The game of her life

HAYLEY is waiting at her regular pitch.

She carries a small wooden truncheon tucked up her sleeve in case her customers turn violent. She has been selling herself on the streets since November. "My mother-in-law used to do it," she says. "She used to say I was sitting on a goldmine. Some of my friends were doing it and I saw the kind of money they were making, so I thought I’d give it a go." Unlike most of the girls working on the streets of Edinburgh, Hayley is not addicted to heroin, although her slow responses and slurred speech suggest some tranquilliser abuse. Her motivation is short-term temporary financial gain to recover from a series of events which left her life in ruins.

"I’m doing it because my house got broken into. I felt like the last four years of my life had been taken and I had to go into a hostel. When I was there, social services took my wee girl into care. They pounced on me when I was at my most vulnerable."

Hayley is 26, but could easily be mistaken for being in her thirties. Her left cheek bears a deep and unsightly scar; not the result of a violent punter, but a run-in with another prostitute. "It’s a long story," she says wearily. She hasn’t had any "bad experiences" with punters yet, but given that Glasgow has witnessed the murder of seven prostitutes in the last 10 years, she can’t be unaware of the considerable risks.

The alternative to working the streets would be employment in one of Edinburgh’s thriving saunas. But "they take too much of your money," she snorts. "And once the punters have paid their entrance fee, they can do what they want. I can set my prices and my limits myself."

Whereas she says its not uncommon for heroin-dependent girls to charge as little as 20 for full sex on the street, Hayley is proud of her higher standards. Prices start at 30 for ‘hand relief’, moving to 40 for oral and 50 for full blown sex. Prices thereafter include ‘everything else’ and taking clients back to her flat. "I’ve earned 200 so far tonight and that’s just three punters in two hours," she says. "I tried working in a conventional job, but I make more in a night on the streets than I did working for a month in a shop. My wee girl wants Lacoste trainers and they’re 60. That’s as much as I get a week from benefits. Am I supposed to spend it all on her? I just love spoiling her with nice things."

Edinburgh’s long-established tolerance zone for prostitutes collapsed last year. An effort was made to relocate the working girls from Coburg Street to Salamander Street but following vociferous objections from local residents that too is now supposed to be out of bounds to prostitution. The Salamander Street area is now heavily policed, with numerous cases of cautioning since the tolerance zone was removed. "But I’ve got them timed," boasts Hayley, undeterred, before she sets off to meet punter number four.

THE REALITY is that prostitution is not going away. Arguably, popular culture has become more entwined with sex and the promise of sex than ever before. The spread of lap and table dancing bars across the country has placed the margins of the sex industry within the boundaries of mainstream entertainment. Whereas prostitution in Scotland was a virtual taboo 10 years ago, contemporary appraisals are more relaxed.

Local authorities, whilst remaining under the bind of the law, are increasingly being left to manage the sex industry alone, resulting in different policies across the country. Whereas Aberdeen is the only city with an official tolerance zone, Edinburgh is famed for its liberal attitude towards saunas, which contrasts with the hardline approach of Glasgow, where councillors recently refused to renew licenses for two of the city’s longest running saunas and are now seeking to shut down all Glasgow saunas secretly operating as brothels.

It’s impossible to know for certain the number of prostitutes plying their trade in Scotland, but up to 1,300 are estimated to be working in Glasgow, while the number in Edinburgh in recent years has risen sharply. Aberdeen, similarly, has seen a 25% increase in the number of prostitutes working the city since the establishment of a tolerance zone around the city’s harbour in 1999. As many as 200 women from across the north-east regularly work the streets, although it is unusual for more than 30 to be working on any particular night.

Given that a working girl can pocket more than 300 in a single night, the scale of the business is staggering. Conservative estimates value street prostitution in Aberdeen alone at more than 1m a year. Add in the trade in sex conducted in private flats and the burgeoning escort agency scene and the scale of the industry is immediately apparent.

Superintendent Jim Duncan, the police officer responsible for policing the city’s red light district, argues that the tolerance zone has been a significant factor behind a fall in reported serious crime connected to prostitution since it was introduced. "The zone was set up following complaints from residents but at least we can now control the situation. The girls are drug users not dealers and we’re at a stage now where there is absolutely no suggestion of pimping."

Aberdeen’s tolerance zone is in a largely industrial area and the police encourage women, most of whom are aged between 17 and 25 and are on the streets to earn money to feed their drug habit, to work outside business hours.

The drop in prostitute-related crime is, Duncan argues, a powerful indicator that the zone is working to the mutual benefit of the police and prostitutes alike. "We’ve not had a report for over a year of someone being robbed by a prostitute. It might still be happening but if it is then we don’t know about it. The majority of the girls use the zone and they say they feel safer there. In fact the girls themselves report things to us - in the last two years we’ve had reports of two under-age prostitutes in the area looking for work but there’s no evidence that they actually found any."

Aberdeen’s tolerance zone has worked sufficiently smoothly for the city’s council leader Len Ironside to call for the legalisation and licensing of brothels in the city as part of a more relaxed and open attitude towards the sex industry, much to the private chagrin of the city’s constabulary. Grampian police hope instead that a drop-in centre currently planned for the tolerance zone will help ease the girls off their drug habits and hence out of prostitution.

But the apparent success of Aberdeen’s laid-back and liberal approach will be tested in the same way as Edinburgh’s Leith experiment was when a major redevelopment of the harbour proceeds. Duncan hopes that a planned wall between it and the tolerance zone will be sufficient for both to co-exist comfortably but he is all too aware of the Edinburgh experience and the difficulties involved in creating a situation in which street prostitution and the local community can live side-by-side with one another.

TOLERANCE ZONE or no tolerance zone, it cannot be denied that prostitutes are still working in Leith, a fact not lost on Ruth Morgan-Thomas, director of the prostitute support group Scotpep.

"No one has sought to address the reasons why women are working there. There hasn’t been any alternative put in place," says Morgan-Thomas, herself a former prostitute. "The reality of the economic environment we live in is that some women will continue working on the street because of their financial need. That’s not going to change."

"When you work on the streets you have the freedom of choosing your own hours. There isn’t a set time for you to clock in. Working in an establishment is like having a proper job with house rules and conditions and some prostitutes find such formalities hard. Shifts are often 12 hours long, which is too long for a dependent drug user before withdrawal starts to set in. If you’re fined for being late, the money you owe the establishment quickly builds up."

Despite the fact that 75% of prostitutes in Edinburgh work in indoor saunas, as opposed to only 25% in Glasgow, Morgan-Thomas is certain street prostitution is here to stay and that whilst there is no tolerance zone, women are at risk.

The reality of violence against street prostitutes was highlighted last year in a study by Marina Barnard of Glasgow University. Out of 240 prostitutes contacted, Barnard and her colleagues found that 54% of street workers reported being slapped, punched or kicked, 25% reported being raped and 23% said they’d been strangled. Cheap sex is easily and often mistaken for cheap lives.

"Sex and money is a very volatile mix," says Barnard. "There are many different triggers for violence towards prostitutes. Often these are about the type and cost of the sex the woman wants to sell and what the men think they should be provided with. In her mind she is clear that this is about sex for money, not anything else, but reminding the client of this can create tension, increasing the risk that he will become irritated and possibly violent."

"Men who buy sex often see it as a service. One man described sex with a prostitute as being similar to getting your car washed, As consumers they often think they have certain rights over the women. This is a view completely at odds with the prostitute’s view that she is in control of the encounter, not the man."

Like Morgan-Thomas, Barnard advocates the reinstitution of tolerance zones for prostitutes and condemns plans to close down saunas. "Prostitution is much more difficult to regulate when it goes underground. It becomes very difficult for health workers to engage with sauna owners," she argues. "Edinburgh’s sauna policy is basically the right way to go, but there is evidence that shows women have less autonomy in saunas than on the street. We need to engage with sauna owners to make sure women aren’t coerced into things like sex without a condom, for example."

Both women point out that the lack of clarity on a location for prostitutes causes more harassment in the long run.

"I question whether women in the community in Leith are safer now there is no tolerance zone," says Morgan-Thomas. "Punters no longer know where the prostitutes are now, so they have to trawl around. There is the likelihood that more women will be propositioned as prostitutes don’t have a tattoo on their arm. After all there are many women who wear short skirts and high boots who aren’t prostitutes."

The SNP MSP Margo MacDonald shares Morgan-Thomas’s concerns. She is proposing a bill that would enable local authorities, in concert with support groups, residents and the police, to designate areas within which street prostitution could take place. "Politicians are moving into line with public opinion. I’m convinced that public opinion is in favour of tolerance zones - just not on their own street, which is quite understandable. This isn’t a sensational bill - it’s simply about tidying up an informal arrangement that previously existed and worked."

EDINBURGH’S saunas were to all intents and purposes decriminalised in the mid-Eighties, when the city was dubbed the Aids capital of Europe and prostitution threatened mass public infection. Although councillors and public figures are coy when it comes to admitting that sexual transactions occur in saunas, they struggle to hide their pride in delivering Edinburgh from an Aids epidemic.

"Lots of prostitutes on the street in Edinburgh were HIV+ back then," says Councillor Phil Attridge, convenor of the regulatory committee on licensing. "If by minimising prostitution on the streets we have made Edinburgh safer than Glasgow, where’s the problem in that? Glasgow now has a horrendous problem, whereas Edinburgh is an absolutely brilliant success story with no tags around its neck." "We’re taking a pragmatic approach. You can stick your head in a moral cloud, but that doesn’t solve problems. Do you want the police, who are already on limited resources, rounding up girls in saunas, or do you want them solving crimes? After all, there are crimes and there are crimes."

But just as prostitution on the streets is hardly Pretty Woman, the reality of Edinburgh saunas is a far cry from Belle de Jour.

Sauna owner and former prostitute Angel takes a pragmatic approach to the job.

"If you’re going to have sleepless nights about it, you shouldn’t do it," she says. "You have to switch off. I’ve got a strong character and a good business head."

Good business sense notwithstanding, Angel has her fair share of recruitment problems. "You can’t just phone the job centre and put a note up advertising for staff. It’s not that kind of work. I’ve had the same staff on and off for years; I may sack them, but I may have them back later."

Angel’s sauna specialises in ‘mature’ staff, employing women only in their mid-twenties and over. "I don’t like them too young because they’re not reliable and some clients don’t like the feeling that they’re doing it with their daughters," she says. "The men are paying for time. Mature staff can provide conversation and help them relax."

It costs 15 to ‘relax’ for half an hour at Angel’s sauna, which is the going rate. For additional ‘personal services’ however, clients have to part with up to 50. Angel is cagey about her own earnings, citing delicate tax issues as the reason and readily admits that her staff won’t say how much they earn as "they’re all claiming benefit and would get done for fraud".

Angel is adamant that it is a service that is being offered in Edinburgh saunas. "These men have needs," she claims. "Some may have fetishes, like dressing up in women’s clothes that they can’t do with their partners. Sometimes their partners may not provide oral sex. An arrangement for sex means no hassle. No one’s going to follow him and call him. There’s no strings attached."

If the taboo behind discussing prostitution has finally been broken, one uncomfortable truth still lurks behind this most controversial of service industries.

"We had a guy come in last week," says Angel. "He’s severely handicapped - are you really telling me he’s going to get a woman? We have wheelchair access so we could take him, service him and leave everybody happy."

It’s a minority case which dispels the myth of the stereotypical punter and that highlights the multi-faceted nature of the modern sex industrywhich is not confined to female indoor and outdoor prostitution. Mark Bailey, an outreach worker with ROAM, an Edinburgh support group for male sex workers, says 220 male prostitutes have contacted the agency since 1995. "There are about a dozen rent boys working on Edinburgh streets," says Bailey, "but it’s an extremely transient population which drifts from city to city. So it’s very hard to measure." Unlike female street prostitution, drug dependency is rarely a motive. "It’s about money, attention and power," says Bailey, quoting broken homes and a history of abuse as typical backgrounds.

NONETHELESS it is clear that different local authorities are taking vastly different approaches towards prostitution. While Aberdeen retains the country’s last remaining officially-sanctioned tolerance zone and Edinburgh’s sex industry now exists in a twilight world, half-illicit, half officially condoned, Glasgow City Council is adopting a more robust and arguably old-fashioned approach.

The Labour MSP and former head of the city council, Frank McAveety, who is sponsoring a bill in the Scottish parliament to outlaw kerb-crawling, argues: "The council is right to be exposing these saunas. They are unacceptable and very often a cover for the criminal underworld. It is very easy for them to hide underage girls and girls from Eastern Europe. It is important to expose these and if they allow them to exist they must regulate them to prevent underage and vulnerable girls falling into a life they can’t get out of." Last month the council refused to renew the licenses of two of the city’s longest running saunas, Park Grove Terrace Health Club in the West End of the city and the Carlton Health club on the south side, effectively closing them down.

McAveety’s concerns are shared by Jim Coleman, deputy leader of Glasgow City Council. "Our view is that women end up in prostitution because of financial difficulties, personal problems or, more often than not, to fund crippling drug habits. Our approach is that women are victims who are being exploited, whether by the punters that are using them, or the pimps that run the brothels."

The divide in Scotland’s cities between those who advocate a softly liberal approach and those who believe that only a ‘Zero Tolerance’ approach can bring results is wider now than at any point in the past decade. Yet a balance must be struck between protecting the public and the prostitutes themselves. Ten years ago, we didn’t have Dr Barnard’s data and seven young women in Glasgow hadn’t been beaten to death.

Ultimately, however, supply will follow demand. That demand for sex was summed up by one regular client, thus: "Funny thing that ‘urge’ to punt again after a week or two. It’s just like being a drug addict, that anticipation of trying someone new, will they match the description, will they be that kind of girl that you want to go back to time and time again? The thrill starts with the phone call, then the nervous anticipation when you arrive, then that moment when, if she has a maid, the door opens and you see her for the first time. Wow! or... Blow me, I’ve made a mistake here."

MEANWHILE in Edinburgh the last prospective buyers shuffle out of the door of the Salamander Street show flats, a steady stream of cars park behind the huge iron gates. A few luxury apartments are still available, but with prices from 70,000-165,000 there’s a certain type of aspirational start-up couple in mind.

Salamander Street is home to the latest wave of young professionals who have invested in up-and-coming Leith. As in Newcastle, Cardiff, Liverpool and London’s docklands, the last 15 years have seen a flurry of gentrification in an area that was traditionally seen as less-than-salubrious. Warehouse chic and quayside bistros are the order of the day and gradually the relics of hardship are being brushed under the pine floors of modernity. But some stains of history are more stubborn than others, and none so much as that of the world’s oldest profession.

Red lights have been greeting ocean-weary sailors to Leith since ships started docking there. Even after the port’s decline at the beginning of the last century, prostitutes peddled their wares on the formerly run-down Coburg Street. But as the upwardly mobile moved in, the undesirables were moved along. Salamander Street was chosen as a location for CCTV-monitored tolerated soliciting, and Hayley and 20 or so other prostitutes set out their stalls. The scheme lasted two weeks. Behind the iron gates, housewarming parties had been interrupted by residents’ meetings with councillors and the police.

Lothian and Borders police state firmly that there is no tolerance zone in Leith but they worry that in its absence they will struggle to control and police the industry. One police source admitted that "No-one really knows where the girls are now. We warned that the consequences of ending the tolerance zone would be a greater exposure to crime and other problems."

Few residents have any moral qualms about the nocturnal activity itself; all are totally opposed to having to witness it on their doorsteps.

"I don’t want to be coming home from work at 11 o’clock at night and being propositioned by men," says Nicky Galbraith, of Coburg Street. "This is going on 500 yards away from the Scottish Executive and they’re doing nothing about it. Women should work in a specific area where police are drafted in to protect them. Not in a residential area."

One woman in her mid-twenties spoke about the value of her Salamander Street property. "I’d like to think we’ve made an investment and re-establishing the zone would affect property value," she said. "I believe that there are plenty of opportunities to work and make a good living and pay tax like I do. I work hard and have managed to do well. Educating people that prostitution is the way forward is not the right moral message for children coming through the system. It shouldn’t be tolerated."

Additional reporting by Gillian McCormack.

Some names have been changed.

THE PROSTITUTE: ‘when you’ve been doing it this long, you become numb to it’

CAROLINE is 26 and works in Anderston, one of Glasgow’s most notorious red light areas. She plies her trade most nights and has been on the streets for most of her adult life and can’t see any way out.

Her current predicament is far removed from the life that her parents and teachers at school would have predicted for her. She comes from a good family and went to a good school, where her teachers said she was a "bright and intelligent girl", but she met a man who introduced her to heroin and that, she says, was the moment at which her life began to fall apart.

"I wanted to be an air hostess when I was younger, go travelling and that kind of stuff, but I don’t think I’ve ever made it past Aberdeen."

Caroline has a pretty face, but years of drugs and abuse at the hands of boyfriends have taken away her good looks. "I started taking heroin when I was about 17. I was going out with a guy called Barry at the time. He was a lot older than me, but he was a really good laugh and I did totally love him.

"Barry had been in prison for dealing; he got me into heroin. I tried it and liked it. Like everyone that shoots up, I liked it too much." Caroline lived with Barry for two years. She has no happy memories. "My mum gave up on me, I don’t really blame her. We used to steal money from her to go and get a fix. The breaking point for her though, was when she had friends over one night and I came into the flat and took money from their bags. She totally lost it and threw me out. She said she had just had enough, so I had to move in with Barry. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I haven’t spoken to her since.

"Once I moved in with Barry, things got bad. We used to just sit about all day and shoot up. I think because we were together all the time, he got fed up with me and started hitting me. Sometimes, it was really bad. We didn’t have much money cause we couldn’t steal from my mum. It was horrible. I can’t really remember whose idea it was for me to go on the streets, but here I am anyway."

It was originally meant to be a temporary thing, to help them out until they could find another way to get cash, but four years ago Barry died after taking an overdose and with no family support and very few friends, except those she had on the streets, Caroline decided that it would be easier to continue working as a prostitute.

She treats her hours servicing, if she’s lucky, as many as 15 men a night, as any other job. "I don’t mind what I do, it gets me money and that’s what matters. I don’t think that I could do anything else now. I’m good at this. I just don’t think about it. When you’ve been doing it for this long, you become numb to it. A punter’s, a punter. I just get on with it. Anyway, it’s all I really know."

"I’ve worked in loads of places. I started off working around the Glasgow Green, been up to Aberdeen a few times. When the murders happened I went through to Edinburgh to work, it was a lot safer. I’m rarely frightened on the street as I think that I can handle myself, but that was a pretty scary time. You just never knew if you could have been next.

"I know people thought we were stupid for still going out, but how could we have stopped working? We all needed the money."

Caroline has been lucky. "I’ve never been attacked and I totally realise how lucky I am. I have had a few weirdos though, but everyone has. The way I see it, anyone who wants to have sex with someone who’d rather be doing the ironing is a bit messed up anyway, but then I suppose people could think the same of me."

Caroline’s current boyfriend is, she says, comfortable with how she earns her living. "He knows it’s just a job, it means nothing to me. Anyway if you’ve done it as often as me, sex is just overrated."

THE PUNTER: ‘I love my wife’

SIMON is in his early thirties and separated from his wife. He has a good job, a smart car and is a good-looking man. He is far removed from the furtive, stereotypical kerb-crawler routinely presented on television. He first went to a prostitute when he was a student, on a trip to Amsterdam. "It was just a bit of a laugh really. We were drunk and stoned and thought hey, when in Rome. All the boys did it."

It was an experience he admits enjoying, but one he certainly didn’t think he was likely to repeat when he got back home to Glasgow.

"I didn’t rush straight off the plane and start trawling through the city streets - it was a good few years later before I went to a prostitute; it wasn’t actually until I got married."

"I wasn’t unhappy in my marriage, I love my wife. It wasn’t because the sex wasn’t great either. I didn’t consciously decide to go to a prostitute, it just happened."

"One night, I think it was about six years ago, a few mates and I were out in the city centre celebrating my birthday. A friend and myself got separated from everyone else and decided to walk back to the West End. We had to walk through Anderston, and as we were walking through, my mate said he would pay for me to ‘have a go’ for my birthday and I did. It just happened."

"I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had when I was younger. It was totally soulless. I remember trying to kiss the girl, and she told me to f*** off. I forgot that this wasn’t someone who actually wanted to have sex with me, it was someone I was paying and who couldn’t give a s***."

Despite that experience, Simon has since had sex with at least 10 prostitutes. "I don’t drive about week in week out, it’s something I do very occasionally once or twice a year. I suppose that’s often enough."

"It’s really difficult to try and justify myself. To me it’s just good sex. With a prostitute the sex is good. They are good at what they do, there is no denying that."

Simon has never visited a sauna since he prefers to drive through Glasgow’s red light district looking for girls. "I think there is less chance of getting caught if I’m in my car. I don’t know why. I’m not disgusted with myself or anything, but I just know that if my wife found out she would be absolutely devastated, and although my friends know that I’ve visited prostitutes in the past, they have no idea that I still do and would never suspect that it’s not just for a laugh."

Simon doesn’t think about what he does because he prefers not to. "I can’t help what I do, I have tried to stop going because I know it would hurt other people, but I can’t. But if I sat down and thought about stuff like diseases, it would just drive me mad. So it’s best just not to think about it."