The West's journo's did a great job last week identifying (from the map provided) over 50 illegal brothels operating in suburban areas of Perth ("Unlawful Brothels Flourish in Suburbs" 23/5).

We were even given a lot of worrying details about the nature of some operators.  The West's investigators found "some "facilitators"offering a range of Asian women from a single address".  

Perth brothel madam Beverley Clarke was quoted as warning that these "so called "Asian Houses" were opening at an alarming rate.  In some cases girls were living in the ceilings of houses and were crammed together" and that criminal operators can esablish a brothel "right next door to your grandmother or someone with children."

Perth MLA John Hyde also stated he had been informed of many brothels establishing in suburbs and that some of these operators "were carrying out unsafe sex practices and offering unsafe sex".

Unfortunately this report did not give much hope of anything being done soon about these criminal activities.  The best Attorney General Christian Porter could offer is that he "is working towards delivering the Governments election promise to ban prostitution outside designated zones".  As successive WA Governments have been "working towards" controlling the WA brothel trade for decades with no noticable results this is not very encouraging! 

We have to ask what the West Australian newspaper is going to do about the 100's of illegal brothel operators advertising in their classifieds columns each week? After all, the West's own journo's are telling them that, of the more then 100 prostitutes advertising in the West's classifieds that they phoned up for their survey, many were operating illegally from suburban homes, appeared to be immigrant women controlled by pimps, or may be offering unsafe sex practices.  Is the West going to stop advertising these highly suspect businesses as a result of their own survey?  Are they going to communicate the details of their findings to the police and follow up any action taken? It seems the West would have to forfeit a significant proportion of the advertising revenue it receives from prostitutes if it was to respond responsibly to its own survey findings! 

Brothel keeping or "keeping a premises for the purposes of prostitution" is supposedly an offence liable to up to 3 years jail under current WA law but police rarely even attempt to enforce this law though suburban brothels advertise their services  openly in community newspapers. 

Brothel madams like Ms Clarke, who openly talk in the media about their business interests in prostitution, complaining (in this report) about a "decline" in her business because "too many girls have been allowed to work privately" face no criminal charges, though they are obviously also committing the offence of "living off the earnings of prostitution".