Prostitution should be decriminalised in the UK to make it safer for vulnerable women, a sex worker organisation has said.
The English Collective of Prostitutes is calling for the removal of laws relating to consensual adult sexual behaviour, arguing that the legislation forces sex workers to operate alone, leaving them vulnerable to crime and reluctant to report violence to the police because they fear arrest.
Niki Adams, a spokeswoman for the collective, said female sex workers were forced to work in isolation. “One woman working alone was viciously attacked, raped and beaten. The case went to court and the man was convicted but the woman then thought: ‘I never want to work alone again.’ She started working from another woman’s flat, and within a few months the place was raided by police … The women were arrested for brothel-keeping. That woman spent months and months before the case came to court and was dropped at the last minute due to a big campaign by us highlighting how outrageous [it was] that women working together were prosecuted.”
She said the pattern was common and, while working alone was dangerous, working together put women at risk of arrest. Read more