SAM became a prostitute at the age of 15, to fund a drug addiction. “I was introduced to crack cocaine by a man from my area,” she said. “I’d had a bad day and this dealer gave it to me, although I was quite naive and didn’t realise exactly what it was.”
Her dealer encouraged her addiction, giving her drugs on the street before one day taking her to a crack house where she was introduced to a prostitute.
“She was about 28. She bought me clothes and took me to a hotel, saying that a man would give me more drugs, about £20 worth, if I had sex with him,” she said.
“I refused, but back at the house she pushed me into the bathroom and threatened me, saying I couldn’t have drugs for free.
“I could see no other way of getting my fixes, so I stayed in the house for two or three weeks, having sex with the dealer and his friend.
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“They would go out in the evenings and lock me in the house, but they were giving me around £400 of crack a day. During sex I would just stare at the drugs, because that was the only reason I was doing it. Sometimes I would be awake for three days at a time.”
Sam managed to cut herself off from the group, but then found that she had no way of funding her drug dependency.
“I began going to other dealers and offering sexual favours. I felt sick all the time. I was taking the drugs to black out the memories of what I was doing,” she said.
“Then, on Christmas Day two years ago, I felt like I was going to die. I had already sold myself and taken £500 of crack that day, and I decided I couldn’t do it any more. I contacted a drug support programme, and broke the cycle.
“I’m 18 now, and working with the Children’s Society because I don’t want any child to get involved the way I did. It will stay with me for ever.”
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Commenting on the Government’s proposals, Sam said: “I don’t think that any prostitutes should be prosecuted — they need more support instead — but if they are then fines are not the way to go.
“They’ll just have to go back out to get the money to pay it, so its not helping anyone. Help for drug and alcohol abuse is a better idea, and I guess it might have helped me if I had been caught. Focusing on education is good because the links between drugs and prostitution are really strong.”
Sam is less positive about plans to get tough with kerb crawlers: “That is not helping the young people who are in crack houses and going through what I did. Just because prostitution is behind closed doors it does not make it any better.”
Jenny is in her late forties and has been a prostitute, working on the streets of London, for 17 years. “I am a full-time mother and a part-time prostitute. If a bill comes in, I go out and earn the money to pay it. I have a disabled daughter who needs full-time care, so I can’t get a nine-to-five job. I either have to get money this way or put my daughter into 24-hour care, which I don’t want to do.”
Jenny is unhappy about the plan for stronger action against kerb crawlers, saying that it will make her job more dangerous. “At the moment we use certain parking areas where we can watch each other’s backs and take down numberplates, but when there’s a clampdown we get pushed to the outskirts. It takes the safety net away.
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“The Government say they are making it safer to move into a property and work together. That’s fine if you work a lot but you’ve got to pay for those premises. At the moment I work one or two nights a month, so I would have to sell myself more to pay for a house.”
Jenny’s solution is to decriminalise prostitution. “Then we really could work in a safer environment, like our homes or a friend’s home. At the moment we are afraid of losing our houses or our children because it’s illegal, but we don’t want to be in front of everyone, and we certainly don’t want to interfere with people’s lives.
“If we do have to work on the streets we don’t want to work near family houses. We’d sooner be in the city centres, near the hotels and bars, but we are being pushed to the outskirts.”
The names in this report are pseudonyms
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THE OLDEST PROFESSION