Glenda Daniels
Charges of brutal police assault will be heard in the Johannesburg High Court
next week when Andrew Phillips, owner of the brothel The Ranch, brings a civil
claim against the Ministry of Safety and Security.
The assault charges will be backed up by allegations of extortion and bribery,
including how police forced prostitutes to have sex with them and how they enjoyed holidays in the world’s sex capital, Bangkok, under the pretext of deporting them.
Sandton’s upmarket brothel The Ranch was closed down in February. Phillips was
charged under the Sexual Offences Act and the Aliens Control Act for aiding the
trafficking of sex workers from Romania, Bulgaria and Thailand. He appeared in
court in March to defend his brothel on the basis of his constitutional rights
and gender equality.
Now Phillips is fighting back, saying he is not prepared to back down after police closed down the brothel. The asset forfeiture unit said it seized assets
to the tune of R40-million to R100-million but Phillips says “this amount is
outrageous”, it is probably “about 10 times less than this”. The unit’s head,
Willie Hofmeyr, says Phillips has not disclosed all his assets.
“The closing-down of The Ranch was an act of revenge by the police’s aliens investigative unit because I was trying to expose their corruption. Why did this
happen when it did, after 13 years of The Ranch’s being a successful adult entertainment business? There were no drugs or children involved,” says Phillips.
He has affidavits from Thai sex workers that allege they were forced to have sex
with police in exchange for work permits, and documents showing how sex holidays
and tickets were paid for by the police to go to Thailand on the pretext of escorting prostitutes safely back home.
He will now spill the beans. “A whole can of worms about the police will be opened up by this case.”
A maintenance worker from The Ranch, Mathew Palmer, will testify on Monday that
when he tried to stop police from assaulting Phillips, he was assaulted by the
police’s task force and public order policing unit at The Ranch in February.
Palmer is claiming R800000 in damages.
“The aliens investigating unit was trying to get back at me, as an act of revenge. Members of the unit were arrested in 1998 after I laid charges of corruption against them,” said Phillips in an interview this week at his Morningside home.
He said the unit’s policemen who started the campaign against him are old-style
apartheid Afrikaner police. Phillips says he gave evidence for more than a year
to police to investigate criminality in the unit. “It went on and on and nothing
happened, and then I became public enemy number one.”
He has video footage of the 22-car police raid and assault in February. “I thought it was a commando-style robbery initially.” The video, which was captured by The Ranch’s surveillance cameras, shows a stampede of police flying
through the property, driving with open car doors, carrying rifles, bombarding
and breaking the back entrance of the brothel and the assault on Palmer.
“They had guns over our heads and said ‘get the fuck down’. They hit us with
rifle butts and they kicked me. Assaults took place on women who were carrying
drinks to clients, a client himself was hit, so were sex and domestic workers altogether about 30 people were assaulted. They locked me up for a week,” says
Phillips.
He maintains that police did not serve him with a search warrant upon entering
his property.
The South African Police Service’s Gauteng provincial head of communications and
liaison services, Henrietta Bester, says: “We confirm thatlll there have been
allll number of com-lll plaints ofllll assaults by the police from the owner and
employees of The Ranch. And we confirm that the matter will be heard in court on June 4.”
This case may be focusing on the specifics of police brutality and corruption
but it could affect whether South Africa legalises prostitution.
There has been no judgement yet in the state’s case against Phillips heard in
March. Phillips’s advocate Mike Hellens said the case had raised huge issues
about decriminalising prostitution.
He asked the court at the time: “What are we doing in society where we are branding Phillips in the same way we would a thief, a drug trafficker and a child molester? Our society is going to have to grapple with issues, which have
risen from places like The Ranch, on the basis of constitutionality. The laws
are out of sync with the values of the Constitution.”
Hofmeyr disagrees: “The allegations are that he was involved in the international trade of women and this is one of the most serious international
crimes at the moment. Even if prostitution was legalised there would still be a problem of living off the proceeds of prostitution.
“And legalising would mean there would have to be a registration process and
there would be strict controls.”