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Two or three prostitutes will be allowed to work together in "mini-brothels" for their own safety in an attempt to force the vice trade off the streets.

Tough action against kerb-crawlers will be combined with a drive to help prostitutes beat addiction to drugs and drink.

But ministers have ruled out the creation of licensed "red-light districts", arguing they would not tackle crime or increase the safety of call girls.

With an estimated 80,000 people selling sex in Britain, the Government set out its strategy for reducing the number of prostitutes. Most controversial was a plan to change the law to allow two or three prostitutes - possibly supported by a receptionist or "maid" - to work together in a flat without fear of prosecution for brothel-keeping.

Only prostitutes working on their own are allowed to sell sex without committing an offence.

Publishing the plans, which cover England and Wales, Fiona Mactaggart, the Home Office minister, denied the Government was "encouraging the commercial sale of women's bodies". But she added: "I think the evidence that women working on their own are putting themselves in danger is powerful."

She insisted that "very small-scale operations" such as "mini-brothels" could be run without offending neighbours. Ministers will press police and local authorities to "rigorously prosecute" kerb-crawlers, pointing out they can lose their driving licences. They could also be forced, at their own expense, to take courses designed to correct their behaviour. More than 300 kerb-crawlers have taken such a course in Hampshire and only four have reoffended.

Warning signs to motorists could be put up in red-light districts telling them that the area was being monitored by closed-circuit television cameras.

The Government will also create a new penalty so magistrates can divert prostitutes towards help for drug or alcohol abuse instead of forcing them back on to the streets to pay fines.

It will tighten guidance for social workers and teachers to help them spot signs of teenagers being tempted into prostitution.

Ministers have backed off from plans floated by David Blunkett, the former home secretary, to allow councils to designate "managed prostitution zones". The idea has been championed by Liverpool City Council, which wants to set up such a district away from residental areas.

But Ms Mactaggart said: "I can't accept we should turn a blind eye to a problem that causes misery for people living in, or near, red-light areas."

The Government plans were welcomed by police chiefs but Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesman, said: "It will do very little to reduce the number of prostitutes on the street, improve the appalling conditions they work in or tackle health problems."

The Tories said more needed to be done to tackle the underlying social problems which caused prostitution.

Niki Adams, from the English Collective of Prostitutes, said: "I can't count how many crackdowns on clients they have promoted over the past 20 to 30 years. The effect has always been to make it more dangerous for women to work.

"It will give them less time to check out clients and women will be forced into working in more remote and dangerous areas because the clients won't want to be caught by the police."

'I get a few moments to judge people and decide if it's safe'

Jenny, 54, a single mother from the North of England, earns £30 to £35 per client but has to pay a medical expert £40 an hour to care for her disabled daughter while she is working. She has paid about 10 police fines for soliciting.

She believes the Government's recommendation to prevent kerb-crawling and street work will only heighten dangers for women. "As street workers, you get a little bit of time to judge the people stopping. I get a few moments to judge each person and decide if I feel safe. If I think they're OK, I get in the car, if not, I send them on."

Jenny welcomed the move to allow "mini-brothels" but said the rental costs of an office would force her to work even harder.

She added: "No woman I know has chosen prostitution as a career. It is because there is no alternative. They are girls running away from abuse at home who have no accommodation, or those in care suffering abuse, those who can't get any benefits because they're under-age or those who are alcoholics or drug addicts and turn to prostitution to feed their habits. It is because there's a lack of resources in other areas that many women get into this situation."

The Catholic Church in Ireland faced calls for an open debate on the compulsory celibacy of priests yesterday after a 73-year-old curate retired when it emerged he had fathered a child.

The priest was based in a rural parish in County Galway. His 31-year-old partner gave birth late last year and the couple plan to raise the child together. The bishop of Clonfert said he had spoken to the priest and his partner and the case was now "a private matter".

Parishioners expressed sadness but said Ireland, after years of church scandals, was no longer so shocked when such cases emerged.

indy Dominguez, 17, of Hyattsville already had a baby, and didn't want another -- at least not until she'd established a home and a career. Three months after her daughter was born, she and her boyfriend went to the CVS pharmacy near their apartment to buy a large box of condoms. They found them locked in a case equipped with a button that read "push for assistance."

They pushed, and heard a call for help for a pharmacist, but no one came. They pushed again. And again.
"My boyfriend said, 'Do you want to just leave?' and I said, 'Yes, let's just go,' " said Dominguez. "We went to a nearby gas station and bought a few single condoms."

Keith Eby had a somewhat similar experience. A day after the 37-year-old health-care consultant found the condoms locked up at his neighborhood CVS at Logan Circle, he tried the CVS on M Street in Georgetown, near his office. Same problem.

"I don't get embarrassed easily, but even I couldn't imagine ringing a buzzer and having everyone in the store know I was purchasing condoms," said Eby. "I can't even imagine what that must be like for someone who does get embarrassed easily or is not comfortable with their sexuality."

Finally Eby remembered that a new CVS had opened across the street in the Ritz-Carlton. He went in and found the condoms unlocked and available on the shelf. He said he bought many so he wouldn't have to go through this again anytime soon.

But Eby remains upset about his experience.

"CVS is going to contribute to a huge increase in HIV infection rates by creating a barrier to getting condoms in their stores," he said.

When experts call condoms a barrier method of birth control, this isn't what they mean.

An informal survey found that almost half -- 22 of 50 -- of the District's CVS pharmacies lock up their condoms -- this in a city where one in 20 residents is HIV-positive. Most of those stores are in less affluent areas where the incidence of HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy -- all preventable with condoms -- are highest. Many CVS stores in the close-in Prince George's County suburbs also lock up condoms.

CVS, the leading drugstore chain in the Washington area, is not alone. Some Safeway and Giant stores in the District also lock up condoms, as do most Shopper's Food & Pharmacy Warehouse stores in the nearby suburbs. (Two chains that don't lock them up, no matter where their stores are located, are Rite-Aid and Eckerd.)

Some who work in public health are alarmed.

"Numerous barriers [to contraception] already exist -- particularly for minority populations," said Nestor Rocha, director of the Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Division of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, which hands out condoms for free. "To add to that that someone has to ask for them out loud in front of other customers is simply making it so that people who could benefit from the use of condoms will not."

Sex and Thievery

Mike DeAngelis, a CVS spokesman, says the practice of locking up condoms is simply a response to theft.

"We're not trying to restrict access -- we're trying to prevent people from stealing," he said.

Lockups are decided on a case-by-case basis, he said. In stores reporting high theft, the company permits managers to lock up not just condoms but other high-theft items like hair-care products, baby formula and pregnancy tests, he said. DeAngelis declined to disclose theft statistics for any CVS pharmacies, or to say when any individual stores began locking up their condoms.

Heather Boonstra, policy analyst for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that focuses on sexual health, doesn't buy the theft rationale.

"It's an economic thing," she says. "It goes back to prejudice and fear. In those areas of the city that are poor, stores fear that people are going to steal the product -- whether they actually do or not."

DeAngelis takes issue with that, citing shoplifting rings that resell condoms on the street. He declined to identify which stores were affected and how costly these thefts have become.

Donna Evans, director of Shoppers Food & Pharmacy Warehouse's health and beauty category, under which condoms fall, said the Shoppers chain permits locking up condoms when loss from suspected theft is shown to be in the 20 percent range.

Safeway and Giant say that while their corporate policy is not to lock up condoms, they let individual stores decide, based on theft numbers.

Lessons Learned

Whatever the rationale, locking up condoms discourages their use.

Christine Spencer-Grier, director of community education at Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, has seen that firsthand. She helps run a program that assists teen mothers in avoiding another pregnancy. One of the program's projects has the young moms venture out to buy condoms and report back on their experiences.

Spencer-Grier said many come back talking of being too embarrassed to buy once they saw they would have to ask for help. Others reported that, when they asked a salesperson for assistance, they got dirty looks or a lecture about being too young for sex.

"Teens are very sensitive to a disparaging look, a lecture -- all of those things are very intimidating," said Spencer-Grier. Many girls, she said, left the stores ashamed and empty-handed -- but still likely to have sex.

Not all groups with a stake in sexual health oppose the lockup policy.

Citizens for Community Values -- which promotes abstinence as the answer to sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies -- applauds adding steps to buying condoms.

"I'd rather see them locked up," said Phil Burress, president of the organization. "It's a lie that condoms prevent all sexually transmitted diseases anyway. People should be educated about that and practice abstinence." But there is little impartial evidence of measurable benefits from abstinence-only policies, say scientists.

Burress pointed to a 2001 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases report showing that condoms aren't effective in preventing the spread of the human papillomavirus (HPV). But, according to the NIAID report, condoms are considered effective against unwanted pregnancy (86 to 97 percent), HIV/AIDS (85 percent) and gonorrhea in men (49 to 74 percent).

But an argument that all stores take their condoms out from behind lock and key prompts resistance. If stores did that, says DeAngelis, theft would be so high, they'd have to discontinue the product altogether.

"We're trying to keep our products available for our customers who are purchasing these products legitimately," he said. "Locking them is the only way."

At this point, Dominguez, the Hyattsville teen mom who was frustrated in her efforts to buy condoms at her local CVS, doesn't much care whether her local pharmacy locks up its condoms.

"I don't think I'll ever buy them for myself," she said. "That experience turned me off." ·

he federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

Abstinence education programs, which have focused on preteens and teens, teach that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable method to prevent pregnancy or disease. They give no instruction on birth control or safe sex.

The National Center for Health Statistics says well over 90% of adults ages 20-29 have had sexual intercourse.

But Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.

Government data released last month show that 998,262 births in 2004 were to unmarried women 19-29, the ages with the most births to unmarried women.

"The message is 'It's better to wait until you're married to bear or father children,' " Horn said. "The only 100% effective way of getting there is abstinence."

The revised guidelines specify that states seeking grants are "to identify groups ... most likely to bear children out-of-wedlock, targeting adolescents and/or adults within the 12- through 29-year-old age range." Previous guidelines didn't mention targeting of an age group.

"We wanted to remind states they could use these funds not only to target adolescents," Horn said. "It's a reminder."

Last year, 46 states applied for the federal abstinence-education money, to fund programs in schools, neighborhood clubs and faith-based organizations.

Sarah Brown, director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, says abstinence programs are among many messages that have helped reduce teen pregnancy rates. But "the notion that the federal government is supporting millions of dollars worth of messages to people who are grown adults about how to conduct their sex life is a very divisive policy," she says.

"We would oppose any program that stigmatizes unmarried people," adds Nicky Grist, executive director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, a non-profit organization based in Brooklyn, N.Y., that advocates for the rights of unmarried people.

For last year's state grants, Congress appropriated $50 million. A similar amount is expected for 2007, but the money has not yet been allocated, according to the Administration for Children and Families.

"I think the program should talk about the problem with out-of- wedlock childbearing — not about your sex life," Brown says. "If you use contraception effectively and consistently, you will not be in the pool of out-of-wedlock births."