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Clients of sex workers are most likely to discover victims of trafficking |
Involving sex workers is the way to create effective policies
Catherine Stephens argues that it would be a mistake for the government to criminalise clients of any sex worker who is ‘controlled for gain’
SEX work is in the news and, as so often, what makes the news bears little relationship to the reality of the sex industry.
After nearly 10 years working in the sex industry, I view pronouncements of pundits and politicians alike with cynicism, aware we’re a handy source of headlines, and a group rarely in a position to set the record straight.
I’ve worked in Soho brothels closed by Westminster, putting over 20 women out of work, including single mothers; one had been running for more than 20 years.
No apparent thought was given to the effect on women working. The council seemed to regard this social cleansing of the neighbourhood as an unquestionable good.
Yes, there are nuisance brothels, but these are relatively rare; it’s in our own interest to be unobtrusive, to be on good terms with our neighbours. Simply using premises as a venue for selling sex (and possibly as a living space as well) does not, in itself, qualify as anti-social or nuisance behaviour.
Abuses do take place within the sex industry.
Coercion, exploitation, rape and violence do occur. No one is more fervently opposed to them than the people who work in the sex industry.
And no one is more aware that all those abuses are effectively facilitated by current law on the sex industry. The only way to work that is free from the risk of prosecution is in complete isolation, with clear consequences for our safety.
Two women sharing a flat are automatically criminalised, as the premises can be considered a brothel. One woman, working alone, with a receptionist is not breaking the law herself, but whoever arranges appointments for her may be considered to be “controlling for gain”.
Now, controlling for gain sounds bad.
Controlling for gain sounds as if someone somewhere is getting slapped around, and that the person doing the slapping is making a fair few bob out of them. Unfortunately, the legal definition of controlling for gain makes no reference to coercion, exploitation or violence, and if the same definition were extended to other areas of work it would criminalise the work of authors, actors, models, barristers in chambers, many hairdressers, minicab drivers, and every permanent or temporary employment agency in the land.
You can get arrested, prosecuted, jailed, and your assets seized for controlling for gain even if it is accepted in court that you offered sex workers a fair, safe and honest working environment. Even if the reason you came to the attention of the police in the first place was because you were reporting anxieties about trafficking.
Even if those anxieties were proven correct and a woman was rescued from sexual slavery because you called the cops.
The government is now considering criminalising clients of everyone in the sex industry who is controlled for gain, that is, everyone who doesn’t work for themselves.
Clients are the other group most likely to discover victims of trafficking – even the Poppy Project, which campaigns for wholesale criminalisation of clients receives 2 per cent of its referrals from people who’ve paid for sex and a further 6 per cent from unspecified members of the public.
If we really want to do something about finding victims of trafficking we should set up a hotline for clients to report, and make it safe for brothel and agency owners to do so.
Involving sex workers to create policies based on reality, rather than ideology and assumption, is the only way to create positive, effective, long-lasting change.
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