Almost 20 years after Emma Caldwell’s brutal murder, sex workers are still exposed to horrific levels of violence and are reluctant to call the police, advocacy groups have told the Guardian.
On Wednesday, the trial of Ian Packer, who was sentenced to 36 years in prison for the 2005 murder of Ms Caldwell and the sexual assault of 22 other vulnerable women, was denounced with contempt for women who sell sex. It exposed the chronic flaws of the police in response to their violent attitudes and the normalized violence by the police. The man is paying.
However, while some dismiss these attitudes as “historical”, by 2024 violence against sex workers will be an everyday reality, while concerns about how they will be treated by police The Guardian reports that doubts persist.
“Most of the women I see have experienced violence,” says consultant gynecologist Alison Scott. She runs a sexual health clinic for sex workers and other vulnerable women in Edinburgh city center, treating up to 400 patients a year.
“A woman in black and blue is here. He thinks that because the man is paying him, it is okay for him to behave in completely inappropriate ways. ”
Scott says the group of women involved in transactional sex is becoming increasingly diverse as household budgets tighten.
“Women with addiction are still on the streets, but far more are working indoors and advertising online, and that number has increased sharply in the last three years due to the cost of living crisis.” doing.”
All the organizations the Guardian spoke to agree that violence is widespread, but either view sex work as a legitimate career choice, support decriminalizing the industry, or view it as violence against women. , views on the initiative differ depending on whether the focus is on criminalizing sex work. Men who buy sex.
Linda Thompson is the co-ordinator of the Women’s Support Project, which runs the Scottish Government’s national program on commercial sexual exploitation, which the government claims is violence against women.
“Violence has increased since Emma’s time and women still don’t have the confidence to come forward,” she says. “Attitudes may have changed in terms of strategic thinking within Police Scotland, but that has not filtered down to frontline officers.”
Thompson published a snapshot study of women involved in sex work, which found that 90% had experienced violence up to the level of attempted murder, and a quarter had experienced sexual abuse in childhood. It was found that one in six had been sexually exploited before the age of 18.
The situation is the same across the UK. “Violence against sex workers is a clear and present harm,” says Raven Bowen of National Ugly Mags, a UK-wide charity working to end violence against sex workers.
Of the 585 reports of violence received by charities in 2023, only 11% felt safe enough to give a full report to the police, and only 11% agreed to give their information anonymously. It was only 45%.
“We all know that sex offenders target sex workers because they can do so with impunity,” Bowen says. “Sex workers are hardly believed.”
Furthermore, she added: “On Wednesday, while police apologized for their mismanagement of Emma’s case, a sex worker was raided for allegedly sharing a workspace with others to keep women off the dangerous night streets. Working together on premises is a life-saving strategy, but we criminalize it as operating a brothel. This is part of why we support full decriminalization.”
Dennis Mina, a Glasgow-based crime writer and former academic, has extensively researched violence against sex workers, most recently in his novel The Less Dead, which includes the story of a 37-year-old mother murdered in Aberdeen in 2016. Recalling the murder of Nkechi Magura. While working as an escort.
“The court was told that because she did not want to call the police or support services who might judge her, she called a friend in the UK and said, “This man is trying to kill me.”
“Twenty years after Emma’s murder, we are still ignoring women. Our guiding principle must be their safety.”
