R.I. House committee votes for bill offering immunity to sex workers – The Boston Globe

PROVIDENCE — The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday voted for a bill that could provide immunity for sex workers who witness certain crimes, including prostitution, if they agree to try to cooperate with police investigations.

Some said the bill could also impede criminal investigations into prostitution and sex trafficking, and are concerned it could be a step toward returning Rhode Island to a time when prostitution was legal.

But the House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously for the bill, which now heads to the House floor for a vote.

Committee Chairman Robert E. Craven Jr., a North Kingstown Democrat, said, “The purpose of this proposed statute is to protect a woman who may have been a witness to a crime of greater severity and might not otherwise want to cooperate due to liability from prostitution or other related activities.”

Representative Edith H. Ajello, the Providence Democrat who introduced bill, said, “It also would allow a sex worker who was a victim of a crime perpetrated by would-be john — perhaps robbed, or perhaps beaten, or perhaps both — it would make that individual able to report the crime and the crime be prosecuted,” and that sex worker would be “protected from that evil-deed doer without fear of herself being charged with prostitution and sentenced to six months or a year in prison.”

The bill, H7165, was lobbied for by an out-of-state nonprofit group called Decriminalize Sex Work, which was founded by Robert Kampia with the mission “to end the prohibition of consensual adult prostitution — and to improve the policies relating to other forms of sex work — in the United States.”

And on Tuesday, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation produced a legal analysis, saying the bill contains a loophole that could be used to protect pimps, sex traffickers, and sex buyers.

The center’s vice president of public policy, Eleanor Gaetan, cited a section that would give immunity any person who “witnesses” or “becomes aware that another person was a victim of a crime” and reports it.

That language would “allow a pimp or trafficker to claim he became aware that a person in prostitution became the victim of a crime — and get off the hook for engaging in trafficking,” Gaetan wrote. “In short,” she said, that language “gives bad actors a ‘get out of jail free card’ for no good purpose.”

Gaetan called for eliminating that language, and said, “This would advance justice for trafficking victims by not providing immunity from prosecution for clever or lawyered up traffickers.”

— Amanda Milkovits of the Globe R.I. staff contributed to this report.

Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.