Natasha’s client booked $2200 worth of sexual services and never paid. She wasn’t his only victim

Natasha Ambrose thought it was “weird” when, after a booking in March 2024 with a regular client, he showed the Sydney-based sex worker a receipt of his payment, but the money had never landed in her bank account.

The man had engaged Ambrose over a 10-month period and she did not have reason to believe he would be deceiving her. He usually paid each time in full by bank transfer, and she thought: “Why should this time be any different?”

The unpaid booking included services totalling more than $2200. Anxious, but wanting to give her client the benefit of the doubt, Ambrose contacted him a few days later inquiring about the payment. She never heard back.

Ambrose would later find out she was one of several victims of serial rapist and defrauder Harjeet Singh Saini. All of his victims were transgender women.

A landmark sexual assault prosecution involving multiple complainants has confirmed NSW’s new consent laws protect sex workers against clients who fail to pay them.

A case put before a court in December found Saini had sexually assaulted multiple sex workers after he conned them out of thousands of dollars he owed them for their services. To Ambrose’s knowledge, the financial loss suffered by some of his victims exceeded $10,000.

The court ruled he had raped the sex workers when he deceived them into providing sexual services, fraudulently claiming he had paid them.

Saini pleaded guilty to 11 sexual assault charges against four women. He was sentenced to six years in prison with a non-parole period of four years.

“I believed Saini to be a client who understood boundaries, transparency and the need for both client and provider safety,” Ambrose told the court at his sentencing.

Delivering the sentence, the presiding judge made note of Saini’s “pattern of violent offending”, and said the offences resulted in far more impact on his victims than a lack of income.

Ambrose told the Herald: “Actually, the effects of the crime, you know, while it was not traumatic in the way a normal sexual assault might be in the moment of it happening … The post effects, and the way that it’s affected our psychology around trust and kind of having a sense of safety in the world and in our work, became more and more like what you might expect from a sexual assault.”

A changing understanding of consent

Since the state’s consent laws came into effect in 2022, there have been just two known prosecutions for fraudulent inducement of payment to a sex worker.

But this is the first multi-victim, multi-charge case to result in sentencing under the new laws that state sexual consent is invalid when it is obtained through deception, including deception about payment for sexual services.

Advocacy group the Sex Workers Outreach Project NSW has welcomed the sentencing, saying it leaves no grey area about what is and is not consensual when it comes to clients refusing to pay for sexual services.

“The principle is clear: if someone lies about payment to obtain sexual access, it is not a misunderstanding, it is not a simple theft, it is sexual assault,” chief executive Kerrie Jordan said.

She said the sentencing represented a shifting landscape in the legal and justice system that was finally beginning to see sex workers treated as deserving of the same dignity as anyone else.

The law had historically disenfranchised sex workers, making it difficult for them to be taken seriously when they report experiences of harassment, sexual assault and rape to police, she said.

“Sex workers deserve safety, dignity and equal protection under the law. This confirms that the reforms are enforceable across both isolated and repeated offending,” Jordan said.

Sex workers discouraged from reporting

Inner City Legal Centre chief executive and lawyer Katie Green said the sentence significantly advanced what had been a severely lagging area of consent law in NSW.

The fraudulent inducement clause in the new laws caught Green’s attention after a flurry of sex workers visited the centre asking for advice about a serial non-payer.

But a lack of education among the police force about the reforms meant officers still did not treat the sex workers as victims of serious crimes, Green said.

Without an advocate present while the women made their reports, police treated non-payment or lying about payment as a civil issue, rather than a serious crime of sexual assault or rape.

“For a long time in NSW, we have really been trying to get the police to lift their game on this, but they hadn’t done so until the consent reforms in 2022,” she told this masthead.

“We think sex work should be explicitly mentioned in the legislation, because we know that when we supported our clients to report, even following the reforms, police have been like, ‘No, no, that’s a civil issue. Go away’.

“So we’ve had to really sit there alongside our clients to point out to the police what the new law is and how it works. We think the language of the law in NSW should be updated to include specific references to sex work, just so there’s no ambiguity when people go to report these crimes to police.”

Eight victims had taken their complaints to the police but Green said there were more who had chosen not to report.

Ambrose said sex workers preferred limiting their interactions with the justice system due to their fraught history with police.

“When you work in an industry that was for such a long time criminalised, you don’t necessarily feel like you’re the people that the cops are protecting,” she said.

“Police are woefully under-informed about the laws that they’re enforcing. The constable that took my initial statement was not under the impression that what I was reporting was a crime.”

NSW Police Sex Crimes Squad leader Detective Superintendent Jayne Doherty said her squad was working to break down those misconceptions within the force.

Doherty started the Sexual Violence Project in 2022 to assess the response to sexual violence across the NSW force.

“There are perceptions from some police that you know, sex workers have agreed to have sex with a person. So how can it be sexual assault,” she told the Herald.

“So we’re trying to change police attitudes.”

Doherty says Saini’s sentencing should be a warning to people who might see sex workers as easy targets for sexual crime.

“The courts are starting to treat these crimes seriously. A six-year sentence is a fairly hefty custodial sentence,” she said.

“That, to me, tells me that some of our courts are starting to listen and pay the proper attention to sexual violence that it needs, and to send that message to potential perpetrators that you won’t be tolerated, we will take action, the court does listen, and you will be sent to jail for it.”

Anyone needing support can contact 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732), National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028, Lifeline 13 11 14, Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800.

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