Horrific case of French husband accused of drugging wife so strange men could rape her should make politicians rule out decriminalising prostitution – Dr Jacci Stoyle

Women in prostitution suffer a catalogue of abuse and exploitation, as well as mental and physical injuries

The case of the lady in France whose husband is accused of drugging her at night, then inviting men to come into their home to rape her, whilst he videoed the assaults, is causing global shockwaves. If true, this was an unspeakable, unthinkable act for a husband to do to his wife, something that is beyond our comprehension, which is echoed by the comments left online following the news reports. It boggles the mind that 83 men could have come to the house to rape an unconscious woman. However, according to one man, the alleged crime was not rape because, he said, “it’s his wife, he does what he likes with her”.

You might be wondering how a man could find others to come and rape his wife. Apparently, there is an online forum where men who are interested in clandestine sexual activity gather to discuss their proclivities. One wonders how such a website can legally be operating, given its raison d’etre is non-consensual activity.

Equally, the mind boggles at the alleged rapists who appear to have been unwittingly exposed by the discovery of the videos. Ironically, the footage may reduce the difficulty of proving the issue of consent as an unconscious woman can hardly agree to sex. It is equally unthinkable that so many normal, seemingly law-abiding men in respectable jobs (the accused include a nurse, a firefighter, a councillor and a civil servant) would pay to rape a man’s sleeping wife without her consent.

And yet. Whilst holding this horror and shock in your minds, which I would suggest is a normal, healthy response to behaviour such as this, I would ask you to consider a parallel scenario. Prostitution is ubiquitous across the world and has been turbo-charged by the internet and sex trafficking. The global revenue from prostitution is estimated to be $186 billion (about £145bn).

It has been given a makeover and renamed ‘sex work’, as if extreme abuse and exploitation could ever be classified as a job. No one, not even the most enthusiastic advocate, applied for this way of life through choice, there is always a back story of trauma or vulnerability of some kind, childhood sexual abuse, grooming, trafficking, neglect, or poverty.

The message prostitution gives exemplifies and reinforces women’s inequality but, in addition, it also exemplifies and reinforces men’s entitlement to sexual access, his right to secrecy, and encourages his greed to have, own and dominate. The men in France are accused of behaving like sex-industry punters do across the world. Many have respectable, normal jobs by day, most of them are married or cohabiting, and they feel justified in behaving differently to the women they use for sexual services, provided they pay for it and can hide their furtive behaviour. If we were able to take away a man’s anonymity, would he still take the risk?

You may think it’s unusual to pay a husband to have sex with his drugged wife. But is it? The numbers of women who are trafficked or pimped into prostitution is estimated at 35 million, with the caveat that this is probably an underestimate. How many punters have paid for sexual services from a woman who was frightened, bruised, drugged, in pain or visibly distressed? Apparently, quite a lot, according to punter websites, which are online forums where punters make comments about the women whom they’ve paid to have sex with. Who are they paying? Mostly, the trafficker or pimp; according to research, only about ten per cent of women in prostitution are independent. Trafficked and pimped women may not be unconscious, but nonetheless, they are no more consenting to sexual activity than the French wife is alleged to have been.

The popular cry to solve the ‘problem of prostitution’ is to decriminalise it. Let us be clear: that means punters, pimps and brothel owners would no longer be committing criminal offences. This would equally apply to the prostituted woman, the victim in this dynamic who should never have been cast as a criminal in the first place.

The French husband is accused of pimping his wife, without her consent. Why would we send him to jail, if he’s found guilty, and yet decriminalise the men who are making £186 billion from all the other women who are violently abused and exploited without their consent through the sex industry?

Full decriminalisation has been hailed as a success in New Zealand, but according to survivors of prostitution there, it is anything but. The women suffer the same beatings and rapes as other women in prostitution, but who can you call when these are no longer a crime? The message from them is loud and clear: no, it does not make it safer for us. We do not decriminalise other forms of violence against human beings. And what message does decriminalising prostitution send to all women?

Sweden criminalised the purchase of sex acts in 1999 and has subsequently shown that otherwise law-abiding men’s fear of possible exposure of their secretive life is an effective deterrent. The numbers of women trafficked and pimped in Sweden has fallen dramatically.

The catalogue of mental and physical injury that is inflicted upon women in prostitution is rarely discussed, but it is colossal. The following is not a definitive list: chronic pain and severe bruising, repetitive strain injury, soft tissue injury, fissures, infection, weakened pelvic floor, cervical cancer, painful menstruation, infertility, bowel inflammation, sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, dissociation, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Why do some politicians and health care unions, who should know the physical and mental cost of this trade, wish to decriminalise those who inflict such injuries?

If we ask ourselves for whom the brothel bell tolls, we must know that it tolls for any woman, and none of us are free ’til all of us are free.

Dr Jacci Stoyle is secretary of the Scottish Parliament’s Cross-Party Group for Commercial Sexual Exploitation