Prostitution resource help please

I am curious to know what the Sex Worker Open University is doing at this event?

I could not get the page to archive via the Wayback machine so please be careful about clicking links within the link

archive.is/x5XDS

Nowhere in these figures or any of the information does your cultish “flirty fishing” appear so if it exists at all it must be a very minor component of the sex industry

Given that flirty fishing was practiced decades ago it would be astonishing if they did find any instances of it wouldn’t it?

I included flirty fishing because, for anyone interested in researching cultic sex trafficking there is a huge resource of archival material available, much of it via the xfamily website. It demonstrates in a chilling and disturbing manner a highly efficient, bureaucratic system for exploiting vulnerable women through sex work. It is also an early indication of things to come.

I love my archival material, I collect ephemera and archival material and always have done. I was rather hoping that there might be other readers out there who share my passion for researching and collecting.

Additionally much of my research is in relation to yoga cults, pseudo-shamanic cults, psychotherapy cults, human potential / personal development cults and new age cults.

The Children of God was a pseudo-Christian cult and I included it out of a sense of appreciating diversity and not wishing to stigmatise any one religious or spiritual practice. Sexual abuse and exploitation can happen in any spiritual / religious organisation.

The other reason for including it was that the archival material available demonstrates that the CoG was a cult that operated a highly organised and well structured prostitution business. It is not the only cult to do this of course, but it is one of the most notorious and well documented, so anyone interested in the subject needs to be aware of it.

Back to your comment. Just because a particular element of the sex business such as cultic sex trafficking or sex cults involved in prostitution do not feature in your links does not, of course, imply that it is therefore minor or inconsequential.

A stripper recently told me that many of the strippers working in Spain were giving their money to yoga cults. Given what I know about sex trafficking and yoga cults I suspect that her report was accurate. I spoke to an erotic dancer a few years back who worked at a certain high profile pole dancing club in the UK. She reported that many of her colleagues were involved in a certain notorious tantric yoga cult.

Of course these reports are only anecdotal and need to be validated with evidence. I can do this.

I would like to ask you, as someone who claims to be knowedgeable about the sex industry, about the prevelance of the following categories within the UK and international sex industries (there are in fact multiple businesses, some masquerading as religious / spiritual organisations, some as therapy organisations / some in other ways, but all are concerned with £££££ and $$$$$$)

self definied "Dakas" / "Dakinis" offering all manner of intimate massage and sexual encounters (usually with a proviso on their website that they do not offer sexual services and that orgasm is just a byproduct of the healing treatment)

various yoni / lingam massagers

various "priestesses" / "goddesses" / "sacred sexual healers" / "holy whores" / "sexual shamans" (there are many euphemisms) offering genital / anal massage and other intimate services (typically with the same proviso as the above category)

various "sexological bodyworkers", "deep bodyworkers" "Reichian therapists" "neo-Reichian massagers", "pelvic heart integration therapists" and other neo-Reichian bodyworkers who claim to clear blockages and recover repressed memories of trauma via intimate massage (same proviso as the above categories)

various "Shaktis" working as pole dancers, erotic dancers, escorts, honey traps, blackmailers and on live sex cams who use their sexual skills (which are considerable - they receive intensive training) to recruit people into their cult and generate revenue for their pimping gurus/ cult leaders. This latter category has a tendency to target people of influence including judges, senior police officers and politicians.

You must be aware of people working within these categories surely?

There are multiple network links between various sex workers organisations and these cults. I would find it difficult to believe that you would not know about the activities of some of these cults, even if you were only aware of the benevolent, spiritual, nourishing, caring camouflage that they use to disguise their activites.

One additional difficulty, relevant to my research into cults, is that there is a growing population of people who claim to combine sex work (they would usually refer to it as "sexological bodywork” “Reichian / Neo-Reichian therapy" or some other euphemism) with psychotherapy.
To be specific there is a growing number of people who massage people’s genitals (anuses too) and some even have sexual intercourse with clients and who claim that this is a valid method of psychotherapy. Increasing numbers of such people are accredited with the UKCP, BACP and with various dodgy accrediting organisations that they and their friends set up themselves to make themselves look more professional than they are (the Independent Practitioners Network comes to mind, although there are many others).

Of course there have always been therapists who have violated their clients sexually. There is a long and horrible history of therapists who operate as cult leaders, Derek Gale, Vanessa Clark, Palace Gate Counselling and Beechy Colclough being amongst the most notorious, albeit only the tip of the Iceberg.

My point is, in relation to identifying the numbers of people working “off-street” in the sex industry, there are a number of caveats and problems, some are well documented in the links you provided, as to why any data on this subject is provisional.

In addition to this there is a liminal category of people who claim to be sex / intimacy coaches, practitioners of psychosexual medicine, Dakas, Dakinins, love coaches, tantric healers, sacred sexual healers, tantric educators, sexological bodyworkers, body psychotherapists, the list is endless, many of whom provide services that are identical or very similar to those of sex workers but who claim that they are not sex workers.

The liminal nature of the category these people occupy is just one complicating feature of why this is a difficult thing to subject to data analysis.

Another difficulty is that of intent. There is a continuum of intent within this category upon which, at one end, operate ruthless criminals, blackmailers, child abusers and worse. At the other end there are extremely vulnerable people, often with mental illnesses or learning difficulties, who genuinely believe that they are channelling Shakti, manifesting a goddess or working as a lightworker to heal the planet through "sacred sexual healing”.

This issue is further complicated by the fact that people in the latter category are not infrequently controlled, manipulated and exploited by people in the former category. Possibly the largest category of people on this continuum (speaking from personal real life experience) are people who are narcissistic, fairly sociopathic, greedy and would likely be diagnosed with one of the B cluster personality disorders. Such people tend to be evangelical about their spiritual beliefs, which are often bizarre in many ways, ruthless about making money and dissociated from the harm they do to others, even when such harm is easy to see.

In my experience of researching cults it is impossible for the detached observer to determine exactly where on the continuum of intent and culpability a particular “sacred sexual healer” exists.

So, to conclude, I am saying that this category of “off-street” sex work is vast, difficult to measure quantitively and fully of liminal “fuzzy edges”.

So we do know a fair amount which groups are the biggest or smallest police in various areas do have an idea of numbers in street prostitution and this is much smaller than those working indoors (in massage parlours, saunas, agenicies or independently etc). Other sources are information are the numbers who engage with support services here also information from counting prostitutes advertisements here and here, plus we do have estimates of the number of clients of prostitutes from NATSAL surveys here.

Thank you for the links. They are all PDF files and for safety sake I never download PDFs and always view them via the archive.

Your first link is to a PDF file located at
eprints.bbk.ac.uk/17962/1/17962.pdf
It does not work in the wayback machine or at the archive. I am not sure why. Can you C&P the relevant text here?

Your second link is to this document
Project Acumen
Setting the Record:The Trafficking of Migrant Women in England and Wales off-street prostitution sector
August 2010
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200422110020/kidnap.bz.cn/UserImages/00001892.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20200422110020/kidnap.bz.cn/UserImages/00001892.pdf

I have not read it all but noticed the caveat on page 10, which I did read and which explains that "in some areas it [the report] may deviate from conventional academic research methods and standards. The report utilises statistics in a variety of ways throughout, but should not be viewed as a statistical report in the classical sense; rather as an inessential analysis which draws on statistics where appropriate.”

Further caveats follow

It may very well be a valuable document that can provide some insights into some aspects of what it calls “off-street prostitution”, however the report includes, quite correctly, caveats as to the limited and provisional nature of the data and conclusions published. I will sit down and read it all carefully when i have a moment and report back.

Your 3rd link is a duplicate of the 2nd
Your 4th link is to a BMJ paper titled "
The prevalence of, and factors associated with, paying for sex among men resident in Britain: findings from the third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3)"

source (via the archive)
archive.is/m3o2A

I am a little confused as to what the relevance of the paper is to our current discussion. I skim read it and while it reported interesting data in relation to men who pay for sex (MPS) one of the most interesting findings (for me at least) was that the majority of MPS reported paying for sex in foreign territories, as sex tourists, rather than in the UK, thus somewhat compromising the ability of the paper to report on trends within the UK sex industry.

Your 5th link looks interesting and the conclusions drawn seem entirely reasonable. Anyone with even the most rudimentary and provisional understanding of how sex workers market themselves appreciates that photos, descriptions, ages, and all manner of other information used to market the sex worker are more often than not wildly inaccurate. Researchers posing as customers or harvesting data from websites advertising sexual services are unlikely to harvest useful data for this reason.

I admit I have not sat down for a few hours to study all the material in your links I have skim read the ones I could access.

The conclusions I have gained from doing so are that, while some researchers can provide some provisional conclusions some of the time, there are many unhelpful rabbit holes researchers can fall into if they are not careful that are likely to result in wildly inaccurate reporting.

This makes sense to me and I would not disagree with it. I will take another look at the documents when i have a moment, however it seems to me that none of these documents claim to provide authoritative data or conclusions as to the exact numbers of people working in any particular aspect of the sex industry.

Having said this I suspect that your claim that there are far more people working off-street than on a typical prostitution “beat" is likely to be correct, however there are further difficulties and complexities that render it pretty much impossible to gain accurate data regarding numbers.

Some of these challenges have been noted in your links.

There is an additional difficulty inasmuch as there are various kinds of transactional sex that may or may not be considered to be sex work by either the parties involved or by outside observers. Sugar daddies, sugar mummy, sugar babies, mistresses, courtesans, “arrangements”, sex in exchange for rent, survival sex, there are many varied and complex forms of transactional sex that are unlikely to be included in any research.

Some are at the more privileged end of the continuum, e.g. courtesans, some, survival sex are at the most disempowered. However, regardless of the level of financial remuneration the power imbalance between the person providing renumeration and the person receiving it I think a centrally important factor in determining the likelihood of abuse and exploitation.

Some of the admins on the saafe website will be able to furnish you with a lot of detailed first hand information. Try enquiring directly on there.

I missed out a reference here and dulicated another-sorry

@hoodathunkit anyone with an opinion on this issue will speak from their own experience and the experiences of people they know personally while this is often true-as one can see from posts on Mumsnet, there is a better way-and that is to look at the proper research which is more reliable.

So we do know a fair amount which groups are the biggest or smallest police in various areas do have an idea of numbers in street prostitution and this is much smaller than those working indoors (in massage parlours, saunas, agenicies or independently etc). Other sources are information are the numbers who engage with support services here also information from counting prostitutes advertisements
here and here, plus we do have estimates of the number of clients of prostitutes from NATSAL surveys here.
Now none of these methods is perfect and all are subject to errors but by combining such results it is possible to get a picture of the quantified typology of prostitution in the UK.

Nowhere in these figures or any of the information does your cultish “flirty fishing” appear so if it exists at all it must be a very minor component of the sex industry

It's worth pointing out in the UK street-prostitution on the street is illegal and for the most part uncommon, and that most prostitution that takes places is the legal-form which is indoors either in people's own home's or hotels in the form of "escorting".

I have an issue with this statement

In my experience anyone with an opinion on this issue will speak from their own experience and the experiences of people they know personally.

There is nothing wrong with this, it is how people naturally form opinions.

However given that women who are abused and trafficked are likely to have experience of knowing other women who are abused and trafficked, and given that women who experience sex work as liberating usually have friends who hold the same view, it is highly likely that people hold opposing views operate within echo chambers where their views become entrenched via confirmation bias.

It seems to me that whether we are talking about extremely vulnerable people who are addicted to drugs, mothers living in poverty, students engaging in sex work to pay for their education, escorts of various kinds, courtesans or whoever, the one thing all of these groups have in common is that they prefer to operate clandestinely if possible due to the stigma attached to sex work.

This makes it incredibly difficult to know which groups are the bigggest or smallest whatever side of the debate you are on.

I posted some links to a website run by former members of the Children of God cult, a seriously criminal cult that coerced and brainwashed women to work as escorts and to use sex and seduction to raise money and to recruit new cult members.

The Children of God was not the only cult to do this. Unfortunately cultic prostitution is extremely common and continues to this day.

Anyone reading the documents I linked to will see that that the women working as escorts, and encouraging other women to do likewise, were enthusing about sex work as a way of saving people for Jesus.

Now to most sane, rational people this appears delluded and disturbing but for the women working as Flirty Fish they were adamant that they loved to spread God's word in this way.

This raises a load of isses about personal bodily autonomy and consent and the manipulation of consent.

So I'm saying that there are a lot of nuances and grey areas here, grey areas relating to the following:

the uncertaintly regarding numbers / % of people invovled in different types of transactional sex - the only thing people can agree on is that this is an extremely controversial issue with different sides providing different stats

different levels of transaction in sexual encounters (some would say that marriage is sometimes transactional - it certainly involves contract law) some sexual encounters are explicitly transactional some less explicitly so some not at all there is a continuum and it is not always easy to know exactly where on the continuum any particular act falls

different levels of power imbalance - hugely important

different levels of abuse and exploitation (as I demonstrated with the Flirty Fishing links many exploited women appeared to be happy and enthusiastic about their "choices")

the changing nature of sex work since the advent of the Internet and the exposion of "women's empowerment" cults promoting sex work as a sacred spritutual path

the rise of the nerds, often lonely, socially arkward, neuro-atypical people with computer hacking skills and the potential to earn very high salaries. It is my understanding that many extremely vulnerble men (and sometimes women) are exploited by various actors selling not just sex but "bliss" and "intimacy" as a form of therapy and personal development.

I'm a bit pushed for time, but basically want to say that the sex industry has changed beyond all recognition over the last few years and that we need to examine the new trends with care if we are to fight abuses and exploitation and protect the most vulnerable people in society.

exponential - "It is not in the interests of prostitutes to draw attention to themselves and most operate quietly and discretely.

In my area when there are occasional visits by the police to premises to check for possible victims of exploitation or trafficking the neighbours express surprise at what was going on. There is little or no direct impact on the neighbourhood."

You forgot to add: "YMMV" (Your Mileage May Vary)

"Prostitutes are not prowling the corridors and accosting people."

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I did not say that that it was the prostitutes who are responsible for making those hotels "not pleasant places, sometimes not safe places, for other women to be, whether alone or accompanied."

I did not mention "corridors".

Clues:

• it is not the prostitutes in and around the Holbeck area who are propositioning children at bus stops and abducting and raping women.

• punters do not wander the corridors of Hotels looking for prostitutes.

@Molesmokes It is not in the interests of prostitutes to draw attention to themselves and most operate quietly and discretely.

In my area when there are occasional visits by the police to premises to check for possible victims of exploitation or trafficking the neighbours express surprise at what was going on. There is little or no direct impact on the neighbourhood.

Similarly those prostitutes who use hotels –I don’t know where you get the idea that those hotels are not pleasant places, sometimes not safe places, for other women to be, whether alone or accompanied. Prostitutes are not prowling the corridors and accosting people.

traceyracer - "It's worth pointing out in the UK street-prostitution on the street is illegal and for the most part uncommon, and that most prostitution that takes places is the legal-form which is indoors either in people's own home's or hotels in the form of "escorting".

It is also worth pointing out that:

• being illegal does not stop something happening (if it wasn't happening nobody would have bothered to make a law against it)

• "for the most part uncommon" depends on where you live and/or work.

• I have no idea whether or not "most prostitution that takes places is the legal-form which is indoors either in people's own home's or hotels in the form of "escorting" - but what I do have an idea about is that in all these cases there is a direct impact on people who are neither punters nor prostitutes, including children.

If you live next door or in the same street as a brothel you may or may not be aware of this - if you are aware then it will likely have been brought to your attention in an unpleasant way.

Similarly, hotels. Hotels frequented by "escorts" are not pleasant places, sometimes not safe places, for other women to be, whether alone or accompanied.

Holbeck needs very much to be highlighted as an example of how a Council can completely ignore the interests, views and safety of residents.

If they want to experiment on people, I wonder why they chose Holbeck, rather than an area of Leeds where the houses are most expensive? Why experiment with "street prostitution" in Holbeck rather than a brothel in a posh residential area? Or a posh hotel?

A lot of people here are posting links re the approach used in Leeds which tolerates street-prostitution/kerb-crawling in a specified area.

It's worth pointing out in the UK street-prostitution on the street is illegal and for the most part uncommon, and that most prostitution that takes places is the legal-form which is indoors either in people's own home's or hotels in the form of "escorting".

exponential - "The thread seems to have gone a long way from the original question as set out by the OP."

Surely up to the OP to decide how much of this thread is helpful and relevant?

Some of us have interpreted the OP's request one way, you another. That's all.

Fascinating info in this thread, especially stumbledin and hoodathunkit, (although I'm not sure I'm in the best place/mood for those links at the moment). Wait until the weekend and a strong gin.

Just checked, in a thread titled "Prostitution resource help please", the OP posted..."but need to find a wide range of useful organisations or articles to help and I guess to balance my own view too... Could anyone offer me some links?"

So all the information is potentially useful and not reliant on a narrow reading of one question posed in the intro. Good, glad that's clear.

I bought "The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth" at the start of last year but had not got much further than Chapter 3, which discusses ECP, Selma James & Wages for Housework and Scot Pep, hence my fascination with the above discussion. Anyhow since my earlier post I've been re-reading, with notes this time 😆👍

The intro is absolutely compelling, from Josephine Butler, to the murdered Yorkshire women in the late 70s, onto the totally tragic story of Emma Humphreys and all the work Julie Bindel has done around the globe on this topic. This book is certainly comprehensive & each chapter is well referenced.

Couple of points so far. It seems important to understand "the false distinction between forced and chosen sex work" promoted by advocates of the trade. As the grim stories associated with Holbeck in this thread illustrate, the tentacles of this abusive trade run deeper than 'individual empowerment'. Indeed Sweden promoted the 'Nordic Model' in their pursuit of developing a more equal society for everyone. What kind of society do we want to live in is one useful question, another, is it a human right to buy someone's body? (Or is sex a HR?)

The book is chockablock full of survivors, at least 50 are given voice & the organisations they have set up to support each other. And the book remembers some of the many who did not survive.

Prostitution is dangerous & abusive for far too many women & children, especially poor women & children. "The global sex trade is built on the exploitation of women & could not exist without the institutionalised opressions of gender, race & class". Crying that individual empowerment should have precedence over the wholesale abuse of women & girls is bullshit. As the indomitable survivor Fiona Broadfoot said (CEASE conference I went to a couple of years ago) "it's not sex & it's not work". Awesome woman that she is. The more I've listened to survivors the more this message comes across.

Right, back to chapter 3 again!

I had some minor contact with them at one point where I tried to explain something important to do with safeguarding.

"Oh but you don't really mean that do you?" said the KCWC droid, with a syruppy voice, while attempting to get me to think and behave in the exact opposite way that I wanted to think and behave.

I cannot express how much I loathe that kind of thing.

It reminds me of the scene near the end of The Office Christmas Special where Chris Finch is penetrating some drunk woman from behind in the car park. She is on her knees and says something like "oh no! Can you just stop for a minute, my knees hurt!" and he says, in a deeply soothing and reassuring voice "oh no they don't" as he carries on regardless

Many women thought women being paid to maintain households wasn't a bad theory, but as with their campaign around prostitution, it ends up seeming to say this is the only work women can expect to get so lets pay them and give them workers rights. they never have campaigns about breaking the cycle of oppression and exploitation.

The important thing to notice about the campaigns for wages due lesbians / WfH and the like is that it makes them look like the kind of batshit "wimmin" featured in the Private Eye coulumn of the same name

And as ever, the mainstream media despite some exposing some of the damage they have done to women who innocently join them, they are still given media coverage. Unlike gender critical / radical feminists.

To be fair some radical feminists have always gotten a lot of exposure in the Graun, a fact that I find quite confusing given the Graun's support for the more extreme elements of the trans movment.

The BBC have always used the KCWC/CWC as a go-to group for soundbites. It may be because there are very few groups out there with spokeswomen willing to step up and provide content?

I am old enough to remember the original Wages for Housework where they had a reputation for creating a cult like feeling in their various groups, eg Wages for Black Lesbians, English Collective of Prostitutes, later migrant groups. In most instances the same 3/4 women were the leaders of these groups. (At that time women's liberation groups were all - or meant to be - collective in practice.)

Yes, I'm unsure of the numbers but it was the same handfull of women who were involved in all the different groups.

But the other part of their history is their entryism. ie the number of groups they destroyed by having a few women join a functioning group which ended up being coopted by WfH. This happened at Greenham Common towards the end. And on one occassion they put out a press release claiming that the national Women's Liberation Conference that year was in fact their own. Other tactics were, for example, at the anual IWD March through central London, waiting for the march to move off, and then rush to the front with their banner to them through visual imagery claim it as their own. (I think Sisters Uncut have learnt tactics from them.)

I think that the entryism is the important issue here.

Let us imagine that we are living under a system of "divide and conquer" in which some hostile foreign power, or a network of puppet masters or useful idiots in power here use astroturfing and entryism to undermine all manner of good causes and grass roots activit movements.

It would make absolute sense to use WfH / The KCWC / CWC to act as the public face of grass roots feminst activism while at the same time making an absolute mockery of such activism by demading wages for black lesbians / WfH and the like.

There are many parallels with the cultic elements within the TRA movement IMO.

I don't give diddly squat what consenting adults get up to sexually. I will support any gender non-conforming person and have done so at risk to my own safety in the past.

I will not ever join in with some kind of collective brainwashing programme where I am invited to testify that TWAW or call myself "cis".

At one level this is all about how far it is supportive and helpful to a person to validate their delusions.

I used to be good friends with someone who had a psychotic breakdown and ended up believing that she was a disowned member of the royal family. Meaningful, coded messages to her from her loyal subjects transmitted via the radio were involved.

If I tried to reasons with her that the radio was not sending her messages or that she was not really a princess she would get extremely distressed. Because I did not wish to distress her I did not challenge her delusions. If she talked about being royal I would just smile and try to change the subject. However I never called her "your Majesty" or "your Royal Highness" because to do so, apart from being a lie, would be cruel in some other way.

Thanks hoodathunkit

I am old enough to remember the original Wages for Housework where they had a reputation for creating a cult like feeling in their various groups, eg Wages for Black Lesbians, English Collective of Prostitutes, later migrant groups. In most instances the same 3/4 women were the leaders of these groups. (At that time women's liberation groups were all - or meant to be - collective in practice.)

But the other part of their history is their entryism. ie the number of groups they destroyed by having a few women join a functioning group which ended up being coopted by WfH. This happened at Greenham Common towards the end. And on one occassion they put out a press release claiming that the national Women's Liberation Conference that year was in fact their own. Other tactics were, for example, at the anual IWD March through central London, waiting for the march to move off, and then rush to the front with their banner to them through visual imagery claim it as their own. (I think Sisters Uncut have learnt tactics from them.)

The problem was that they appeared to have been a creation of Selma James who had, still has, a big reputation. Much loved by the Guardian etc..

Many women thought women being paid to maintain households wasn't a bad theory, but as with their campaign around prostitution, it ends up seeming to say this is the only work women can expect to get so lets pay them and give them workers rights. they never have campaigns about breaking the cycle of oppression and exploitation.

And as ever, the mainstream media despite some exposing some of the damage they have done to women who innocently join them, they are still given media coverage. Unlike gender critical / radical feminists.

It is my experience that cultic dynamics arise in all areas of life where there are power imbalances and where people are vulnerable.

It is therefore understandable that the sex industry will be subjected to cultic dynamics . It is also unsurprising that religious, personal development and therapy cults generate revenue via prostitution.

This is something that we need to think about with extreme care. It is a controversial issue as it related to issues of bodily autonomy, personal choice, brainwashing / gaslighting and of course, appalling exploitation.

Many of these issues resonate with ones I will be referring to on the thread about Aristasia and "Miss Martindale”.

Firstly I would like to start by sharing with readers some links relating to a cult that was notorious for the sexual abuse of children and for the sexual exploitation of women via escorting (aka ESing) and “flirty fishing” (aka FFing). Women were expected to use seduction and sex to recruit and indoctrinate men into the cult as well as to generate revenue for the cult. Anyone interested in coercive control, cults, brainwashing and also in issues relating to bodily autonomy and the sex industry would do well to study this particular cult, although be warned it is extremely disturbing.

I manage my anxiety and trauma by doing my very best to learn as much as possible and to think as much as possible about the things that scare and threaten me and others. Some people deal with their anxieties and trauma by avoiding such things as they find them “triggering". Readers in the latter category are advised not to check the following links or at least to exercise extreme caution.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160516044759/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg398.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20160516044759/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg398.pdf

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160617093312/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg403.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20160617093312/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg403.pdf

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160515225905/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg394-397.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20160515225905/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg394-397.pdf

further archival documentation in PDF form can be found here
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180510105144/www.xfamily.org/index.php/Heavenly_Helpers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20180510105144/www.xfamily.org/index.php/Heavenly_Helpers

videos here
Deborah Davis on Flirty Fishing and her father David Berg

20/20 documentary (incomplete - FFing at 23.35)

Also of course, while I do not believe that sex work is a mentally or physically healthy way for most people to live their lives, living in fear of the knock on the door from the bailiffs is a very unhealthy way to live, as is not being able to pay the rent or feed your children.

In my experience sex ork can feel like a magical, wonderful way to earn money for some people for some of the time.

As people get older and their social circles increasingly comprise of sex workers, punters and exploiters (or of people who do not know and who believe untruths - some sex workers have double lives) the mental and physical toll of engaging in commercial sex increases over time.

Very few people save money and invest it well so they can exit comfortably. Most (I'm not claiming all but most) in this category turn to earning commission from the exploitation of others.

(Intrigued hoodathunkit by you reference to them. They / the Centre have been exposed a number of time for their cultish behaviour, but they continue to survive, contribute to the media and MP enquiries, and are the only Women's Centre that somehow had enough money to buy a building)

My concerns about them go back decades. They used to be called the Kings Cross Women's Centre.

They hold a group called "single mother's self defence" which is not about learning fighting skills it is about managing poverty.

Given that they have the ECP there and that many of the women there wear different "hats" and form part of the various different groups there it is easy to see how single mothers, struggling with debt, bailiffs etc, could attend their meetings, meet sex workers and discover a not so wonderful way to deal with their financial problems.

People do not need to be pimps or traffickers to recruit people into sex work. People get involved via social contagion in the same way that they get involved with cults.

It is also true, and I have personal experience of this, that people involved in sex work will try to help their friends who are struggling financially by introducing them to punters and to sex work. The recruiters in this instance may be well intentioned and wanting to help their friends.

I am living in a precarious situation and over the last 2 years, even as an older woman, have had several offers to "help" me that have involved sex work.

The people offering to help I think partly genuinely want to help but also may, in some instances, be motivated by self interest that they have dissociated from mentally.

These things are usually complex and nuanced

I am going through some immense RL challenges at the moment so please excuse my scant posting here

The desperation and degradation of the prostituted women was painful to watch. You would not wish it on anyone. It’s a life of poverty, violence and despair.
All of the women had severe problems that had led them to the lives they were now living.
It’s a sobering, real life counterpoint to the fluffy language used by those who advocate for prostitution. There’s no empowerment or glamour, just misery.

Episode 1
www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Oma_yvMh8

You can link to the rest of the episodes from that one.

Thank you for posting this. The whole series makes for horrifying watching. It is these very women, some of the most vulnerable, traumatised and abused women in society, whose lives would be changed and helped beyond recognition by the NHS presciption of diamorphine as facilitated by the British system.

There is another interesting documentary series on the BBC called Cops Like Us that follows the work of an underfunded, depleted police service in Stoke on Trent.

The 3rd and final episode shows a situation where a young women addicted to drugs and with a habit costing hundreds of pounds a day uses shoplifting to fund her habit. The police are persuaded by a shop owner to use criminal proceedings against the women and she is arrested. One of the cops is exhausted and depressed by the situaiton because thousands of pounds of public money and countless hours of police time will be spent prosecuting a drug addicted woman over a £12 theft from a shop.

The fact is that vulnerable people who are addicted to drugs have lives that descend into crime and chaos and cause all kinds of harms to themselves and to society. It is completely unneccessary. The costs of prescribing diamorphine and providing, if wanted, counselling, health care, advocacy, assistance with housing, are miniscule compared to the financial and other costs to society of dealing with the crime wave related to addiction.

The continuing war on drugs and legislation that treats substance misuse as a criminal, rather than a health, issue is a kind of collective insanity, a societal gaslighting that harms everyone but most of all it harms the most vulnerable people in society, generates immense wealth for organised criminals and leaves our police service with an impossible task.

So why don’t I have rights over my own property ? Why isn’t it as simple as I own it and can do what I like with it and everyone else has to suffer the consequence of my choice ?

That was rather the question OP & I posed was it not?

Isnt Holbeck a good example of where women’s “ freedom” to be abused and men’s rights to abuse and exploit them clash with the rights and freedoms of others who live and work in the area ?

You can’t look at anyone’s rights in isolation when exercising that right has implications for others.

I might have the legal right to burn down my house, but that creates risk for my neighbours and risks for the fire fighters who will come to stop the fire spreading .

Do I have the moral right to make my children homeless and demand that the public pay to house them and me? And pay for grants to get me furniture?

What about the mortgage company who own most of my house - what about their rights and their shareholders?

I certainly can’t claim my house insurance or I will go to prison.

So why don’t I have rights over my own property ? Why isn’t it as simple as I own it and can do what I like with it and everyone else has to suffer the consequence of my choice ?

The thread seems to have gone a long way from the original question as set out by the OP. It is not about Holbeck or brothels .

If I understand it correctly the OP's question is how do you balance the individual “right” of a person to do with their body as they please against the societal view that she/he may be damaging themselves and the possible harms caused by prostitution to wider society.