Women Affairs

Deborah Jeane Palfrey while awaiting sentencing for running a prostitution ring catering to Washington's elite has been found dead in a storage shed at her mother's home in Florida. Police in the Gulf Coast town of Tarpon Springs said the 76-year-old mother of Deborah Jeane Palfrey woke from a short nap and began to search for her daughter. She found Palfrey's body in the shed next to her mobile home, police said. "Hand-written notes were found on scene that describe the victim's intention to take her life, and foul play does not appear to be involved," Captain Jeffrey Young said. Palfrey, 52, was found guilty last month of running an escort service that earned her at least $US2 million ($2.12 million). She had not yet been sentenced but media reports said she could have faced up to 50 years in prison. The scandal over the woman dubbed "the DC madam" ensnared Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, whose number was discovered in her telephone r...

Minna and Fariba are neighbours and good friends. They support one another. Both have to live under the pervasive curtailment of women's rights and the double standards of today's Iranian society. They make a living walking the streets looking for men. They have a choice between leaving their small children at home alone or bringing them along when they have sex with men. The film is a sympathetic portrait of the two women, exploring their day-to-day life and the workings of prostitution in a country that bans it and prosecutes adulterers, sometimes with the penalty of capital punishment. Many of the clients find a way to buy sex and still comply with Muslim law: they marry the women in what is called 'Sighe', a temporary marriage sanctioned in Shia Islam. Sighe can last from two hours up to 99 years. Both Minna and Fariba enter into Sighe with clients, and Fariba is in a Sighe marriage with a neighbour, Habib, that lasts six months. Giving his perspective on temporary ...

Geesche Jacobsen A MAN has been accused of forcing his new Egyptian wife to work in a brothel so he could buy a flat, before sending her back home empty-handed. When the man, FS, brought his bride to Sydney in July 2000 after an arranged marriage in Cairo, he told her she would help him pay back money for her visa, a jury has been told. The woman, now 27, has told the District Court that soon after she arrived he took her to the Hideaway Brothel in Banksia. "You're going to stay here and you're going to do whatever they ask you," he had told her. She said she did not speak any English and did not understand what was happening. She objected but she said he told her he knew members of the Mafia, so she was frightened. FS is charged with procuring his wife as a prostitute and keeping her in sexual servitude. When she got pregnant, FS allegedly forced her to have an abortion, and she was told to go back to work at the brothel after a few weeks. She also told the court, th...

Wendy Ellis, a former New Orleans prostitute who will be featured in Larry Flynt's Hustler magazine appeared at his office Tuesday to accuse Sen. David Vitter of having a sexual relationship with her in 1999. Wendy Ellis told reporters that Vitter visited her two to three times a week for sexual relations between July and November 1999. Flynt produced parts of an Aug. 22 polygraph test that he said confirmed her account, but Ellis could provide no financial records, photographs or other evidence to support her assertion that the Louisiana Republican was a client during that time. Vitter has denied those claims. "I want the truth to be known," Ellis said. "It was a pure sexual relationship. He would come in and do his business." Story Continues Below Ellis declined to comment when asked if she was being paid or reimbursed for her statement regarding Vitter, but she later said she would appear in Hustler magazine in January. She would not say if she is bein...

In an attempt to escape poverty, women in China are increasingly turning to prostitution and competition for clients has reportedly resulted in lower pay and more dangerous conditions for China's estimated ten-million sex workers. Although prostitution is technically illegal in China, freelance sex workers operate openly throughout the country at every level of society, the International Herald Tribune reports. They work in bars and state-owned hotels as well as in poor neighborhoods. Although open prostitution in China is common today, it was nearly nonexistent a quarter of a century ago, reports Asian studies scholar Jinghao Zhou in China: an International Journal. The recent resurgence of prostitution, he says, comes from economic changes that have taken place in China over the last three decades -- rapid urbanization due to globalization, and the reform of China's market economy. Sociology and AIDS Policy Professor Jing Jun told the Washington Post that China's thrivin...

Many Asian women in Bahrain are being duped into working as sex slaves for men who lure them with promises of marriage, according to Thai Ambassador Phithak Phrombubpha. He says victims are put up in apartments and visited once a week by their boyfriends, who brainwash them into believing they will eventually live together and start a family. Mr Phrombubpha said women who want to escape are powerless to act as their passports are confiscated and once their visit visas expire they become illegal residents who rack up huge overstay fines that they have no means to pay. His comments come after one victim of human trafficking, who managed to escape from her captor, came to the embassy seeking help. The 25-year-old, whose identity is being protected, is being kept in an emergency accommodation in Zinj until she flies home on Friday. "These people come to Bahrain because of an economic problem and they want to earn money," Mr Phrombubpha told the GDN. "People recruit them by ...

It was midnight and I was coming back from the party, the celebration of my sister's birthday. I needed to buy some water. Asked the taxi driver to stop on the crossing of Sovietskaya and Toktogula street. What I saw absolutely shocked me. I never witnessed it from such a close distance. A bunch of extremely young girls in revealing, short dresses and excessive make-up gathered in front of an internet cafe "Alfa" and were having vulgar chats and selling themselves in the sex trade. The whole situation reminded me of one young girl who once came from a small and remote village to the capital in the search of a better life. She was so young and unexperienced in life that she did not notice that one day the profession she had was the 'oldest profession' as it has been dubbed. But she never considered herself as a prostitute, or a sex-worker. She said it perfectly suits her as she likes her way of life. Her parents have no suspicion about their daughter's way of ...