Can a contract between two people providing for reimbursement for sexual services be legal? That’s one of the questions the small claims court must answer in a case in which a 77-year-old client is suing a companion to whom he loaned $20,000 to get out of his situation.
Published at 12:58 am. Updated at 05:00.
“It is a very touching story, full of sadness on both sides,” said Judge Sophie Lapierre as she opened the trial on November 9 at the Sherbrooke Courthouse. “But we clarify what is important on a legal level: Was there a loan? Is it valid? And was there a receipt? », summarized the judge.
The case comes months after a Nova Scotia Small Claims Court judge ordered a man to pay a sex worker $1,800 for sexual services he did not pay for. This decision is considered a first in the Canadian justice system.
In this new case, the plaintiff is Serge*, a man who had dozens of paid relationships with a sex worker who then worked under the name “Léonie.”
Serge says he was the victim of “psychological and financial abuse” after lending more than $20,000 to the woman, who became her “friend and client” over the course of their meetings.
He is seeking $15,000 from her, the maximum allowed in small claims court, for amounts she has not reimbursed him.
A “dream night clause”
Serge began lending money to the woman when she told him she wanted to leave the world of prostitution. After taking out a car loan and a personal loan in the woman’s name, Serge had her sign various acknowledgments of debt, formal contracts that called for repayment of $487 per month. “I had the contract prepared by a notary so that it complied with the Civil Code,” Serge confirmed in court.
Serge claims that from that moment on, their relationship no longer had the character of a client-escort relationship: “It was over, we were friends,” he claimed, but admitted that he had “like damn six or seven really intimate meetings.” Friends” had. In doing so, he deducted $200 from the amount the defendant owed him.
An addendum to a debt acknowledgment agreement that the woman submitted as evidence provided for reimbursement “in kind” of $200 per appointment. “There will be a minimum of 2 meetings and a maximum of 4 per month,” says the document, which also details the terms of a “dream night clause” in which the woman agreed to spend one night a year with Serge.
“Void, absolute nullity”
In her defense, the woman argued that this appendix makes the contract “null, absolutely null”, since it concerns advance payments for sexual services that are criminal in nature, prohibited by law or contrary to public order.
During the trial, Judge Lapierre asked Serge several times whether he had agreed with the woman to arrange other forms of reimbursement “in kind.”
It was I who made the decision on my own to get rid of her debts, knowing that she wasn’t working, didn’t have a job, and that she was in financial trouble.
serge
When the woman ended up in a shelter for abused women because of personal problems that had nothing to do with her relationship with Serge, Serge finally signed a release form and freed her from debts. He claims he did it because a friend of Léonie’s told him that Léonie would commit suicide if he didn’t pay off the debt, which the woman strongly denies.
“I was stabbed, cheated,” Serge pleaded before the judge. It was I who took her out of her environment. I paid for his electricity. I have always been in good faith. »
Serge had a representative from DIRA-Estrie, an organization that helps seniors who are victims of abuse, testify and say that the fear that the woman would commit suicide had caused her great distress.
Issues related to consent
The Concertation of Struggles Against Sexual Exploitation (CLES), an organization that opposes the legalization of prostitution, is struggling to explain how such a contract could end up in court. “It’s like she [l’escorte] had no right to get out of this relationship. It is the same type of control as domestic violence,” comments Jenny-Laure Sully, spokesperson for the organization.
Without commenting directly on the cause, the organization Stella, which represents sex workers, reiterates that it is not uncommon for women in the same situation to be “cornered” by clients who threaten to use the courts to get them to do so to force the provision of sexual services.
“Sex work remains completely criminalized in Canada,” emphasizes Executive Director Sandra Wesley. “It creates a playing field large enough to harm us, for example by threatening to report us to the owner of our home, to our parents” or to any other person in a position of authority, she complains.
*We are not naming the woman involved in this case because she is the mother of a minor child. For reasons of fairness, we have also decided to withhold the man’s name.