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By Ella Smook
Metro Writer
The city has found a unique weapon in its fight against prostitution - a former brothel owner who last hit the headlines when she took her attempts to have prostitution legalised all the way to the Constitutional Court.
Ellen Jordan, who lost R3,2-million and was bankrupted by her fruitless efforts to have the country's prostitution laws declared unconstitutional seven years ago, has since switched sides and will now be advising the city on the ins and outs of the industry.
Reports during her court case in 2002 dubbed her "the Madam of South Africa", but Jordan said yesterday she had changed and now believed the sex industry was exploitative and women were driven to it through lack of choice.
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Dissenting from the majority judgment which found prostitution laws were not unconstitutional, justices Kate O'Regan and Albie Sachs said that making prostitutes the main offenders and their pimps mere accomplices, reinforced sexual double standards and perpetuated gender stereotypes.
Councillor JP Smith echoed this position yesterday, saying the city would in future focus less on law enforcement targeting prostitutes and more on enforcement targeting their clients - including cracking down on strip clubs, brothels and pimps.
But he said the city, in conjunction with religious bodies, would focus most of its efforts on setting up structures to provide a way out for sex workers.
Speaking at a press conference following a meeting with the Family Policy Institute, Jordan and Doctors for Life International representative Abraham Warren, Smith said there were not enough places of safety in the city, and the matter would be urgently addressed.
Social workers would also be accompanying vice squads in future, he said.
Jordan said she believed the city was doing "the right thing" in helping "girls" who were "lost" and "exploited" because they saw "no other alternative, no other way".
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