Three Articles

* MDs urged to battle prostitution laws

* Limo driver lured girls to sex ring, police say -- Charged with prostitution of 15-year-olds

* A confederation of Angels: One man's dream come true -- The Hells Angels only in Canada

---

MDs urged to battle prostitution laws

MDs urged to battle prostitution laws Margaret Munro, CanWest, July 20, 2004

Canada's leading medical journal is urging doctors to lobby the federal government to change Canada's "hypocritical" prostitution laws.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal says current laws favour people buying sex and high-end escort services, while street prostitutes are put at risk.

"Physicians should urge federal politicians to repeal all prostitution laws" and start over in a bid to reduce the harm and deaths associated with the sex trade, the journal's editors write in today's issue.

The editorial, accompanied by a commentary by prostitution expert John Lowman of Simon Fraser University, deplores the hypocrisy of the "two-tier sex trade" that now exists in Canada -- the off-street licensed trade and the black-market street trade. [. . . . ]

Mr. Lowman, who has studied prostitution since 1977, says "we need to create viable opportunities for people to leave prostitution if they so choose, and we need to get prostitution off the street so children and youths cannot be lured into it, unaware of what they are getting into. In the short term, we need to figure out where adult prostitution can occur in a way that minimizes health risks."

He says reconvening the parliamentary committee on prostitution law reform is an "indispensable first step" in developing policies to address the plight of street prostitutes. The committee was dissolved before the election.

Limo driver lured girls to sex ring, police say -- Charged with prostitution of 15-year-olds

Limo driver lured girls to sex ring, police say -- Charged with prostitution of 15-year-olds Siri Agrell, National Post, July 19, 2004

TORONTO - Manicures, makeup and dinners out were the rewards four 15-year-old Ontario girls received after being allegedly being forced into a prostitution ring by a 61-year-old limousine driver.

Peel Regional police arrested a Brampton man last week after receiving a complaint from one of the girls, who detectives say were rented out to stag parties.

The man had apparently met the teens, three from London and one from Mississauga, on an Internet chat site where he had advertised for models.

When the girls arrived in Brampton, police allege he put them to work as prostitutes, driving them to stag parties after receiving orders on his cellphone, and waiting for them outside in his airport limousine. [. . . . ]

It is not illegal to have consensual sex with a 15-year-old, but paying for such services is a crime.

Piara Marok has been charged with obtaining juvenile prostitution and will appear in court on Aug. 9.

A confederation of Angels: One man's dream come true -- The Hells Angels only in Canada

A confederation of Angels: One man's dream come true Globe and Mail, Biker Series, Tu Thanh Ha, July 19, 2004

MONTREAL -- Walter Stadnick had a dream.

[. . . . ] "The Hells Angels only, throughout Canada, with no other biker clubs," Stéphane Sirois recalled Mr. Stadnick saying.

The gang's hold over the country would be so strong that the bikers' "bottom rockers" -- patches on the back bottom of their vests that show which province or city they represent -- would say only "Canada," Mr. Stadnick told him.

At the time of that 1996 conversation, the gang had chapters in Nova Scotia, Quebec and British Columbia. The Prairies and the rich Ontario market remained out of reach.

But less than five years later, local bikers in both areas had "patched over." Ontario alone was suddenly home to one of the world's largest concentrations of Hells Angels.

Mr. Stadnick's dream was reality.

Walter (Nurget) Stadnick, 51, born Wolodumyr Stadnik, is a secretive man little known to the public. But as architect of that great expansion, he is one of Canada's most pivotal organized-crime figures.

His recent trial in Montreal gave a rare look at his life and the gang's inner workings. It showed how he and his Hells Angels sidekick Donald (Pup) Stockford -- two English-speakers in the sea of francophones who formed the gang's power base in Quebec -- were behind the arrival in Ontario of the world's mightiest biker gang.