talita has the nerve to continue claiming their research interviews are anonymous!? Despite multiple blatant structural issues inherent in the research design which render the process FAR FROM ANONYMOUS
It is categorically not anonymous as soon as you tie multiple data points together with an identifying code for each individual - even in cases where that code actually meets basic standards in research design and methodology ( Eg not assigning a two digit number in an order which corresponds with the order in which interviews are booked or conducted …Eg interview 18 followed by 19 then 20)

Let alone when you contact people on their work numbers and use their work name throughout the three hour IN PERSONA INTERVIEW along with writing the number of the interview out on every single page during the interview thus creating a clear opportunity for memorising the code with the identity

Which is what happened already when one of our members asked for the data to be deleted from her interview - she was told it had been wiped - before realising that she hadn’t informed them of the code number
When confronted with this issue the representative for contact about research attempted to minimise the seriousness of these breaches- and claimed that it had just happened to be the case that the interviewer happened to recall this one interview in regards to the work name linked to the anonymous interview data coded with the pseudoanonymous at best methodology

And this is before we get into the dozens of apparent breaches of EU data laws as well as the fact that the researchers organised the rooms in a way that led to 2 participants seeing each other in person accidentally - due to an interview being conducted in a room adjacent to the only toilet in their office and the participant being informed she could go to the toilet freely at any point without worrying-
Only to discover yet another major breach of not only her own anonymity but that of another woman whose interview was walked into mid questioning about childhood abuse and trauma!?

Sprid gärna! Tack ❤️

18/08/2022

In this podcast M. William Phelps asks if the Swedish government and social services effectively sanction the murder of Petite Jasmine?
Worth listening!

Escucha y descarga los episodios de Crossing the Line with M. William Phelps gratis. A Swedish s*x worker loses custody of her kids to her violent and abusive ex. Did the government go one step further and effectively sanction her murd... Programa: Crossing the Line with M. William Phelps. Canal: Cr...

16/08/2022

{{“Every time [I cross the border], I’m afraid.

Obviously, I don’t bring anything illegal with me.
They could check my bags.

But all my clothes are
going-out clothes,
beautiful, with a décolleté.

Obviously not for Finland,
if I’m going to visit a boy.

If they start questioning me about that.
There are high-heeled shoes.

So very much not Finnish.
Not for living with one man.

That’s why it’s always unpleasant
to cross the border.“ }}
———

“A Russian-speaking woman crossing the border from ‘East’ to ‘West’ is interpreted as somehow suspicious; if her bags are checked
& certain items of clothing are found,
she maybe deemed s*xually unfit to enter Finland.

Although s*x work is not illegal in Finland,
entry may be denied.
The same clothing in the bag of a Finnish woman crossing in the opposite direction would probably not be interpreted in the same way.

The interviewee characterised her clothing as non-Finnish, but more tellingly she added that this was clothing deemed inappropriate for monogamy.
Previous research also documents how Eastern European women’s migration and border crossings have been represented as an inevitable path to commercial s*x.”

PDF | Drawing on two ethnographic projects, one among Russian-speaking women engaged in commercial s*x, the other among young Russian-speaking migrants... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

11/08/2022

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06/08/2022

In April this year, the police announced statistics from their latest operation and the media reported this statistics uncritically without any context or explaination- other than that provided by the police.

This is one of the ways Sweden normalises violence against us and misleads society about violence and implied or disputed acts of violence -
You will notice that the few times where s*x workers or anyone supporting our rights is given any airtime in Sweden it is only ever in letters to the editor opinion pieces which are generally disputed by people or groups - often in positions of significant power - OR it’s in news reports where the media takes their duty to provide balance very very seriously - to the point that you virtually never get to hear about s*x workers rights or s*x workers experiences which contradict the dominant ideology without it being “balanced” with equal time given to those who oppose our very existance and who focus on character attacks and specific rhetoric which sees our intentions labelled as devious, corrupted and our analysis and claims labelled as delusional and out of touch- with frequent accusations that we are running errands for pimps johns and traffickers.

The issue with balance is that there is no meta balance. Why are we or other critical comments not given equal space in articles which share the police or other authorities views - where is the balance when media reports quote organisations seeking a sweden without s*x work(ers)??

These articles about 30 of 38 clients booking women from Ukraine is a perfect example of what happens when media only reports one side. In essence the police claim to speak for all sides - and the work of certain individuals in building up this narrative of prostitution following on from war and clients allegedly seeking out women from Ukraine in order to consciously abuse their power over them is given credibility due to the lack of critical investigations and the lack of consideration regarding police conflict of interest and corruption.

For months leading up to these raids the head of Swedens police unit on prostitution has been making posts about war in Ukraine driving prostitution. No evidence has been provided in most of these posts - and many spurious claims have been made. So when news broke of so many clients being suspected or charged with s*x purchase in regards to bookings or alleged bookings with Ukrainian women it made it look like the police are knowledgeable and simply predicted what was to come. But those of us who know how police conduct themselves in such operations could see a different explaination which was not provided in the media.

It is no secret- the police have made countless comments in posts and in books and in media interviews for years about how they conduct themselves when investigating and arresting people for s*x purchase- but many people haven’t put 2+2 together…
Questions should have been asked about how this came to be- but instead the questions were put to police who deferred responsibility away from their own actions and put it on clients -
So the media reported that 30 out of 38 men chose to exploit women from Ukraine.
The head of police declared in his social media posts and in media interviews that “these men do not care”
It was argued that all of the people (“men”) arrested shared one thing in common- a self absorbed lack of empathy with the plight of vulnerable women and children.

Somehow the police managed to incite outrage against the clients - the head of police whinged on social media that the sentencing is never harsh enough in his opinion and a whole picture is constructed :
It gets to a point where the narrative approaches “criminals with no heart are mercilessly seeking out vulnerable women and girls and ra**ng them while knowing they have to sell themselves becoz they have nothing and they have fled war AND the police are trying their best but they are essentially POWERLESS TO STOP THEM!”

From here it is ALMOST understandable that some people become enraged and demand that “these people” be sent to prison.

We say ALMOST because if this were actually true then it would be understandable but the problem is of course that the reality is far from this.

Now people may question us and ask “But how do you know? Are you denying their suffering?”

The answer is no/ we are not denying anything.
To the contrary…
We are simply pointing out that if this truely is the case and police know this is the case then WHY are such cases being dealt with as “s*x purchase”?

The big issue here is that “s*x purchase” charges are meant to ONLY be possibly to apply in cases where there was not one person (or multiple people) forcing someone to be abused or exploited or forced into “s*x acts” as in s*xually abused - against their will.

Chapter 6 of the legal code explicitly states that s*x purchase charges are ONLY applicable in cases which do not fall under any charge listed prior to it in the same chapter.
Which means that as long as any case involves s*xual abuse or R**e or when any individual doesn’t take all reasonable steps to ensure the individual(s) they perform s*x acts with /on is in a state where they can give consent and where they have consented (ongoing throughout)

So why are police viewing and treating these cases as s*x purchase?
And why doesn’t the media ask this?

04/08/2022

“A mother loses custody of her kids to her violent and abusive ex.
Did the government go one step further and effectively sanction her murder?”

-Crossing the Line with M. William Phelps

Listen to this episode from Crossing the Line with M. William Phelps on Spotify. A mother loses custody of her kids to her violent and abusive ex. Did the government go one step further and effectively sanction her murder?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

12/07/2022

As people debate the proposal to narrow the possible sentencing options for the offence of paying for s*xual contacts (yes wording has changed a tad over time)
We think it’s worth looking back to 2010 just before the maximum penalty was doubled from 6 to 12 months prison..

Plus consider that since r**e laws were changed in 2018, 4/5 of the examples given below that were used to argue for increased maximum penalty have since been explicitly included in other offences listed earlier in chapter 6 of penal code. Which means that the s*x purchase offence does not apply- since it can only be applied to cases which fail to meet all of the offences listed prior to it in chapter 6. (Which includes r**e and negligent r**e and numerous offences around s*xual exploitation and abuse of children and youth)

But back to the main point- about how Sweden increased the range of penalty options for sentencing in 2012- following the 2010 “evaluation”.

As you can see below, several arguments were used…one point was that more policing could be done if penalty increases but since that is a problematic argument by itself..we will focus on the other arguments which at least have some semblance of being remotely possible to consider without automatically ringing every known alarm bell …

Consider the infamously biased 2010 so-called “evaluation”- [it’s an evaluation in the sense of: “what can we find here to help us promote the Swedish model abroad?” …rather than any kind of critical assessment of how things had turned out in practice…]
In this quality document there was a section dedicated to arguing that the “Maximum penalty for the purchase of s*xual services should be raised”

As stated in the official English translation of select parts of the “evaluation”,

“In our view, variations between different s*xual purchase offences are far too seldom taken into account when deciding on a penalty.
From the review of current practice undertaken by the Inquiry, it is clear that in some cases there is reason to take a more serious view of the offence than has been the case in practice.

Examples of such cases include
-exploitation of a person
with a psychiatric disability,
-contact being made through a
third party or an ordering service,
-exploitation of one person for several hours
by several s*x purchasers or
-exploitation of a young person or
-a person under the influence of drugs.

In our view, the current level of penalties for certain s*xual purchase offences is not proportionate to the seriousness of the crime.

There is a need to be able to make a more nuanced assessment in more serious cases of the purchase of s*xual services than is possible within the current penalty scale for the offence.

We therefore propose that the maximum penalty for the purchase of s*xual services be raised from imprisonment for 6 months to imprisonment for 1 year.”

….

Directly after this, the same “evaluation” discusses the issue of how the law is constructed in relation to who the victim is or whose interests are being protected by the s*x purchase law.

The evaluation reaches the conclusion that,
“The person exploited in prostitution may normally be considered the injured party”

How certain are they about this?
Well…not exactly 100% but probably it’s maybe possible…?
Look, there’s no reason to assume it is IMPOSSIBLE to treat the person who is paid for s*xual services as the victim of the crime of paying for s*xual services…

For anyone paying close attention to what is being written and the situation found in reality, it becomes obvious that the lack of absolute certainty around this question comes from the fact that at this point in time, after just over a decade of the s*x purchase law being enforced- there is still not even one known case where the victim of the crime is officially the person who was paid for the services. This is, to the best of our knowledge, still the case to this day. In any case the vast majority (but probably all) of charges for s*x purchase have been laid under pretence of protecting societal interests.

But the report chooses to describe things another way:

“Neither legislation nor legal doctrine offer a clear answer to the question of who is to be considered an injured party.
In our assessment, there is nothing to prevent a person who has been exploited in prostitution from having the status of injured party in proceedings concerning the purchase of s*xual services.
An examination should be undertaken in each case to determine whether the person providing the s*xual service is so directly affected by the offence that she or he should be entrusted with exercising the public function implied by a penal claim.”

The evaluation also noted:
“Our review of the judgments and summary fines imposed during the period studied shows a great deal of uniformity in terms of assessment of penal value and choice of penalty.
Since the Supreme Court examined the question of culpability in a case of the purchase of s*xual services in 2001 (NJA 2001, p. 527), more than 85 per cent of all prosecutions for individual instances of such purchases have resulted in a penalty of 50 ‘day fines’.
The offence is generally reported rather summarily, and judgments seldom refer to any extenuating or aggravating circumstances associated with the offence.

When the ban was introduced, some feared that it would be difficult to monitor compliance with the ban and to define and prove the criminal act.

However, our investigation of the application of the ban shows that, following an initial period of some uncertainty, police officers and prosecutors now consider that in general the provision works well. The prosecutors with whom the Inquiry has spoken have stated that they do not currently see any application problems directly linked to the penal provision.

Sexual purchase offences are usually considered to be easy to investigate and relatively uncomplicated to process.

There can be evidentiary problems, but almost half of the offences reported have been linked to an individual, meaning that a decision has been taken either to bring charges, impose a summary fine or grant a waiver of prosecution. This is double the number compared to other reported s*xual offences.

The uncertainties that remain when it comes to applying the provision concern whether those who have been exploited should be considered witnesses or injured parties in court proceedings, and the point in time at which an attempted offence has been committed.
It is considered difficult to prove attempted crimes, with the result that, in connection with street prostitution, the police deliberately wait until the s*xual act has begun before intervening, and the offence has thus been committed.”

27/06/2022

For those who aren’t aware of Swedish context- Göran refers to a high ranking well known policeman who was busted years ago after being found abusing children- prior to being caught committing such heinous crimes he was known as captain dress for his promotion of gender equality within police …

Not everyone would post such a letter without comment on that aspect but maybe Simon was feeling invincible as he just got some award recently as well

Ibland kommer det in brev till Polismyndigheten adresserade till mig. Inte sällan innehåller dessa brev texter från arga män som tycker att polisens arbete mot s*xhandeln är helt uppåt väggarna. Jag tänkte här dela med mig av avsändaren Dieters tankar kring vårt arbete.

”Hej (Göran) Simon Häggström! Att det är ungefär tre gånger så många som skjuts i Sverige än i Tyskland per miljon invånare förvånar mig inte alls, eftersom den svenska polisen i motsats till den tyska i stället för att bekämpa skjutvapenvåld ägnar sig åt att trakassera s*xköpare. Likaledes är jag inte alls förvånad över att det finns färre s*xköpare i Tyskland räknad per capita än i Sverige eftersom tyska kvinnor är bättre sängkamrater än svenskor och deras män ser inte någon anledning att gå till horan. Slopandet av s*xköpslagen skulle sålunda minska inte bara skjutvapenvåldet utan också s*xhandeln, eftersom kvinnorna skulle då känna sig uppmuntrade att ge sina män bättre servis just för att avhålla de att gå till horan.”

Tack för att du tog dig tiden att dela dina tankar med mig Dieter! Tyvärr lyckades du inte övertyga mig med dina argument. //Simon