Listen / Read
There’s something a bit incongruous about Storkey’s soft, chirpy voice discussing prostitution and sex trafficking. Her voice would be fine for reading Beatrix Potter to a bunch of 4-year-olds, but for discussing prostitutes, pimps, punters and sex slaves, I’m not so sure.
When I was 14 I watched Reservoir Dogs. With my grandparents. They wanted to be ‘cool’ with me by letting me watch something so controversial, but insisted that we watch it together. Listening to today’s Thought for the Day reminds me of how that felt. My nan was knitting a jumper throughout and my granddad kept nodding off and waking up during the particularly gruesome bits, and dozing off again. It was weird and super awkward.
But I digress. It seems to me that sex work and slavery are in danger of getting confused. So how about legalising sex work so it contributes to the legitimate economy (which could do with some help right now) and regulating it to help prevent against abuse, coercion and the horrors of sex trafficking. Not an original proposal, and not a generally popular one. But we’re not so very far from just such an arrangement as it is.
Brothels in Sheffield and Leeds were raided in 2004 as part of Operation Rampart. There was some controversy over the raid on Sheffield’s Omega sauna in Attercliffe, and a courtroom battle ensued. The raid was conducted on the basis of intelligence that illegal immigrants were working there, but police could find no evidence to corroborate this. They pushed ahead anyway and charged the owners with living off the earnings of prostitution.
However, police had spent years developing a mutual understanding with staff at the Omega. In fact, the police station is only 150 yards down the road. The police made regular visits (some even put in overtime) and sent the clear message that as long as the premises were free from under-age workers, illegal immigrants, drugs and alcohol, prosecution would be avoided. Senior police officers were called to testify to their understanding attitudes towards the operation of brothels.
Subsequently, the owners got away with it, winning their court battle on the grounds that it was unfair they should be prosecuted after they had stuck to the rules the police had outlined. The Omega was refurbished, got a dazzling new sign put up over the door, and re-opened for business.
The police didn’t give up though. They built a case of tax evasion against owners instead. It turns out they’d been laundering cash and that one of the owners had £270,000 buried in his garage (approximately the amount he should have paid in tax). There was a further £105,000 locked away in a NatWest safe deposit box and they had set up off-shore companies with fictitious Portuguese directors. One of the owners has been given a jail sentence while the other, who also pleaded guilty to tax evasion, is currently awaiting sentencing due to health issues. So the police got them eventually, despite getting jizz on their faces the first time round.
Even so, the brothel is still open with the same mutual understanding still in place. There is of course still the question of the original police intelligence, and whether there was any truth to it. But if sex work was legal and regulated then this wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place. Police wouldn’t have had to come to the legally dubious arrangement they had, and wouldn’t have had to spend over £1million in the accumulated costs of the raid and court case. Add that to the money spent on the second investigation and court case and it doesn’t quite tally up to the £325,000 or so reclaimed in unpaid tax and fines from the brothel owners.
Much more important than cooked books, safely regulated brothels with registered sex workers would be no haven for sex traffickers. It’d also be a lot easier for punters to distinguish between a sex worker in a newly refurbished brothel, complete with jacuzzis, mirrored ceilings and local bobbies, as opposed to an under-aged immigrant locked in the back bedroom of a bedsit bordello. It could actually make this new law workable, rather than the testimonial nightmare I expect it will turn out to be.
[Ed. Since writing this I’ve learnt the important detail that the new law will not take account of testimony offered by punters that they didn’t know the prostitute was controlled by a pimp etc. This gives it teeth I didn’t realise it had. I’ve also read that the theory behind legalisation arguments may not reflect the reality on the ground in countries where prostitution has been legalised. Any legalised sex work industry would have to be tightly regulated and would still require high levels of police attention. I still tend to disagree with a blanket ban on buying sex, but I now believe the new legislation is the right step to take at this time; it could prove very effective in protecting exploited women.