This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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Criminalising sex workers’ clients makes trafficking worse

By:   []

Date: 2021-08

Emily: One of the recent developments in this space is that more and more people are saying that migrants and sex workers should be included in the conversation. This is obviously harder to do under criminalising models than under decriminalisation. Do you think it's relevant to have sex workers in the conversation about what the trafficking sector should do about the sex industry?

Andrew: Of course. They absolutely have to be in the conversation. They need to be informing what enables them to be ‘safe’ and what allows them to identify things that are unsafe. That, to me, is an immediate goal. But I also want them in the conversation because, just as we talked to victims of trafficking, we should be talking to sex workers. This is the bit that's just not done. And I feel I'm banging my head against a brick wall with the Home Office on this one. There is continual talk at an extremely general level around the push factors into exploitation. The narrative there hasn’t changed for 10 years. But we did a bit of work internally within Unseen and it doesn't match that narrative. You've got to talk to people that are in it and affected by it if you want to get the story right.

If we don't talk to people directly then it's always filtered. Even talking to me about what trafficking victims feel, I'm filtering it and processing it and I'm going to give an opinion. You sometimes want it raw. But then the question becomes, how do you go from the raw and the anecdotal to a statistical level that holds true? How do you find a balance between individual stories and systemic issues?

This chat has brought to mind something else, which is that I’ve found myself wondering how much the UK is being influenced by the United States. There’s something that always confuses me whenever I go to the US. I go there thinking that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to trafficking. But when I arrive in the US, I find myself thinking that a) I really don’t understand this country and b) I don’t understand what is going on here. If you look at the trafficking organisations in the US, you’ll see that there is an obsession with sex trafficking to the nth degree. And it is in combination with the huge preponderance of faith-based charities there as well. You’ve got 50 states with different laws around prostitution, they have a massive problem with ‘child prostitution’, and it all dominates the conversation around trafficking in a really unhealthy way. The big funders in the US also have very clear positions and clear funding preferences. I wonder if some of that is starting to creep into the UK discourse as well.

Emily: What do you think it will mean for the commercial sex sector, and for trafficking within that sector, if Diana Johnson succeeds and we end up with the Nordic model in the UK?

Andrew: I think we can say with certainty that it won't be Sweden. It will be a variation on Northern Ireland. Crudely speaking, we’d bring in the Nordic legislation on top of the current system and that would deliver the same results. Systems are perfectly designed to deliver the results you get, and if you don’t like the results, you actually have to change the whole system. You can't just put the sticking plaster on it. And that's what I think this is.

Nobody is disputing what Diana Johnson is saying, that sex trafficking is hugely wrong and damaging and something should be done about it. That’s fine, not a problem Diana. But doing something when there is no evidence that it works and when there is evidence to the contrary, and thinking that just because you’re doing it in England and Wales you’re going to have a different outcome – that’s just nonsensical.

Emily: So in terms of the effect it would have on the trafficking, the effect would be either be negligible or make it worse.

Andrew: No. Make it worse. It will make it worse. Everywhere that they've brought that type of the legislation in, all the evidence shows it doesn't work. It makes the situation around trafficking worse. It drives it further underground. It will hurt those that you're trying to help.

Emily: Are you comfortable with anti-trafficking being used as one of the key reasons to promote and support Nordic models?

Andrew: No, I'm not comfortable. I'm hugely uncomfortable with it. My question is this: which trafficking organisations have Diana Johnson and others talked to that have led them to this position? We looked at the Nordic model when we wrote ‘It Happens Here’, I’ve spoken to academics since, and I’ve looked and looked and looked and I can find no evidence in defence of this.

Emily: Any final thoughts?

Andrew: Just one further observation on engaging with survivors or workers. Years ago, I asked a clinical psychologist about the journey to recovery for somebody who has been exploited.

What is the timeline? They of course said that everybody is individual, but if we’re talking in generalisations there is probably at least a seven-year window between exiting exploitation and being able to talk about the issue without retraumatising. A minimum of seven years. So, this whole thing of greater incorporation of survivor voice: I'm not opposed to it, but we need to remember our duty of care.

I once went to an international conference where I met up with a number of good friends who are survivors of trafficking. During dinner one of them said to me, ‘What you probably forget, and we forgive you for forgetting it, is that even though we can talk about it, the impact of it is with us always. So even things like if I go to the toilet, I can't close the door and lock the door. It just triggers me. Because I'm in a small, confined space and locked. And I live with that every day. And I can put things in place to cope with it, but things can still trigger me.’

So, when we say that we want to hear those voices, we have a duty of care as to how we do that. And I think we also have a responsibility to recognise that just as we filter things, they filter things because of the circumstances that they've been through. I’m bringing this up to re-emphasise the complexity around this. How we both receive and give information is really, really critical. Especially with something that's so emotive as this.
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