Sex workers and sex trafficking will be discussed by Cambridge city councillors, but not immediately and not the way some might want, vice mayor Marc McGovern said Monday, clarifying the conversation will be “about the broader issue. This is not going to be about the issue that many people spoke about tonight with what’s in front of us involving our colleague.”
Good luck with that.
During the roughly two and a half hours of public comment leading off the City Council meeting, there were around 50 speakers addressing sex work in Cambridge – a hot topic since the public learned in November 2023 that women were seeing customers in apartments in a couple of Alewife buildings. City councillor Paul Toner, who was named in court last month in connection with the “brothel” operation, was mentioned roughly 40 times.
Many were calls for Toner to resign as having violated his oath of office or setting a bad example for children; others spoke in support, saying he was doing a good job on the council and should stay at least until his case worked its way through the courts.
All of it was an aberration: Mayor E. Denise Simmons is usually the strictest enforcer of her rules of decorum that public comment and council dialogue shouldn’t go to “personalities” – which, in practice, has usually meant no one is allowed to mention local public officials in a negative light. In this case, Simmons allowed the references to Toner to pass without comment when he technically wasn’t named on the agenda.
An attendee at a premeeting rally among people expecting to speak said McGovern had advised them that the mayor wouldn’t allow mentions of Toner by name, so they should use their allotted 60 seconds in other ways. That speakers were allowed to refer to Toner directly was a surprise, according to people knowledgeable about the running of the meeting.
Emails were sent to Simmons, McGovern and Toner after the meeting to ask about the change in policy. The meeting ended shortly before midnight. McGovern replied the next day and confirmed his advice to the speakers. “That is typically the rule,” he said Tuesday.
The request for the Human Services and Veterans Committee to take up the issue of sex work and sex trafficking especially as “exploitation is inherent in illegal prostitution rings, where consent cannot be reliably ascertained,” was filed for Monday’s agenda by councillor Patty Nolan.
Toner’s vote made approval unanimous. “I’ll be voting for it because it is an important conversation,” Toner said. “I do want to point out that this could have just been called as a meeting and not been a policy order.”
Second night of comment
At the previous meeting, councillors voted to suspend their own rules to allow public comment against Toner with no corresponding agenda item because it was better than getting “hours and hours of public comment on this,” councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler had said, with agreement from councillor Burhan Azeem that if he voted no, “other colleagues will just introduce a resolution and then we’ll get tons of comments on it. If it’s just one person, this is fine.”
Also since that March 24 meeting, the mayor reassigned his responsibility as chair of several committees; in each case his co-chair remains in charge. The change, made two days later after conferring with Toner, was done without notice to the public.
The previous time committee leadership changed – when Cathie Zusy joined the council after the death of Joan Pickett – Simmons placed an item on the agenda and the item was sent out by the City Clerk’s Office. They mayor was asked by email on Monday what was behind the change in approach, but did not reply.
Expectations for hearing
There are issues already lined up for the Human Services & Veterans Committee that will keep a meeting on sex work and sex trafficking from being called until May or June, McGovern said. He chairs the committee with councillor Ayesha Wilson.
Still, there was already a sense of what the meeting would entail, McGovern said.
“We heard in public comment folks wanting to be sure that we invited folks who work in this space and folks who have life experience to be part of the conversation, and that’s who we will ask to be there, because that’s who we can learn from,” McGovern said.
Recounting sexual exploitation
Yet even those experts, “people who are advocates in this space and work in this space, have different feelings,” McGovern said.
Speakers included Mary Speta, Chet Harding and Morgan Bae of Amirah, which provides services to people leaving sex work; Heather Wightman and Ivette Monge of the Framingham-based nonprofit Ria, which supports survivors of commercial sexual exploitation; Alex Powell, of the Safe Exit Initiative; Sarah Gyorog and Ciara Woodward of Transition House; Desiree Demos of the Eva Center; and Audrey Morrissey and Audra Doody, who identified themselves as survivor of the commercial sex industry.
All spoke to the horrors of sex work, suffering “threats, violence and copious amounts of substances, enduring things most people couldn’t even imagine” in work that is “no little girl’s dream” with buyers who made agreements around consent that “were almost always broken,” leaving one woman unable to have a relationship three decades later “because my body doesn’t know the difference between a buyer or someone I love.”
Advocates for industry
Also speaking were Jessica Van Meir, Mary Carol and Amber Ying of the Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective; and Sascha Cohen, an Emerson professor and historian of gender and sexuality; and Vick Mohanka and Yann Dardonville, who said they were reading statements on behalf of current sex workers who needed to stay anonymous.
These experts said there were was not enough evidence – prosecutors chose to use no testimony from the sex workers in the brothels in Alewife, Watertown and Virginia – to back up charges of trafficking or exploitation, but it was known from court documents that the workers were “adults who are not held against their will, did not have their travel documents withheld from them and had the right to turn down a client.”
The proxies for local sex workers offering testimony, meanwhile, read statements saying of the brothel model: “Some workers prefer to have all these responsibilities taken care of for them. Some people leave and become independent workers, while others prefer the convenience.” One statement said sex work meant being able to focus on art while “in a high-cost-of-living area,” earning a living from clients who were “kind, respectful and nonviolent.”
Many on both sides of the issue looked forward to the committee discussion, some because they saw the possibility of Cambridge joining its neighbor Somerville in moving to support a state bill protecting sex workers and victims of human trafficking. The April 25 resolution approved by councilors there was brought forward by councilor at-large Willie Burnley Jr., who called current prostitution laws “a ridiculous, puritanical farce.”
This post was updated April 1, 2025, to note that mayor E. Denise Simmons enforces rules of decorum, not a written rule about discussing “personalities.”
A stronger
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The judge in the federal court case noted that the women workers were asked to submit victim impact statements but they refused. This was noted in the docket that is publicly available. It is not a scenario that they were not asked or denied a voice.
Well at least Toner will be able to testify as an expert witness.
I think Marc’s criticism of Mayor Simmons is unfair.
First off, the city council has rules that are democratically decided on. They aren’t “her” rules.
Second, the “no personalities” rule was struck down by the SJC case Barron vs Kolenda. Accordingly, the council voted to strike it from their rules. It is no longer a council rule. You are allowed to refer to councillors during your comment.
Marc follows the council closely, so I’m not sure why he didn’t realize this.
Toner’s case was not explicitly on the agenda, so there’s an argument that the mayor shouldn’t have allowed people to speak to it. But that argument would be based on the rule that limits public comment to agenda items, not the “no personalities” rule that used to exist but no longer does.
This distinction is important, and Marc should update the article to clarify.
See eg:
https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/03/20/ruling-by-court-could-test-councils-civility-code-affecting-public-comment-and-even-councillors/
While there are no winners in this sad case, I find it potentially helpful to hear the experiences of people in the business as well as those who depend on it for other reasons. The court is there for a reason. In these kinds of cases, there are always nuances and dynamics not made public. I am a firm believer at letting the system play out.
Councilor McGovern is circulating a letter wanting to force Councilor Toner to resign. Rules were broken (suspended) by Councilor Sabrino-Wheeler to let a student speak on this issue off-agenda. Councilor Simmons, who expressed letting the courts oversee, has quietly switched sides. But the first two sanctimonious self-righteous councilors dictated the moment. I’m sure there are political manipulations in their background that have influenced decisions that some might find alarming. Let he without sin cast the first stone.