Cyprus Mail reports:
A SEX WORKER in Nicosia’s old town yesterday spoke out after a heated altercation with residents and police outside her place of work on Tuesday night. “I’ve been in the business on this street for six years, and now all of a sudden the neighbours remember to get annoyed” the 49-year-old told the Cyprus Mail.
I’ve heard this excuse so many times and even used it myself a few times. But if you think about it for a second, you’d realize that it’s plain silly. If something wrong is going on and it annoys you and you don’t do anything about it for a long period of time, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do anything about it forever. There is a breaking point for everything.
“I do not bother anyone and if they do not like my line of work, then they should help me get out of it, not persecute me.”
Obviously, you do bother someone. And even though they probably should help you to get out of this line of work, they don’t have to. After all each one of them makes an effort on his own not to get into it. And each one of them succeeds, so why shouldn’t you?
Not that I have anything against this line work.
Residents complained that clients of the sex worker would often wander on the street in their underwear or completely naked, while some drunken clients would even urinate outside their doors.
“Several cars pass by every night, blowing their horns and shouting at the sex worker” said another neighbour.
There we go against “I do not bother anyone”. Maybe not you, but your clients do.
Mavrou said that the authorities had encountered serious difficulties in proving the pimping charges due to the vagueness of the current legislation on prostitution.
According to police, the legislation is unclear as to whether brothels can operate in residential areas or anywhere else, while the circumstances by which a person engages in paid sex are also vague.
That, for some reason, is my favorite bit of the article, together with this:
Nicosia’s “red light district” has been predominantly confined to three streets in the old town since the 1950s on Soutsou, Pentadaktylou and Theseos streets. The woman in question was working out of a house on Theseos Street.
It’s so nice of them to specify exactly where the “red light district” is for those of us who don’t know Nicosia highlights that well.
Nice one! Finding a new place for this woman must be now on the top of the list for the authorities. Must be part of the unclear law!
I liked this part too;
“In an effort to break the demonstration, police officers started issuing parking tickets to the residents’ cars, which were parked in the middle of the street.”
This brought some much needed money in the public sector.