'Scots sex workers will pay the price if men made criminals'

Published on Sunday 4 May 2008 22:36

DEMANDS to make buying sex illegal in Scotland have been attacked by a prostitute support worker as "demonising" men.

Ruth Morgan Thomas, a former sex worker who runs the Scot-pep project in Edinburgh, said she was "shocked" by research which claims to discover "dangerous" attitudes among men in Scotland who use prostitutes.

She says the recommendations of the study, based on interviews with 110 men in Scotland who have paid for sex, would drive the industry underground and expose women to more violence.

The report said one in ten of the interviewees for the Women's Support Project study thought it was impossible to rape a prostitute. The researchers also claimed that several punters believed that rape was "inevitable" if men's sexual needs were not met.

Half of those questioned did not believe the women were exploited by pimps.

An estimated 5,000 women have worked as prostitutes in Scotland in the past year – about 3,000 indoors and 2,000 on the street.

The report – Challenging Men's Demand for Prostitution in Scotland – calls for men who buy sex to be placed on the sex offenders register, and calls for "legal sanctions" against using prostitutes.

"To name them as sex offenders would send a strong message and reinforce their already-existing knowledge of the harm they perpetrate, which they struggle to deny," the report says.

But Ms Morgan Thomas told The Scotsman the recommendations, if adopted by government, would drive the industry underground and encourage more violence against sex workers. "As a former academic I was quite shocked by this research. As a former sex worker I was even more shocked," she said.

"Yes, there is violence, but to say that the majority of men are engaging in buying sex to perpetrate violence against women is not the reality.

"It demonises men. The conclusion that we need to criminalise clients because there is violence is flawed."

She said that in Sweden, organised crime had moved into the industry after it was driven underground by laws banning the purchase of sex.

"We know in countries where purchasing sex has been criminalised that it is the sex worker who pays the price.

"It drives it underground to a certain extent and organised crime moves in," she said, citing studies that suggested the trafficking of sex workers in Sweden had doubled since the ban was introduced in 1999.

Sandra White, MSP, has laid a motion in the Scottish Parliament urging politicians to support the controversial findings.

The move has triggered an amendment from Margo MacDonald seeking to discredit the report, which she has branded "claptrap".

"Most people who understand anything at all about prostitution are opposed to this law," said Ms MacDonald, who pledged to fight any attempt to criminalise the purchasing of sex in Scotland.

"In the first year of its existence, prostitutes did disappear from the streets of Swedish cities. Groups working with these women reported concern that they were held behind locked doors out of reach of support agencies, health agencies and the police, with whom they had a very good working arrangement," she added.

RAPE CHARGE THREAT SOUTH OF THE BORDER

A HARD-HITTING new poster campaign to make prostitutes' customers think twice about paying for sex with trafficked women is launched today.

The Home Office initiative warns men that sleeping with a woman who has been forced to work in the sex industry will make them a rapist.

Ads, which will be placed in gents' toilets in pubs and clubs, depict a sleazy brothel with the caption: "Walk in a punter. Walk out a rapist."

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said: "These women are being treated as commodities and are sold, controlled and exploited by others for a profit. Trafficking is a vile and evil trade and sex buyers must be made to think twice about the consequences of their actions."