Isabella Bardoel

Legal help for women in trouble

Cool response to Hookers' Hotline

TORONTO – The four women take turns. Three times a week one of them sits waiting near a phone through the long night, waiting for a call on the Hookers' Hotline.

It's a contact service of sorts for prostitutes, though not the type one would expect. Hookers' Hotline offers immediate legal help for women in trouble.

One of those waiting is Baba Yaga (not her real name), a 29-year-old former stripper and prostitute. She tells why she and three other women have chosen to spend their Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in the company of a telephone.

Somehow we have to get to women charged with soliciting before they reach the courts, she says.

With this hotline we are trying in some way to help reverse the Guilty trend in the courts — to see that women are properly represented.

By calling 923-0740 any time between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. on those nights, a woman who has been charged with a prostitution-related offence or is in other legal trouble can get immediate help.

We want to inform women of their legal rights and afford them a chance to get legal counsel so they are prepared - before they go to court — and not left to the mercy of the court's defence counsel, Miss Yaga explained in an interview yesterday.

Somehow we've got to reach them before that happens — because it usually ends up in a guilty plea and a conviction. That doesn't have to be the case.

Last year, 766 men and women in the City of Toronto were charged with soliciting. First offences are usually dealt with by imposing probation or a suspended sentence followed by fines of about $50 to $100 for further offences. Only after several convictions is an offender sent to jail — for perhaps two weeks, although the sentence may be for as much as three months after many offences.

The Committee Against Street Harassment and the Toronto Elizabeth Fry Society, two non-profit groups, believe that 90 per cent of all these cases are given fines or probation. They decided to work together on the hotline. Through it they hope to reach women who may benefit from the various legal and personal help programs they offer in the courts and jails and on the streets.

For a first offence a woman cannot get legal aid under the law as it now stands, explained Wendy Hughes, 25, program director for the society. That's one of the biggest problems we are faced with. They show up at court, have a five-minute talk with a court defence counsel and usually plead guilty. That on-the-spot defence counselling is useless, and also largely responsible for the high conviction rate.

Besides getting legal counsel for those who need it before they go to court, we know some lawyers who are willing to go to the actual police lockup on the night of the arrest.

If the women would just call us when they get a chance to make that one phone call, they can be put in touch with legal help by volunteers trained in crisis counselling, Miss Hughes said.

For those who call but are not in immediate trouble, there is a free legal clinic every Thursday night at the society's headquarters on Wellesley Street East. Still, if women who need help don't want to appear personally, they can call the same number during the day for legal help over the phone.

Although the service has been available all summer, the two women admit there have been problems reaching those who need it most.

We depend on community service announcements leaflets passed on the street and word of mouth, Miss Yaga explained.

We even pass out our leaflets in women's washrooms. But when we went into the bars downtown — that's where we ran into a lot of problems. There is great hostility there to us — from owners and prostitutes. On one occasion we were thrown out of a downtown hotel.

Despite an energetic campaign, the phone the phone calls are still just trickling in. Miss Yaga attributes this to the negative attitude of the public to the whole subject of prostitution and the prostitutes' fear of coming out of the closet.

If we can't reach the women who need it, the program is useless.