Police raids at 10.45 in the morning are not common in the sleepy cul-de-sac of Chalton Heights, Bedfordshire. When the banging on the door began, Claire Finch was getting ready to have a bath. Although the small massage parlour she ran from her home was not yet open, she headed downstairs in her dressing gown.
Before she could reach the door reserved for her clients, several police officers kicked it in. Outside, 20 others had surrounded the house with four cars, three vans and a team of sniffer dogs. The 49-year-old was arrested and charged with brothel keeping, a crime under the Sexual Offences Act of 1956 that carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years.
“We thought of ourselves as calendar girls,” says Finch today, sitting in her lounge as she describes the parlour where six middle-aged women, two or three working at any one time, sold massages with “happy endings”. The prosecution’s view was less rose-tinted. Although women are legally entitled to sell sex individually, if they club together they risk a charge of brothel keeping for whoever has their name on the lease. “We weren’t worried though,” she continues, gesturing with an immaculately manicured hand. “A blind eye has been turned for so many years. You only have to open a paper to see the ads stating ‘Choice of eight ladies’.”
“We weren’t women doing drugs on street corners or even Belle de Jour, nipping off to Italy on the weekend. We were just middle-aged ladies trying to pay the mortgage,” she says.
The jury, it seemed, sympathised with her. Despite the legislation, Finch was cleared of keeping a brothel last month. Three of her neighbours, including an 87-year-old woman testified on her behalf in court, while another sent a letter of support. They told the jury that Finch was a decent member of the community who cared for an ill and incontinent neighbour and would look after their children in an emergency.
As the verdict was read out, Finch remembers seeing her daughter, neighbours and friends in tears. “It was a wonderful moment winning that case. Better than winning the lottery,” she says. “I was ecstatic. The whole place erupted . . . the policewoman squeezed my hand. Even the judge was smiling.”
“The question is whether it was in the public interest to prosecute the matter in the first instance,” says Finch’s solicitor, Stephen Halloran. “Parliament really needs to look at changing the law if a jury has lost confidence in something that’s more than 50 years old.”
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life ... 125757.ece
When is a brothel not a brothel?
When is a brothel not a brothel?
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”