The Star: October 05, 2017

12
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Thursday October 5 2017
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Fire rages, homes at risk
Six-year battle to stop sex workers
• By Kurt Bayer
MATT BONIS thought his
family had escaped the worst
when the earthquakes hit. Their
St Albans home stood up well in
the violent shaking that wiped
out large swathes of the eastern
suburbs and felled much of the
nearby central business district.
But as the aftershocks
rumbled on, New Zealand’s
greatest modern natural disaster
brought with it an unexpected
consequence for father-of-two
Bonis and his neighbours. They
suddenly found their normal,
quiet suburban street turned into
the nation’s second biggest street
sex trade epicentre.
Prostitutes, and their pimps,
had for years plied their trade
on a seedy red light stretch of
Manchester St, south of Bealey
Ave inside the city’s old Four
Avenues boundary.
But when the quakes flattened
the CBD, and an army-patrolled
cordon kept the public away
from potentially-dangerous
buildings and falling masonry,
the sex workers migrated north
of Bealey Ave.
And for the last six years, they
haven’t really moved. For Mr
Bonis and many residents of
that Manchester St area around
the corner of Purchas St, life has
proved a living hell.
In their gardens and around
their properties, residents have
found needles and syringes,
human faeces, used condoms,
and litter. Vandalism to houses
and cars has been reported, as
well as thefts. One elderly couple
found a prostitute “servicing a
client” on their lawn at 3am, and
when they asked them to leave,
had their car vandalised.
Attempts to ask the prostitutes
to move on are often met with
threats and intimidation, locals
say.
Mr Bonis made a police
complaint last year after three
prostitutes allegedly threatened
to burn his house down at 3am
with his family inside.
The trade starts about 10pm
and often goes through to 6am
or 7am.
“They yell price lists to their
clients, they yell all sorts to
each other. My son who is now
11 knows the price lists, he
knows what a transvestite is. It’s
everything you try and protect
your children from,” Mr Bonis
says.
Since 2011, Mr Bonis and
fellow residents have tried to
get help from police, the city
council, the Government and
the New Zealand Prostitutes
Collective to try to move the
sex workers away from the
residential zone.
Mr Bonis says he’s made more
than 300 calls over the last six
years to police over noise and
other complaints.
“It’s got to point where they
don’t respond at all now,” he says.
The residents have been
campaigning for a bylaw to
ban the sex workers from the
residential area. Some have
already given up, sold, and
moved on.
A camera was installed last
year on the corner of Manchester
and Purchas Sts in a joint
initiative by then city councillor
Ali Jones, security camera firm
ATF Vision and police to deter
clients of the sex workers and
document antisocial behaviour.
But residents say it’s failed to
curb the kerb crawlers, and more
often than not, there is a sex
worker on all four corners.
Former city councillor Aaron
Keown erected ‘No street
workers at all times’ signs in the
area in 2013, but council staff
took them down because they
were deemed illegal.
Central Christchurch
resident Andrew Huntley
launched a petition earlier this
year to get the city council to
ban prostitutes soliciting in
residential areas through the
introduction of a bylaw.
“Personally I am fed up being
offered a blow job for $20 when
HAD ENOUGH: Matt Bonis on
the corner of Manchester and
Purchas Sts near his home,
where residents are fed up
with sex workers and
anti-social behaviour.
PHOTO: MARTIN HUNTER
I’m walking my dog at 6am in
the morning,” Mr Huntley said.
“I’m fed up having to watch
where my dog walks in case
of needles. I’m fed up having
prostitutes leering at me in
my car to see if I’m a potential
punter just when I drive to and
from my home address, and I am
right over them exposing their
breasts, backsides and genitalia
in broad daylight on some
occasions when I have driven by
– I have to, I live here.
“I’m fed up having condoms
dropped on the verge outside
where I live, and am struggling
to get the image out of my mind
of the prostitute defecating in
full view, one morning when I
left for work.”
The residents were buoyed
earlier this year when police
indicated they would back the
city council in enforcing a bylaw
to regulate the street-based sex
work, especially in residential
areas.
•Turn to page 15
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