NZAF slammed over "deeply hated" honouree

Posted in: New Zealand Daily News
By - 23rd September 2010

5.40PM: A notable advocate for sex worker rights is refusing a NZ AIDS Foundation Life Membership, because a controversial and "deeply hated" transgender prostitutes' outreach worker is also being honoured.

Christchurch-based NZ Prostitutes Collective staff member Anna Reed received a letter from the NZAF saying that she was to be bestowed with Life Membership for her years of work training volunteers, advocating for HIV prevention and involvement with organisations such as the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Needle Exchange programme.

She says she was horrified when she saw Mama Tere Strickland was to be included as a fellow recipient and immediately informed the NZAF that she felt unable to accept the award.

Reed says she has met many transgendered sex workers who have told her their lives would have been very different if they had not met Strickland.  "As young transgendered [people], they were 'taken in' by her, she was paid by WINZ - or the equivalent body - to look after them, there was never food in the house and she put them out to work on the street and took their money," Reed has written to the NZAF.

"[Mama Tere] also has a history of 'standing over' other street based workers and taking their money. These things may have occurred some years ago but have left lasting shared memories and she is deeply hated and distrusted by many of those she seeks the funding to represent."

Reed also noted that Strickland aligned herself with the Maxim Institute when the Prostitution Reform Bill was going through Parliament and was vocal in opposing it, particularly to the media. "I am unable to share an award or even a media release with someone who has behaved so offensively within the sex industry," Reed wrote.

Her stance is backed up "wholeheartedly" by the NZ Prostitutes Collective and its National Co-ordinator Catherine Healy, who has written to the NZAF urging it to reconsider giving the award to Strickland.

Healy told the NZAF it seems that the uniting objection to Strickland being honoured is that she has "worked consistently against the rights of sex workers, domestically and internationally, and has been supported in this by our enemies in the religious fundamental sector and anti-sex worker feminists". The breaking down of discrimination against sexual minorities and sex workers has been a mainstay of NZAF anti-HIV strategy for more than two decades.

Meanwhile, NZAF member Calum Bennachie says he has long harboured concerns about Strickland. "I have spoken to the Executive Director about these concerns in the past," he says. Additionally, in December 2008 he wrote a formal letter of concern to then-NZAF Trust Board chair Mark Henrickson and his fellow trustees.

GayNZ.com has sought comment throughout this afternoon from Strickland but so far our phone and email messages have not been returned.

The NZAF says an official complaint has been made and it can't make any comment until that process is sorted.