This is not a legal problem. This is not a problem statutory reform can solve. Her work was legal where she was doing it. She was a service provider engaged in a lawful business enterprise, not meaningfully legally different from a masseuse or a personal trainer or a manicurist, for these purposes. Her work puts her in close contact with customers to whom she provides services. Nothing about that implies that she waives her basic human rights to do her job.
And this is not an enforcement problem. The police made an arrest and the prosecutors brought the case. The judge didn’t throw it out. The case went all the way to a jury.
This is a cultural problem. He admitted he pinned her down, he admitted he covered her mouth, he admitted that he put his penis inside her with no condom … and a jury of ordinary citizens acquitted him anyway. I can’t see any way that happens unless they simply decided that they are so biased against sex workers that they think sex workers deserve to be raped when doing their job.
