In the lap of the courts

You’d have to feel sorry for the Gardai. So much to do and so little time to do it. Just picture the scene in and around Pearse Street station...

A little bit further on out the road, a black English tourist is being abused and threatened by local louts. On nearby O’Connell Street, a junkie is brandishing a syringe at a 60 year-old woman at a bus stop and snatching her handbag. On Summerhill, there’s a car-full of youths, six of them, and they’re going to a party, bottles of Bud in their hands – they’ve been drinking since three in the afternoon, including the driver, and it’s now past 11pm, and the man behind the wheel is finding it hard to look, never mind drive, straight.

Rise up over the city a little bit, and you get a fuller picture. There’s a bloke getting a battering outside a bar in Inchicore. In Ballyfermot, three balaclava’d lads have decided that the local chipper can afford to donate a few bob to their mutual benevolent fund, and they’re smashing glass and pulling knives to make their feelings clear.

On the coast road, going towards Sutton, a car has careened out of control into a bus stop, taking a cyclist with it. In Donaghmede, a bloke whose girlfriend has been making eyes at another guy all night has decided to take matters into his own hands and he’s whacked her across the head once, twice, three times. Now, her nose is bleeding.

In Killinarden, a car is being stolen. The door has been forced and the boys are climbing in, ready to gun it, in through Tallaght and onto the M50 at Spawell. Up in the Square, three gougers have smashed the window of another parked car and they are removing the contents from the boot.

In Pearse Street, meanwhile, they have more important things on their mind. They are planning a major sting. They have targeted a lapdancing club, where they have reason to believe that immoral acts are taking place...

During the week, newspapers carried reports of a raid on Dublin’s self-styled ‘Premium Gentleman’s Club’, the Barclay Club. If nothing more serious than the gaiety of the nation had been at stake, then a good night’s work was indeed done by all.

The gardai arrived at the club to carry out an inspection. They were accompanied on their tour of duty by the manager of the club, a Mr. Gerry Harrington. They entered a ‘private room’ in the club, where the Gardai said that they saw three customers being entertained by three exotic dancers. Among the exotic dancers was a naked performer, by the name of Lauren Langley, who was being ‘groped’ by a customer.

The customer in question, an English financial services worker by the name of Paul Greenhalgh, gave evidence that the dancer had been startled by the yellow jackets worn by the Gardai. She had fallen as a result, and he had merely put his hand up to prevent her from injury.

The Garda evidence, however, was that Mr. Greenhalgh was seen caressing Lauren Langley’s breasts, buttocks and genital area.

On the face of it, it seemed like an open and shut case: the Gardai had walked in on a bit of live sex action and, bravehearts that they are, they had lived not just to tell the tale but to object to the renewal of the Barclay Club’s licence. But the club manager did not go down, as it were, without a fight. He was, he insisted, aghast when asked if he was running a brothel. He contested the evidence given by the Gardai, on the basis that the customer “would need to have been an octopus” to do what they had suggested.

The judge believed the cops. It was clear to him that a sexual act was taking place and – therefore – that there was not adequate supervision of what went on in the room. The court report made for immensely amusing reading. But the question which remained after the mirth had subsided was an old one: what the fuck is the State doing becoming involved in things that consenting adults get up to in their ‘private rooms’? And why is the machinery of State – and the time and money it costs to operate it – being wasted on trivial and stupid cases of this nature?

I have no idea whether or not the Barclay Club is a glorified brothel. But if acts of a ‘sexual nature’ did not happen there, it would be very strange indeed – the women who work in the Barclay are, after all, paid to act in a sexually provocative manner, and in doing so to extract the maximum amount of loot, both for themselves and for the club, from the (mostly but not necessarily exclusively male) clientele.

Frankly, I just don’t get it, as a form of either entertainment or pleasure. The point, however, is that if people get their kicks out of doing that kind of thing, let them. And if they want to go a bit further, and actually engage in coitus, or oral sex, or whatever else tickles their fancy, then that’s the prerogative of the individuals involved as well. Or it should be.

It is absurd for the State to want to be involved in transactions of this kind between individuals – or indeed between groups. This sort of legislative interference is a ridiculous vestige of Victorian pseudo-morality that should have been jettisoned long ago. But as long as the law prohibits brothel-keeping, or makes prostitution illegal, then the cops will go on busting people – and taking up what we all assume to be the valuable time of the courts in the process. It’s one of the less dangerous and unpleasant tasks they have the option of performing – so why wouldn’t they?

The legalisation of prostitution in Ireland is long overdue. I don’t believe that the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, is genuinely convinced that it is right to continue to outlaw sexual acts between consenting adults where money changes hands. What’s more, he must be well aware that getting the Gardai off the vice beat would free some necessary bodies up, to deal with crime of a far more serious nature.

But does he have the guts to propose a change in the law, and to make it happen in spite of the opposition from the Holy Joes in Fianna Fail?

Over to you, Michael…