Guest Blog Post: Reblaw Panelist Veronica Monet

Below is a guest post by Veronica Monet, Certified Sexologist (ACS) and Sex Educator (SFSI), Ordained Minister (ULC) Trained for the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence (CARDV), and Author of Veronica Monet's Sex Secrets of Escorts (Alpha Books 2005). She is a panelist on this year's Reblaw panel, "Sex Sells, But Should We Sell Sex?"


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After I graduated with honors from Oregon State University I headed south to California to embark on my corporate career. I worked a desk job for a telecommunications firm and was quickly promoted to office manager. I would make a few lateral moves to other companies in Silicon Valley over the next several years eventually landing a job as a marketing representative for a radio station. Seven years after receiving my college diploma and despite numerous certificates, awards and other forms of recognition, I was still making a pitiful salary. My next move would shock many.

If I had not met a beautiful redhead in a red Mercedes convertible, I probably would not have embarked upon this next chapter in my life. But she was beautiful and she had a ton of money and I found myself seduced in more ways than one. Married with three children, Heather defied the stereotypes about prostitutes. She approached escorting like any other small business and even paid her quarterly taxes. I was impressed and I wanted to learn everything she knew. I asked her to train me. This fact alone was a bit unnerving. After all, I had a college degree and seven years in corporate jobs. What on earth could a prostitute teach me?

Fortunately, I knew instinctively that I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to conduct business in her profession so I didn’t even attempt it without the benefit of her years of experience. There was plenty to learn not the least of which was safety. She taught me the tricks of the trade which make safer sex hot and erotic. She taught me how to screen the phone calls so I only saw the good clients. And most importantly she taught me how to avoid arrest. Turned out that vice cops were rather obvious in their demeanor and not all that difficult to weed out from the legitimate customers.

My life as a high-end escort was like a fairy tale in many ways. I dated some amazing men for very large sums of money and I was treated like a princess at every turn. Dining at five star restaurants and staying in the finest hotels, I flew from city to city to meet my high powered clientele. I eventually married and continued to work as a courtesan while I lived the typical quiet suburban life. My husband and I traveled the world to exotic scuba destinations. We enjoyed a particularly memorable diving excursion to Papua New Guinea but the Caribbean was also a favorite stop.
And then it happened. After working in the prostitution profession for twelve years without a single negative experience except the occasional bore or clod, I accepted an outcall to the home of a serial rapist.

He seemed nice enough at first but it quickly became apparent that he had a mental disorder and was imbalanced. I knew that meant he could be dangerous so I smiled and took his phony check even though I didn’t accept checks from first time customers. It was too late though. As I scanned the apartment I realized that all the windows and doors had bars on them and locked with a key only. Without the key I was trapped. And I knew there was no way he was going to let me go until he got what he wanted.

I was one of the lucky ones. I managed to get him to wear a condom and when he was done, I got the hell out of there and made a bee line to the bank to confirm my suspicions that it was indeed a bad check that he had passed me. The bank manager told me this man was passing about 20 bad checks every month! I asked her why she allowed him to continue to bank with her branch and that was when I was asked to leave the bank.

So he was obviously inviting a lot of prostitutes to his apartment every month and forcing his fake checks and his fat self on them before they were allowed to leave. This man was committing rape, false imprisonment and fraud. Surely the authorities would want to know.

But I was afraid to report him because I knew the police would probably arrest me for prostitution. So I contacted a women’s organization and asked them to help me convince the Oakland police to take my rape report without arresting me. They wrote a series of letters imploring them to get their priorities straight but the Oakland PD refused.

So the rapist continued to rape and just three weeks after he raped me, he stabbed an eighteen year old girl in the face. She was too traumatized to report it to the authorities let alone testify.

I couldn’t believe the police would rather put me in jail for a misdemeanor than get off their lazy buts and find this violent criminal who was committing felonies. The only reason the cops didn’t care was because his victims were prostitutes. That made me very angry.

So I kept working the angles over the next three years and couldn’t catch a break until I met Robyn Few. She had just founded the Sex Worker Outreach Project in San Francisco/Berkeley. She was quite adept at political activism and when I told her about this serial rapist who was still at large and preying on sex workers, she didn’t hesitate to get involved.

Robyn Few used her connections with the press to pressure then Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown to pursue the case. I finally got to give my deposition without going to jail in the process. Of course that didn’t exactly induce the authorities to pull out all the stops to apprehend the perpetrator. They made a lame attempt but gave up pretty quickly. And thanks to the three year delay, his trail had gone cold anyway.

I wish this case was an isolated one. But it happens every day of the week. Laws against prostitution make it unlikely that prostitutes will report their rapes or assaults and so violent criminals are allowed to run free. Perfecting their techniques while they bolster their courage, perpetrators often use prostitutes as practice victims until they get brave enough to start raping and/or killing college coeds and other women our culture deems worthy of protection. The whole system is corrupt. Since when do we as a culture condone designating certain citizens as legitimate targets for rape and murder? Although the law doesn’t spell it out that way, it IS the end result. Prohibition always leads to an underground culture where laws are impossible to enforce. Police priorities only exacerbate the situation.

Of course the irony is that the laws against prostitution are touted as some type of protection for the prostitutes. Proponents of laws against prostitution will tell you that women who work as prostitutes are at risk and need to be rescued. But the very laws which are purported to benefit prostitutes only serve to degrade, stigmatize and marginalize prostitutes while their attackers go free.