Prostitute Sees Sex Trade Hope for Jobless
BERLIN Jan 31 (Reuters) - A celebrated Berlin prostitute said Monday that German job center advisers shouldn't shy away from offering jobs in the sex industry to the long-term unemployed.
Molly Luft, who sold her famous Berlin brothel two months ago and now runs a bar in the city's lively Kreuzberg district, said the sex industry was always looking for new recruits.
"Why shouldn't they send the unemployed to work in the sex industry? Before it was a gray zone, but now employees are insured and receive benefits," Luft told Reuters. "People would no longer be unemployed and could earn themselves a living."
Most business sectors in Germany are shedding workers, and unemployment is expected to exceed five million, nearly 11 percent of the workforce, in January for the first time since reunification in 1990.
German sex workers have been on a par with any other employee since the government legalized prostitution in 2001. They are entitled to social security benefits and pay taxes.
Registered brothel keepers also believe they have a right to seek new staff through job centers and have been scouring job seekers' databases for suitable matches.
"I was always looking for workers over 30 years in the trade. People aren't willing to work very much but they expect to earn a lot of money," Luft said.
A spokesman for the Federal Labor Office said that if job seekers said they were prepared to work as, for example, dancers in strip bars, advisers could put them in touch with any suitable employers, but vacancies would not be displayed in job centers.
He also stressed job centers would not look for prostitutes on behalf of brothels, nor offer sex industry jobs to people who hadn't specifically mentioned it as an area of interest.
Speculation has grown over recent weeks that Germany's new welfare reforms, obliging the long-term unemployed to take any available job or risk losing their benefits, could lead to women being offered jobs in the sex industry.
"One can't expect everyone to be prepared to work in the sex industry," Luft said. "Plus if people aren't very attractive they aren't going to make much money," she added.
The Master of His Domain....
OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian who masturbated at a window in his house won his appeal against a conviction for indecency on Thursday after Canada's top court ruled there was no evidence of intent to commit an indecent act, and a home was not a public place.
The Supreme Court of Canada noted that British Columbian, Daryl Clark, had agreed it was an indecent act to have masturbated "in an illuminated room near an uncovered window visible to neighbors."
But Justice Morris Fish, writing the 9-0 decision, said such acts have to be done in public places to be a crime -- and a home was not a public place.
The law also says indecent acts are only crimes in every location if the person intends to give offense.
Clark was convicted of an indecent act in a public place and given a four-month sentence after a prosecution that followed complaints from his neighbor, named in court documents only as Mrs. S.
The woman said she spotted Clark while she was watching television with her two young daughters in their family room.
She alerted her husband, and the couple observed Clark from their darkened bedroom for 10 or 15 minutes -- also using binoculars and a telescope -- before summoning the police, who said the upper part of Clark's body was visible from just below the navel.
"In my respectful view, the trial judge ... erred in concluding that the appellant's living room had been converted by him into a public place simply because he could be seen through his living room window and, though he did not know this, was being watched by Mr. and Mrs. S. from the privacy of their own bedroom 90 to 150 feet away," Fish wrote.
If it bothered them so much, why did they watch for so long?
The Porn Tape on the Bus Goes Round and Round
ATHENS (Reuters) - A bus driver shuttling pupils to school in northern Greece shocked their parents when he put on a porn tape, officials said on Thursday.
The incident on Tuesday in the town of Kilkis prompted dozens of complaints by parents who have asked the bus company to fire him.
"The driver said 'kids we've got porn, do you want to watch it'," one of the pupils told reporters. "Everyone started shouting yes, yes and he just put in a tape and we watched it on the small TV screens on the bus."
The children were aged 12 to 15.
The bus company will meet on Friday to decide what action to take against the driver, local government officials said.
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