The recent news about Steve Wright and his crimes

[SolzhenitsynsCat]

Names changed for this, for very obvious reasons.
From the age of about 27 to about 34 I was addicted to heroin and got money for drugs through sex work. This was between about 2005 and 2012. I remember very well the news at the time of the murdered girls in Ipswich. Murdered by Steve Wright who’s just got another 40 years for a girl he murdered in 1999 (not a sex worker). I remember my poor old dad, drunk one night screaming and crying at me that I was “going to end up like those bloody girls in Ipswich”. I didn’t really care and didn’t ever think I would be at risk in that way. But of course I was. I used to get in cars with complete strangers and be driven out of the town I lived in and be paid very little for sex, usually no more than £20-30. If I’d been murdered, no one would probably have even noticed I was gone until well after the fact.
I don’t know what I’m trying to get from this post. But all of that world hss been on my mind.
I got clean in 2013 and my life is unrecognisable. These days I live a very quiet life with my five year old son, husband and dog. We recently bought our own property (with help from family, family who previously I’d become completely estranged from due to my behaviour.)
I just feel incredibly fortunate that I wasn’t one of those girls, that thorough sheer luck alone I’m still here to tell this tale and that I’m well out of that world.
like I said, not really sure what I want from this post but there’s no one I can really talk to about this in real life so I wanted to post here.
Here’s to the future. Here’s to a life free of that absolute all-encompassing need for drugs.
Have a lovely evening everyone.

I'm in awe of your strength. Well done for making this life for yourself 💐

Bless you, this must be dragging up some incredibly complicated stuff for you.

I don’t think humans are very good at understanding risk and danger until it has passed. Then we look back and think ‘oh shit!’.

It sounds like you’ve worked so hard to make yourself safer now, and it’s paid off with a lovely life! I guess the price of that is being able to look behind you from a place of safety and see where you were.

Keep on upwards lovely.

It takes a huge strength to get clean and turn your life around, you've done an amazing thing.

I know from experience that it's a surreal feeling sometimes, to look back at the nonchalant way you once put yourself in danger. It doesn't fit with who you are now, so it's almost impossible to explain to those who know and love you now...and yet it's part of your life.

Well done you OP for changing your life around.

I think the chilling thing about this new conviction is that serial killers don't start killing in their 40s. So it's very very likely that he committed other murders that he has still not been connected with. And as he was by his own admission a prolific user of prostitutes, including in Thailand, his crimes could be world wide.

I can't remember if they mentioned on the news how long Wright spent working in Thailand. I did wonder if he was killing there.

I am going through an unbelievably shit time- and your post has made me cry. That's not meant to make it about me, but rather about you, and how much you have turned your life around from such an awful place.
I hope you are very proud about the life you have made for yourself.

About that man, it is awful, the treatment of another man that the police decided to blame, the fact that his partial number plate was available to the police and they didn't follow it up. The fact those other women would still be alive had the police not decided someone else was guilty. And the papers that described them as sex workers first and women second. All of it is dreadful.

Mate. So much love for you, well done

Thank you everyone who’s responded. Yes, absolutely that “wtf” feeling. You know like when you do a big journey in one day and the morning of that journey seems so long ago and yet so close at the same time? Yeah, it’s like that. I can remember in disgusting technicolour those days. I know what those girls were feeling, when they got in his car. One of them (Paula Clennell, I think?) gave an interview to the press a couple of days before she was murdered saying she was worried bit would continue to ‘work’ on the beat. I feel utterly haunted by it all.
thank you all for being so kind and nonjudgmental 🙏

I’ve been rarher unhealthily reading up (more than I did at the time) and read something about him wearing a black shoulder length wig to make him look like a woman so ie wouldn’t get pulled by the old bill I guess and that’s just chilled me to the bone, not sure why more than other aspects of this case

First of all very well done on turning your life around 👏

I was reading about this today, what (another) monumental cock up by the police 😬 if only they had investigated properly from the get go, those poor girls would probably still be alive 😭

All power to you OP for turning it all around. Be kind to yourself. 💐

Well done OP.

im from Ipswich, was 17 at the time of the murders and it was a really awful time for everyone x

Well done for turning your life around.

You should be so proud of yourself for making such a change to your life. Terrifying about that awful man. There really is evil in the world.

Well done!

You really have turned it all around, and I hope your life with your lovely family will always be happy.

Don't beat yourself up about the past. You are here now, and healthy, and that is all that matters. Hopefully your family will continue to love and support you.

Well done op. Youve done amazing.

It must be chilling.

Someone I know was working in the jail he initially was in when he was arrested for those murders .
Apparently when he was going to the court appearances it was in suits ( yes plural ) purchased for him by us ( public money ) I assume this is / was a thing for all high profile cases. Shocking .

You have picked yourself up and completely turned your life around, so v happy for you op x

Well done on turning your life around. If anything your story really highlights that Steve Wright’s victims were normal women like anyone else. We can all go through tough points in life but ultimately we are all equal. There is no underclass, despite what the Daily Mail would have us believe.

Thank you. Yes, had I taken a different road as a younger woman, I would never have got into drugs. I was from a middle class, fairly privileged background so, on the face of it, not a ‘typical’ drug addict. I remember an outreach worker (from a charity supporting the homeless, particularly sex workers) incredulously asking me what I was doing in that world. Without blowing my own trumpet, I’m bright, I’m certainly no fool (mostly) but once I was hooked on those drugs, I just couldn’t stop (until I was ready to). I’d have sold my soul to the devil for a hit.
They used to say in NA meetings (which I still occasionally attend) that addiction is the greatest of ‘levellers’ - doesn’t matter how intelligent/wealthy, etc you are, it will eventually lead you to the same place as every other addict who walked before you. I’m grateful every day that I’m out of that world, but will never forget where I came from. In many ways, those experiences have made me the person I am today and the skills I use in the career I’ve made for myself are enhanced by those experiences.
Thabks everyone, it has really helped me writing all this down.
Have a lovely evening 🙏