France jails two for 22 years for murdering trans sex worker
REUTERS FILE PHOTO
Dangerous job
Just a month before her death, Campos was among a group who hired a guard to protect them while working among dense trees with no public lighting. The assailants were armed with tear gas, tree branches, a knife, a stun gun, and a pistol that had been stolen a week earlier from a police car while the officer was with a sex worker. Six other men, aged 23 to 34, were also sentenced. One of them was handed six years in jail for violence that led to an unintended death. Four more received varying sentences of up to six years in prison for taking part in the assault. The sixth was to be jailed for five years for stealing the pistol. Campos’s mother and sister, who live in Peru, are civil plaintiffs in the case along with six of her former colleagues, the bodyguard, the Acceptess-T transgender advocacy association and the Mouvement du Nid prostitute support group. Acceptess-T in particular argues that increased violence against sex workers stems from a 2016 law making it illegal to buy sex in France but not to sell it, shifting the criminal responsibility to clients who can be fined if caught. While some groups say the law helps protect women from trafficking and exploitation by discouraging prostitution, many sex workers say it has made their jobs more dangerous and deprived them of income. RELATED STORIES Sex work as work and art featured in French festivalIn US capital area, Black transgender sex workers on edge Pandemic devastating to Dominican transgender sex workers
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