Human Rights, and human wrongs.

The madness of offering the mentally disabled sex with prostitutes at taxpayers' expense

By BEL MOONEY
Last updated at 8:57 AM on 18th August 2010

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Sex for those with disabilities is one of the last taboos. Most people don't want to think about it - which is why they'll have been doubly shocked by the news story in this week's Mail that a young man with learning disabilities will receive state funding to see a prostitute in Amsterdam.

His social worker insists that 'refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights'. Apparently, the unfortunate young man needs a holiday, too.

To me, this is just another reminder of how the concept of 'human rights' has been misinterpreted by the woolly and well-meaning. What worries me is that it could cause a backlash against the very people who most need our understanding and help.

The 21-year- old's trip to the Dutch brothel, where he hopes to lose his virginity, will be funded through a £520 million scheme introduced by the last government called Putting People First: Transforming Adult Social Care.

The original 2007 document (written in the usual tedious socio-speak jargon) sets out Labour's 'ambition to put people first through a radical reform of public services, enabling people to live their own lives as they wish... and promote their own individual needs for independence, wellbeing and dignity'. We might well ask how giving a young man a handout to buy loveless sex with a prostitute can do anything to promote his independence or his dignity. Surely, it could actively damage his well-being too - even if only on a level of stoking future frustration.

And I can't help wondering about the 'human rights' of all the sad, shy people who write to my Saturday advice column, desperate for love and - yes - sex.

No one will give them a handout to buy what they cannot find in the usual way. No one considers it their 'right' to have a holiday paid for from the public purse just because they've got mental problems - as so many have. There's no lobby for the lonely. The Putting People First scheme says it ensures 'that all those eligible for council funded adult social care support will receive a personal budget via a suitable assessment process'. The assessment is carried out by a social worker, of course, and the payment is given in addition to benefits. And it seems that many councils, through their social workers, are using the Putting People First money to fund visits to prostitutes and lap-dancing clubs, sex courses, subscriptions to internet dating sites and holidays in places such as Tunisia.  Some 53 per cent of councils are said to have a strategy that ' explicitly empowers' disabled people to pursue their sexual aspirations. Once , the disabled lobby campaigned for proper access. Now it sounds like improper access is also on the agenda. I want to emphasise that I have no objection to anybody with a disability having such aspirations. How could I?

Years ago, I had a great friend called Tim who was profoundly disabled because of childhood polio. Wheelchair-bound, tiny and with a deformed spine, he was still clever, witty, a talented writer - and pretty sexually obsessed. We'd talk about it frankly - and endlessly. He longed to get laid.

One day, a woman read something he'd had published and started a correspondence. They met, fell in love and she left her able-bodied husband to be with Tim. A big lady, she could carry him with ease. And it was with ease that she carried him to bed - and they had a happy, fulfilled life until he died a few years ago. Tim was lucky. So are those disabled men and women who, within specialised residential homes, fall in love and marry. Organisations suchas The Outsiders and TLC (Tender Loving Care) do invaluable work to recognise the sexual needs of the disabled and do what they can to help - campaigning in a pretty forthright way.  The rest of us may not want to know, but that doesn't give us the right to dismiss what is all too real to those concerned. 

I recently read a touching account of a 22-year-old man with a life-limiting condition who dreamed of a loving relationship, but who was finally driven to book a 'sex worker' for a home visit. He said: 'The experience, while not emotionally fulfilling, gave me confidence and a sense that I was not missing out.' Now, this is no place to discuss the rights and wrongs of prostitution, but I'm sure I will shock some readers when I say that in my opinion the prostitute who saw that man provided a useful service.

But who paid? That question is not irrelevant. The issue here is not about need, but whether the state should pay for sexual services for disabled people. I reject the view held by Liz Sayce OBE, chief executive of the disability network Radar, that a person's desire for sexual relationships is a matter of human rights. It is not. The social worker whose client will travel to Amsterdam for sex describes him as 'an angry, frustrated and anxious young man' who has a need for sex, adding: 'He has been to two sexual health and sexual awareness courses and, basically, wants to try it.' 

Good God, it used to be basketmaking and physiotherapy, but now it's sexual awareness. 

The sad thing is that this shocking squandering of public funds stems from a misunderstanding of the once-noble idea of human rights, which enshrined basic ideas of dignity and equality at the heart of western government.

The 1998 Human Rights Act contains many good things, but it has been misquoted, misapplied, misused. And when that happened, it served to turn most people against essentially enlightened ideas.

'The right not to be tortured or inhumanely or degradingly treated or punished?' Yes, of course. But nowhere in the Act do I read that disabled people have the 'right' to have sex, no more than the rest of us. By insisting that this is so, social workers and disability lobbyists alienate the very people who might otherwise be sympathetic to their cause. Wish you had a girlfriend? Yes, that must be really tough. You think you have the right to travel abroad to have it off with a prostitute while we pick up the tab? Sorry, friend, no.  Perhaps it all stems from the one clause in the Human Rights Act which makes me throw up my hands in despair: Article 12 - the right to marry and found a family. What, in the name of reason, does that mean? How can the lottery of love be enshrined as any sort of right?

This is a perfect example of an inherently well-meaning idea having a damaging, far-reaching effect.  Far too many people today seem to believe there is, somehow, a divine right to happiness. That someone, somewhere will deliver them love, good sex, children and a happy- ever-after because they deserve it. A human right. It doesn't work that way, it never has and never will. For the able-bodied and disabled alike.

(mailonline)