This article was published more than 22 years ago. Some information may no longer be current. With their promises of a good time with sweet Myriam, sensual Betsy or Gina the beautiful transsexual, classified ads for escort services have mushroomed in recent years in newspapers from Vancouver to Halifax.
In Montreal, police believe things are getting out of control, so members of the organized-crime division are visiting local periodicals, urging them to reconsider running escort agency ads. They are warning the ads could leave periodicals open to solicitation charges. He said police have received conflicting legal advice on whether the papers are publishing something illegal. The act of prostitution in Canada is not against the law, but solicitation -- communicating to trade sexual favours for money -- is illegal.
But others, who are well-versed in the issue, are convinced it's possible," Insp. Frenette said. In , Toronto police laid 14 counts of communicating for the purpose of prostitution against NOW magazine over ads in its classified section.
Three weeks later, the Crown's office dropped the charges. In Montreal, ads for escort agencies run in a variety of publications, from mainstream dailies to alternative weeklies and crime tabloids. At the daily La Presse, Philippe-Denis Richard, the legal-affairs vice-president, said the newspaper has yet to see police make a case that those classifieds are against the law. The increase in ads for escort agencies reflects the growth in off-the-street prostitution, which some consider a less-dangerous form of the sex trade.
Frenette said, however, that escort agencies sometimes use minors and are often fronts for organized crime. Newspapers say they screen the ads' content and require that the client be a legally registered company, which explains the proliferation in local papers of ads from "Valerie Reg. Beautiful transsexual, big functional breasts, ready for anything," one recent ad read.
