Case Explained:This article breaks down the legal background, charges, and implications of Case Explained: Sex Workers Mobilise to Ensure the Murder of Yuko Isn’t Downplayed and Dismissed – Legal Perspective
Sex workers are descending upon Melbourne’s Magistrates Court at 8.45 am on Tuesday, 31 March 2026, to call for justice for Yuko, a 62-year-old Asian migrant sex worker, who was raped and murdered in horrible circumstances, as she was legally working in a Footscray brothel. And those rallying before the court are calling for the case to go to trial, so that justice can be served.
Michael James Chalmers is accused of murdering and raping the woman, whose body was found after the 36-year-old left her in a room on Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung land in Footscray’s 149 Rainbow Garden brothel on 27 November 2024. Yuko is said to have died through some form of neck compression or smothering, however forensic pathologists can’t agree on what happened.
Next Tuesday marks the final day of committal hearings, which means Magistrate Vincenzo Caltabiano will then determine whether Chalmers’ matter will proceed to trial, where he will face serious criminal offences. The defence is arguing that the charges should be dropped as there is no DNA evidence linking Chalmers to the injuries, although CCTV footage places him at the scene.
Sex workers from Vixen’s Rising Red Lantern Project and Scarlet Alliance’s AMSWAG (Asian Migrant Sex Worker Advisory Group) have been assembling out the front of the court during all of the committal hearings relating to Chalmers, who has not entered a plea as yet. And their concern is that the case might be dismissed due to “insufficient evidence”.
Those mobilising before the courts next Tuesday understand that their presence is making a difference to whether this case may proceed, because there is a long history of downplaying assaults upon or even murders of sex workers, as their employment has long been criminalised and stigmatised to the point that the authorities have often dismissed such crimes as somehow lesser.
An attack on all sex workers
“This is not a debate about the length of the sentence. This is about truth-telling,” said AMSWAG spokesperson Damien Nguyen in a statement on Tuesday. “The past 18 months have seen an incredibly dehumanising debate inside the courts, with anti-sex work arguments and victim-blaming rhetoric made by all sides involved.”
“We will gather to demand an end to the conditions that led to Yuko’s passing in the first place. We dream of a future where survivors are no longer silenced, where migrants are no longer fearful of visa cancellation and deportations, where sex workers are no longer fearful of criminalisation and discrimination daily,” Nguyen continued.
Despite this country having some of the most progressive sex worker laws and protections on the planet, the stigmatisation and continuing criminalisation in some jurisdictions of sex work and sex workers leads to a casual callousness about how crimes against sex workers are considered and approached by law enforcement and to a lesser extent, the judiciary.
Numerous human rights bodies, including Amnesty International, advocate for the decriminalisation of sex work as best practice for sex workers. The state of New South Wales was the first jurisdiction anywhere in the world to decriminalise the industry in 1995. Victoria decriminalised sex wok in 2022, while the Northern Territory and Queensland have also decriminalised sex work.
The understanding is that whilst sex work decriminalisation has led to better legal and health outcomes for those who work in the profession, the stigma and the legacy of criminalisation still lead to unjust outcomes for sex workers, which includes the dismissal of crimes against them.
“We ask that you bring everyone that you know,” Nguyen said in terms of people showing up to the vigil for Yuko in Naarm-Melbourne next Tuesday morning. “Join us to say that an attack on any worker is an attack on all workers. We gather for Yuko and we gather for all of our sisters, who we lost way too soon, who never came home.”
Blaming the victim
A 2008 report from the Australian Institute of Family Studies on sexual assault against sex workers and their safety at work found that due to the “criminalised and socially marginalised position of sex workers”, they were unlikely to report sexual assault. And around 20 percent had experienced rape at work, whilst a significantly high 46 percent had experienced sexual assault outside of work.
Prior to the decriminalisation of sex work in various jurisdictions throughout the country, sex workers were reluctant to approach police in relation to crimes against them, as they were working in an illegal profession and officers would not take their complaints seriously. The opinions of law enforcement in respect of sex workers have not kept up with the law reform either.
CCTV footage from the brothel on the night of Yuko’s murder has Chalmers speaking with Yuko, prior to grabbing her in a headlock and pulling her down upon a bed, and cameras then capture Chalmers leaving 30 minutes later. However, despite this sort of evidence being before the court, Yuko’s supporters continue to be concerned about whether this will go to trial.
There are also broad issues with the way in which law enforcement has been approaching Asian migrant sex workers ever since the Australian Border Force launched Operation Inglenook in 2022. The initiative is supposed to be about human trafficking, but results in young Asian women being racially profiled at the border and being sent back to the country from which they came.
AMSWAG and Rising Red Lantern have been campaigning against Operation Inglenook, raising awareness around the fact that not only are dozens of Asian women being turned back at the border, but federal and state police have been engaged in raiding legally operating brothels on the off chance that they might locate someone who has come from overseas and is working at the time of the raid.
A pattern of neglect
Yuko’s body was located at the brothel that she ran, and which also served as her home, two days after Chalmers had left the site, as Victoria police were carrying out a welfare check. The difference of opinion on how she might have met her death and whether injuries suffered prior to Chalmers’ visit might have led to her passing, appear to have the potential for the case not to proceed.
Part of Victoria’s only peer-led sex worker organisation Vixen, the Rising Red Lantern Project outlined in a post about next Tuesday’s vigil, that whilst their assembly will be about justice for Yuko, it is also about “a pattern” of cases involving sex workers and a lack of justice brought, and the project further notes that it is “about whose lives are protected and whose are not”.
“This upcoming Tuesday, as the court makes its ruling,” AMSWAG’s Damien Nguyen further set out in his message this week, “may there be hundreds of incense lit in the legacy of Yuko.”