An Anthology of English Pros

THIS WEEK’s revelations in the Daily Telegraph and More 4 news of the disappearance of two-thirds of the migrant sex workers “rescued” in the UK’s ‘Pentameter’ anti-sex trafficking raids comes as no surprise.

The two Pentameter inquisitions, in 2006 and 2008, involved all 55 UK police forces and rendered coituses interruptus from Lands End to John O’Groats, as well as in Ireland. There were some 1,300 raids on premises, largely brothels, but a mere 255 women  “rescued” were deemed trafficked – a tiny fragment of the 4,000 supposed sex trafficking victims the Home Office had promised in its dodgy dossier.

Of those 255, only 37 – less than 15 percent – accepted offers of support. Another three dozen returned to their home countries voluntarily, while 16 were deported.

The remaining 166 (65%) refused offers of help and left the police facilities, their whereabouts now unknown.

The Home Office stated that due to the nature of trafficking, “a significant number of victims are unwilling to engage or accept support.”

But their reasons for declining help are controversial: Read the rest of this entry »

LATER THIS YEAR, a new law is due to come into effect which will criminalise those who arrange a liaison with a sex worker subsequently discovered to have been coerced.

The offence will be New Labour‘s 3,601st since 1997, contributing the latest instalment of what Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman Chris Huhne (right) has described as an attack of “legislative diarrhoea.” 

Other clauses in the Policing and Crime Bill, now in the Lords, will:

• remove the right to a warning for kerb crawlers

• enable buildings housing brothels to be closed for up to three months, and

• introduce three compulsory sessions of rehabilitation for street sex workers caught persistently soliciting (as an alternative to a fine), with persistently defined as just twice in three months (it is now a week).

But it is the new client offence which has caused most jubilation among some feminists, and vehement opposition from others. Cheerleaders for the new moves are, predictably, Eaves Housing and Object. Their new campaign, Demand Change, is in the vanguard of the movement to use the new law as a thin end of a wedge towards their ultimate goal of criminalising all who hire sex workers, or, as the prohibitionists would put it, buy prostituted women. 

But just before we rush headlong to sign the petitions, dust off the banners and jump aboard this moral crusade’s bandwagon, let us pause and mourn the fallen from previous conflicts. Soldiers die in crusades, but the casualties in this war are unlikely to include many representatives of the socioeconomic groups A, B and C1, who throng launches and campaign meetings in the salubrious surroundings of Portcullis House.

Among those women who will be unable to join, for example, is one Amanda Walker (pictured).

Amanda, 21, was a Leeds street prostitute who left her two year old son at home with his father in the Rawcliffe area of the city to seek work in London as a result of income lost through a local ‘kerb crawling’ drive by West Yorkshire Police ten years ago.

The police initiative was held in Read the rest of this entry »

‘According to Hebrew lore, Lilith was the original partner of Adam, the world’s first man. Lilith and Adam argued – some legends say she was too proud to submit to Adam’s wishes – and Lilith departed Eden, where she was succeeded as Adam’s mate by Eve. In other ancient legends Lilith is considered a demon or a mother of demons, and is supposed to haunt desolate places. The name of Lilith is mentioned only once in the Bible, in Isaiah 34:14, where she is listed along with hyenas and jackals as those who dwell in the ruins of God-forsaken Edom.’   Source  

THIS IS the story of an error. Two errors, in fact. But not just any old errors, as we shall see.

Back in 2003, an organisation known as Lilith produced a report entitled Lap Dancing and Striptease in the Borough of Camden (an area within London).

Lilith, along with the anti-sex trafficking Poppy Project, is part of Eaves Housing, the London vulnerable women’s support charity. These organisations receive much of their funding from the Government and London Councils and are generally regarded as being enormously influential in shaping Government policy. Within Eaves, the Lilith Project carries out “research, education, campaigning and training to prevent violence against women.”

By far the most quoted fragment of Lilith’s Camden report are statistics which seek to connect the arrival of four lap dancing clubs to cases of rape and sexual assault in the borough.

“Comparing the rape and indecent assault figures for 1999, before the establishment of Spearmint Rhino and Secrets Holborn, Finchley Road and Euston, and 2002…rape of women in Camden has increased by 50%, …[and] indecent assault of women in Camden has increased by 57%,” it announced.

The story, of course, grabbed the headlines, both in Camden and nationally. Women in the vicinity of lap dance clubs everywhere lived in a climate of fear, and were very likely induced to join the bandwagon of the moral crusade led by Eaves, which finds its goals realised in many ways in today’s Policing and Crime Bill.

The figures, though, were wrong. Indeed, they have been known to be wrong for awhile, but they still sit in the report on the web, and thus continue to be relied on by social conservatives in normally responsible reports and newspapers – often the very newspapers that have published the fact that they are wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

THE ANTI-SEX WORK STALWARTS of the Poppy/Eaves/Lilith brigade are on the march again, this time with a number 10 petition aiming to criminalise all clients of sex workers.

Making her case, Ruth Breslin, Eaves Housing’s Research and Development Officer, informs potential signatories that: 

Studies indicate that the majority of women enter prostitution under the age of 18 and that childhood abuse, poverty, drug dependency and homelessness are key triggers into prostitution. Once in prostitution, sexual and physical assault is common and 9 out of 10 surveyed women say they would exit prostitution if they could.

But what “studies,” where? Ms Breslin is interestingly silent on the issue, especially for a “research” officer. Meanwhile two new academic works have joined the pile suggesting the direct opposite is closer to the truth.

First was a study by Dr Nick Mai, of London Metropolitan University, whose team interviewed 100 migrant sex workers, mostly in London but also in Sheffield and Liverpool.

Among its key findings are:

• The majority of the migrant workers are not forced or trafficked

• Working in the sex industry is often a way for those interviewed to avoid the unrewarding and sometimes exploitative conditions they meet in non-sexual jobs

• By working in the sex industry, many interviewees are able to maintain Read the rest of this entry »

AFTER FIVE YEARS, the secret dodgy dossier behind the Government’s claim of 4,000 ‘sex slaves’ in the UK has finally been revealed.

The figure has been repeated countless times by ministers and is relied on to justify a wave of new prohibitionist laws – such as the plan to criminalise some sex workers’ clients – and to strengthen others, by closing premises housing ‘brothels’ for three months and arresting ‘kerb crawlers’ without warning.

But the means by which it was reached has been a closely guarded secret since it was first estimated in 2004.

Enquiries both in and out of Parliament merely elicited the response that it was in an “internal Home Office document on serious organised crime.”

Even the Joint Committee on Human Rights was unable to gain access, and noted in Paragraph 78 of its report on Human Trafficking, that: “Though [new research] has not yet been published, the Government told us it showed there were an estimated 4,000 victims of trafficking for prostitution in the UK during 2003 at any one time….we have not been able to judge the validity of this figure.”

And we can now see why it wasn’t published.

The figure has been repeated countless times by the media as a definitive indication that the UK’s brothels are teeming with coerced migrants.

Yet the rationale in Chapter 3 of the Home Office’s study could be pulled apart by any reasonably intelligent Year 7 pupil.

To arrive at their 4,000, the Home Office researchers started with three sources: Read the rest of this entry »

CONTROVERSY continues to surround the Home Office’s plan to subject clients of sex workers to £1,000 fines if the women they arrange sex with subsequently turn out to have been coerced, though the nonsensical “controlled for gain” phrase has been dropped in favour of women who have been “subjected to force, deception or threats” including those “subjected to force by psychological means and the exploitation of vulnerability.”

This followed heated exchanges in the Commons Scrutiny Commitee on the legislation – the Policing and Crime Bill – where MPs queried the fates of many trafficking victims and whether they would continue to be rescued by punters given the prospect of £1,000 fines and resulting publicity.

Among those giving evidence at the Committee was Denise Marshall, chief executive of the Poppy Project, which provides homes and support for rescued trafficking victims, mainly in London. Suddenly at the Committee, she made an astonishing assertion:

Interestingly, in the time we have run the POPPY project, we have had 22 referrals from punters—from those buying sex from trafficked women.

They made the referrals because the women were in an obvious physical and emotional state of distress. That sounds good on the surface until you realise that all the 22 men had sex with the trafficked woman before they phoned us.

These are trafficked women whom we have taken into our projects and whom have given evidence to us in statements. All those men, knowing the women were trafficked, had sex before phoning us to help the women to get out of their situation.

This clearly had a stunning effect on the committee, and was duly quoted by Home Office minister Alan Campbell to Parliament at the Report Stage. Yet the more one thinks about this, the less astonishing it becomes, and the more one studies the subject, the more one has reason to question Ms Marshall’s assertion.

Whereas in society in general, a relationship precedes sex, in a brothel the process is reversed. Sex comes first and a relationship, if it happens at all, develops afterwards. That is what brothels are for: it is their very raison d’être. So we should be less than surprised that the men had had sex with the women at an early stage in the proceedings.

A trafficked woman, furthermore, is unlikely to divulge her story to every punter who comes along. In doing so, she risks the punter taking the matter up with the brothel management and the possibility of reprisals. Imparting her plight to a punter therefore entails a degee of risk and consequently requires the build-up of trust.

Furthermore, many trafficked women have little or no English. This story tells the tale of one woman’s remarkable escape and the lengths that a punter had to go to in order to overcome the language barrier. Read the rest of this entry »

AS PARLIAMENT debates how to criminalise clients of trafficking victims and others ‘controlled for gain’ in prostitution, a Crown Court case last week has further revealed the stupidity of the Home Office plan.

  

A 29-year-old Thai mother of two was rescued from a life of misery in a Plymouth brothel and taken to the police by a punter, who would have faced a £1,000 fine for his trouble if the planned law was in effect.

 

 

Six Malaysian and Thai nationals have so far been put away for a total of 17 and a half years for the human trafficking case, with another two facing sentencing on February 17.

 

 

As the Plymouth Herald reported of the victim:

Ordered to service one more [punter]…she took a risk and begged the client, a Danish man known in court as Mr K, to rescue her using a mixture of Thai and sign language to explain she had been trafficked into prostitution.

He had left, spoke to his ex-wife who was visiting Plymouth and together they hatched a plan. He called back the next day, claimed he was a police officer and grabbed the woman. He and his ex-wife then used a electronic translation machine, typing in the question “prisoner?” which when shown in Thai caused [the victim] to break down sobbing.

Judge [Francis] Gilbert said Mr K’s conduct was to be “highly commended” and investigators said it was his bravery which not only saw [the victim] freed from sexual slavery, but also lit the fuse which saw those involved in the evil trade brought to justice.

[UPDATE February 17 - the two fellow defendents were jailed for nine and a half years between them.] 

It is only the latest of many such cases revealing the crucial role of clients in aiding trafficking victims – a role played despite everything the Home Office can do to prevent them – witness the department’s “Walk in a punter, walk out a rapist” posters, inferring (wrongly) that a client is a rapist if the woman he has a liaison with subsequently turns out to be a trafficking victim.

 

Since my memorandum to the Parliamentary committee scrutinising the proposed Bill, the Poppy Project (which rescues and cares for sex trafficking victims in London) has revealed to the Committee that even it itself has received 22 referrals from punters. This must have been like pulling teeth, as the Project is renowned for its enthusiasm to see punters behind bars.

 

 

Denise Marshall, Poppy’s CEO, said 

Interestingly, in the time we have run the POPPY project, we have had 22 referrals from punters—from those buying sex from trafficked women. They made the referrals because the women were in an obvious physical and emotional state of distress. That sounds good on the surface until you realise that all the 22 men had sex with the trafficked woman before they phoned us. These are trafficked women whom we have taken into our projects and whom have given evidence to us in statements. All those men, knowing the women were trafficked, had sex before phoning us to help the women to get out of their situation.

 

This sudden remarkable turn around in the state of the Project’s records should not go unnoticed. Only last August it published Routes in, Routes Out based on the case files of 118 carefully selected women it had helped. Paragraph 5.4 has a table that reveals that it then had no idea how some 26 of these women escaped their captors. Nine of the 118 were known to have escaped with the aid of punters, who also may or may not have provided the initial intelligence  responsible for a score of other women escaping through police raids.

 

 

Suddenly, five months later, Poppy can now reveal to the committee of MPs not only that 22 women escaped with the help of punters, but that in each and every case the punter had sex with the women, not only before saving them, but after knowing they were trafficked. A veritable revolution in record keeping appears to have taken place.

 

 

“All those men, knowing the women were trafficked, had sex before phoning us to help the women to get out of their situation.”

 

 

Really? Hmmm….

IT WAS a collection of people one would not normally put together unless one aimed to start World War III.

In the one corner were representatives of the English Collective of Prostitutes  and the UK Network of Sex Projects, in the other the Poppy Project  (which rescues London’s ’sex slaves’) and ‘Object’  - the Disgusteds of Tunbridge Wells etc’s campaign against lap dancing clubs. All of them females, I imagine all feminists, together epitomising the division in feminism over something the rest of the world knows as prostitution, but which, even with UN help, they could not possibly get as far as even agreeing the terminology for.

That was the scene for the first session of the parliamentary committee inquiring into the  Home Office’s latest perpetration, known as the Policing and Crime Bill. Read the rest of this entry »