An Anthology of English Pros

THINK OF HUMAN  sex trafficking and you think of young, usually migrant women forced into prostitution against their will by villains.

Often, though not always, they are attracted to the UK with promises of vanilla jobs, and then imprisoned and forced to service men, paying all their earnings to traffickers who see them as nothing but cash cows.

This horrendous practice takes place throughout the world. And this includes the UK, though the numbers here are clearly far less than often painted – hundreds, rather than the 4,000 once (very badly) “estimated” by the Home Office but still quoted on occasions.

It is, of course, a very serious offence, for which one can spend up to 14 years in prison. Which is why one should be angry when it is used gratuitously against someone who clearly does not deserve the label.

Such a person is Yan Yang (right), a 50-year-old woman gaoled for 10 months at Ipswich Crown Court this week. Her “human trafficking” offence was to arrange a taxi from the local station for two young women who had come from London to work for her.

Let’s make no bones about it – Yan Yang was setting up a parlour (aka brothel) in Ashmere Grove in the town. She already had one young woman in her employ, and the two arrivals from London had responded to an advertisement she placed for masseuses in a Chinese newspaper. 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 »

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 »

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 »

[Evidence to Public Bill Committee on the Policing and Crime Bill]

1 Introduction (Summary) 

1.1 This submission consists mainly of such evidence as I have been able to collate through the web to demonstrate the actual and potential aid given by ‘punters’ to victims of Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation (HTfSE) by identifying them to the authorities or aiding their escape.

This, in my submission, would be considerably prejudiced by the Bill in its current form, which would deem a client guilty of a strict liability offence at the point of arranging sex for payment with a sex worker ‘controlled for gain,’ which may well be by telephone or through the internet before he or she has met the sex worker concerned.

1.2 This evidence does not pretend to be comprehensive. It relies in part on local newspaper accounts, several of court cases, with all their limitations, and in part on official reports of various bodies. All net addresses viewed January 22-26, 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

THERE ARE LESS migrant sex workers in the UK than any other western European country – but from by far the largest diversity of nations, says international research.

The survey is the latest by TAMPEP, the international networking agency that charts migratory patterns in prostitution.

It shows that, despite London’s very high percentage of migrant sex workers (76%), across the nation as a whole  only 37% of sex workers are migrants.

This compares with an average of 68% in European countries surveyed, apart from the former Soviet bloc.

The low figure will be a set-back for Government ministers and national prohibitionists, who have constantly portrayed the picture in the London ‘bubble’ as being typical of the UK.

But despite small numbers, no less than 56 nationalities were counted in the UK results – way ahead of second place Germany, with 38, and third place Greece (36). The Commonwealth, links with former colonies and the success of the English language could all be factors. Read the rest of this entry »