Police officers & lawyers, I need your wisdom please re brothels

[MrsMcEnroe]

Hello all,

Some background: I own a shop in a part of town that has been grotty and neglected for years but which is now, thanks to a lot of hard work from residents and traders plus a Lottery grant, now starting to regenerate.

Across the road from my shop is a brothel. It is acknowledged as such by the local police. Residents and traders are not happy that the brothel is allowed to continue operating. Most people are worried about the supposed "dodgy blokes" (to quote a recent email, not my words, on the subject) that it brings to the area; however, I have more serious concerns regarding the welfare of the ladies working there. I have seen some of them leaving and they don't look well at all.

I am attending a meeting of the local community forum tomorrow, at which the police, council members and planning officers will tell us what they are doing re the brothel (if anything). I know I've read that prostitutes are at much higher risk of violence, including sexual violence, than other women; does anyone have any facts and figures I could use please? Also, is it even legal to operate a brothel? When I was doing my law degree 20 years ago, I'm sure brothel-keeping came under the heading of living off immoral earnings but perhaps this has changed?? I just want to make the point that there are vulnerable women right there in our midst who, rather than being condemned, should be helped. (I never qualified as a lawyer, hence my lack of current knowledge).

Or am I being naive? Or simplistic?

This post comes cross in a very stilted manner - sorry, I'm typing with 2 fingers with a puppy asleep on my lap!

TIA.

Historically. and socially people adopt the social norms that are present within their society. So if the social norm is that the keeping of slaves and thereby the fecundity of slaves is seen as a positive thing, then of course people, be they male or female are going to offer these up as positives and indicators of sucess.
That does not make their viewpoint correct.
I also doubt there were many females involved in the starting point of slavery, the capturing of people within Africa, in order to send them to slave markets.
I have no historical data to back up this statement but I have a feeling that at the start of slavery within the carribean and America, there would have been very few women listed as owners, with that number creeping up slowly as the use of slaves became more established but never at any point, outstripping the number of male owners that were listed.
This, of course , would be in part due to the way inheritance laws were biased against female inheritance but by no means the only or even main reason.
As for middle class educated women choosing to work as prostitutes, I certainly never came across any who would have fitted that description during my stint as an escort.

fridakahlo Tue 28-Aug-12 04:14:49
As for middle class educated women choosing to work as prostitutes, I certainly never came across any who would have fitted that description during my stint as an escort.

And my GF was certainly not middle-class, and didn't enter higher education, so I can't offer any anecotal support for that thesis.

The women leaving are probably just knackered if they have been busy. Obviously I havnt seen this brothel or the women leaving but its the brothels where you see endless men going into and coming out of yet you rarely see the girls leaving or only leaving and returning with a male escort (or even the same female escort) that I would be more concerned about, there is only one reason a woman would be staying there and thats if she was being forced too. Women leaving at the end of the day means they are going home so quite likely free to return the next time because they want too which means they are likely there from their own choice. If the women leaving are all escorted from the door by the same man or men every time then that again is a huge alarm bell.

FACT: If all the brothels, agencies and prostitutes in this country ceased trading overnight the economy would soon go into free fall. The black economy is uncountable, its huge and it keeps many women off benefits and many a marraige happier because the wife who no longer has a labido isnt getting pestered for sex every day any longer.

I dont agree that more men would be attacking women if this happened as most men who visit prostitutes are not sexual sadists, predators or perverts, they are just men who are horny and for some reason personal to their lives do not have access to a non paying way of having sex that includes the socially inept, overly shy, etc

carry on and get that brothel closed down why dont you, put women out of work for a few weeks as thats all it will take for the same place to re open and probably not very far away either.

The very fact that the police are aware of the place means they probably do regular visits to speak individually to the girls and to check they are their of their own free will and to come and go as they please and also to ensure that the girls have a visa allowing them to work in this country. They do that you know, the police. They tend to leave alone if everything is run well as they know that if that place is closed, a murkier more oppressive place may be where those girls end up as they will just apply to other brothels to work in if that one doesnt reopen. At least girls in brothels are safe as there are other people there in case a man tries to get a bit nasty, girls working alone do not have that luxury unless they pay for security and a lot don't

I know nurses, accountants, university students, middle class women who are all in the sex industry. Whoever said they never met any probably wouldnt know a respectable middleclass woman if she punched him on the nose in a brothel because his automatic assumption walking into one is that they are all low class down trodden women at the bottom of the social ladder. He probably paid at the lowest end of the scale which will more often than not get you what you pay for. If he was too tight to pay for a prostitute who has self worth and a brain therefore charges more for her time then he can only blame himself. They are out there, an awful lot of them. Career women, students, housewives ,mums at the school gate who have husbands who work all day. They are from every single walk of life imaginable including the upper classes

How do you know all these women, Hedidit? As a punter? A co-worker? A researcher? An avid reader of newspaper articles purveying the myth of the happy hooker?

Let's see, we've got "freely chosen" - nope, mostly drug adicts with a history of abuse. We've got "men can't help it and need sexual release" (or else what?). Bullshit, and demeaning to men who are mostly perfectly in control of their sexual urges. "Saving marriage" - generally until the wife finds out, which tells (or should tell) you something informative. I call misogynist bingo "house".

From comments heddit has posted on other threads, he appears to be a john i.e. a man who uses prostitutes. So of course he wants us to believe that all johns are nice men just buying a service and prostitutes are all empowered a la pretty women or belle du jour. He is lying. Not one piece of independent research backs up what he is saying.

Sorry you are both wrong. I am in fact a woman who was a receptionist in a parlour s couple of years ago although no longer. Several of the escorts I worked with are long term members on here. I also did work as a prostitute independently for a while but found it a bit lonely after working in a house with other girls for so long. So you see I have no vested interest in wether you believe me or not. I am just trying to give a clearer picture of the uk sex industry to those with a rather skewered doomy gloomy view on it with no experience what so ever to back up their claims. I would never go onto amotor forum and dare post as I know bugger all about cars yet everyone and their mother think they know about sex work and assume it's like they see on the tv. It's not. Each and every one of you know either a punter or an escort...you just don't know it. There ate escort mums on this website, a good number if them lol me too xxx

You clearly have a vested interest since you have only posted on these threads and are consistently minimising the pain and trauma experienced by prostituted women who themselves use the word rape to define their experiences.

Lol..please explain to me what vested interest I have when I am no longer in the industry? More importantly why are you so determined to absolutely refute the idea that a grown woman would happily sell sex for a living. Are we all to fit into your box? Your idea if what a wand choices in life should be? You may not be able to comprehend the difference between a girl kidnapped, beaten and sent around the world to be raped for money and a free thinking female who chooses the industry for her own reasons...but there most definately is one.

The fact is there is a massive trafficking problem, it's global and unfortunately what the authority's do makes little pact upon it. There is though a different side which you may stand up and shout does not exist, you may attempt to besmirch me because I am being honest, you won't change the facts though regardless of how unsavoury you find them :-)

Really, I was a prostitute and I was never raped?!! I guess you would know more what with you not ever being one and all. Oh and the reason I am only posting on these threads is because they ate so far the only ones I find interesting at the moment x

I'm really pleased to hear that hedidit.

Meanwhile, here's the research I posted about 3 pages ago:

According to evidence submitted to the UK Government (Home Office, 2004), between 50-75% of women entered prostitution before they were 18, with 15 years being the average age of entry. In addition, Paying the Price (Home Office, 2004) noted that 75% of children abused through prostitution had been missing from school. Cusick and colleagues (2002) found that a majority of British women in prostitution had begun prostitution as minors. The average age at entry into prostitution is adolescence (Spangenberg, 2001; Boyer, Chapman and Marshall, 1993; Nadon, Koverola and Schludermann, 1998).

... an overwhelming majority of women in all forms of prostitution have been sexually abused as children (Silbert and Pines, 1982a; Nadon et al., 1998). Some estimates are as high as 90%. As one woman explained, ?Through childhood sexual abuse, many prostituted women have become conditioned into thinking that this is their choice? It normalises this kind of behaviour and causes many to enter into the trade? (Aumord, 2009).

Research has shown that there is a 75% rate of current or past homelessness among those prostituted in nine countries (Farley et al., 2003).

There is extensive literature documenting that prostitution causes profound emotional damage (Baldwin, 1992; Barry, 1995; Dworkin, 1997; Herman, 2003; Hoigard and Finstad, 1986; Farley et al., 2003; Raymond et al., 2002).

A majority of women who sell sex have pimps who may be called by other names, such as friend or husband. Nonetheless they function as pimps (McLeod, 1982; Farley, 2007).

Watts and Zimmerman (2002) at the Department of Public Health and Policy of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine noted that trafficking for prostitution and violence against prostitutes was one of the most common and severe forms of violence against women in the world (2002). A study of 240 women prostituted in Leeds, Edinburgh, and Glasgow found that 26% of women in indoor prostitution had experienced some form of serious violence from the men who had bought them in the past six months (Church et al., 2001).

Only 9% of the women in Kramer?s (2003) study indicated that they had any positive feelings at all during acts of prostitution. More commonly, Kramer?s interviewees described feeling sad, detached, angry or anxious when prostituting. Kramer?s study ... found that 77% of the time the women experienced a negative emotional state.

Generally, the literature indicates that women are not sexually aroused by prostitution, and that after extended periods of time servicing hundreds of men, prostitution damages or destroys much of their own sexuality (Barry, 1995; Funari, 1997; Giobbe, 1991; Hoigard and Finstad, 1986; Raymond et al., 2002).

From the Eaves study - Men Who Buy Sex

Under such circumstances, notions of consent are really dodgy.

I don't really care if a few women are overjoyed to sell sex and are having the times of their lives. It normalises the idea that women are commodities which is harmful for all women, especially the vast majority of those in prostitution who have no meaningful choice.

but it is normal. In every small town there are at least one or two brothels, in larger towns there are many, in the citys the numbers are staggering. Thats brothels where the guys go to see the girls. On top of that there are the outcall agencies of which each town is covered by at least 3 or 4 often more in a catchment area then on top of that there are countless numbers of women working independantly and in large citys literally hundreds of them...thats all over the uk...adds up to a LOT of people buying and selling sex. By the way, you dont buy the girl, you pay her to perform a service.

I know a lot of people have read that, but none of the ones I know, which are a lot, were ever sexually abused. I have a feeling that this study was probably done on street girls who are a different kettle of fish. They work on the streets as they cannot work in a brothel or for an agency as a lot of them will not tolerate drug use. An addict will chose to work on the streets as she has no constraints of having to remain at work for a given time, she can go off and shoot up when she wants or whatever it is she is craving. A lot of runaways end up on the streets working in this way, often they have run away because they are being abused. There are different tiers and ways of working, different types of girls in different arenas, its not just one big group who all work the same way or have the same lives.

If that study was done on independantly working women or in parlours the statistics I suspect would have been vastly different.

To be honest pubegarden few of the women who are in this industry through choice really care what your opinion is, they know that people can never know this business till they are in it, then they get a shock at just how nice most of the guys are, how friendly most of the girls are and just how normal it begins to feel within a very short space of time. They also get a shock when they realise how fun it can be as like me, before they came into it, they had the same preconceived notion of what it must be like...but its not. Their opinion is "are you going to pay my bills, or my morgage, or my sons tuition fees at the private school he is in because his mother can afford it because of the sex industry...no! Are you going to pay for me to take my children on holiday 2 or 3 times a year...no!" The discussion pretty much ends there for them.

My words dont take away from the pain of another enslaved human being, freely working escorts who know exactly what this industry entails abhore traffickers, pimps etc even more than you believe me

Tell us hedidit - if it's such a great career opportunity why are you no longer in it?

because I met someone who is financially well off and I saved a lot of money whilst I did work so I decided to devote the last few years before my children are of an age to fly the coup to being a stay at home mum again. As I said in another thread though, its a bit lonely working independently but luckily there are plenty of forums where you can link up with other independent ladies and form firm friendships. I am safe in the knowledge though that my lady bits are still in full working order so should I ever find myself not so well off It will be my first and only choice of earning money. Once you know what your lady bits can do for you its a very liberating feeling. All you need is a website and a phone and you are in business again. Its a feeling of freedom that takes away the worrys of what would happen if my partner and I split up as I wouldnt try to take his money, he earned most of it before he ever met me.

oh and you can work when you want and not work when you want. If you so choose you can work all day every day for a fortnight then just not bother for a few days or weeks, go on holiday when you want, start and finish your working day at the times you choose, see only the men that you decide are polite and friendly enough and also choose where you work, from home, a hotel, do a few months in a brothel which is fun as they are buzzing with energy and hilarious storys of mr so and so who wanted to be tied up and told off or mr so and so who brings in his own dog lead and water bowl as he likes to be led around and have his tummy tickled blah blah...

and yes..most of them are married which is I feel the crux of the venomous comments here. Why though...well you should all ask yourselves that as the answers are as numerous

You're mistaking 'commonplace' with 'normal'. It's not normal it's fucked up. The woman is paid to have sex she doesn't want. Having sex you don't want isn't a service, it's rape.

Where prostitution has been legalised it has been normalised (NOT made it normal - it isn't) and has increased demand. It has led to more trafficking and more violence.

In places like Sweden where p unters are criminalised but the prostituted women are treated as victims of crime, public attitudes have shifted and paying for sex is seen as the abuse that it is. This has led to a massive reduction in demand and in trafficking.

Women working the streets are not a 'different type of girl' they are women just like you and me. The shit that happens to them is just as bad as if it happened to you or me. The more you normalise prostitution as some sort of fun, lucrative, dazzling carreer choice, the more of them there will be and the more shit will happen to them.

And I'm well aware of how 'normal' abusers generally are. Life would be much simpler if they were easy to spot.

Hedidit - I think your post 8:19:08 has proved very telling...... Give enough rope.

Hedidit: your three responses to my question absolutely bristle with defensiveness. Full of "and another thing, and another thing.." Not the usual response to being asked why one gives up what you imply is a glittering, high earning career.

And it really is quite rude and unprofessional to make fun of the clients who funded your stellar success.

Sounds like you don't really like men very much.....except for taking money off them....

@FoodUnit"I also find it a bit weird to believe women can refuse a punter in brothels. I've heard it said that you can refuse an 'act' - but the whole point of a brothel, where men get to choose who they want and what they do to her, would be totally undermined by giving the women the power of refusal. Customers aren't expecting to be rejected are they? And since rape happens in brothels, even if the woman refuses an act the man can still do what he wants by force. "

No he can't. Women in brothels aren't alone, they almost always have a security guard in a nearby room waiting the whole time she is with a customer (and women who travel to customers' homes usually have a driver waiting on them outside) and all she has to do is scream or press a panic button for help if the customer becomes abusive or starts forcing her into something she hasn't consented to.

And if the customer has raped or attempted to rape her she can report him to the police. Yes sex workers can be raped to- they still have a right to give or refuse consent to sex regardless if money has changed hands or not.

Anyway if more than one women is working at a time in the building (in original post) then is is classed as a brothel (and is illegal). If it is just one women at a time then no law has been broken.

Reporting a brothel may get it closed but chances are the workers will just go find somewhere else to work anyway (after being hassled by the police or even arrested).

What would a brothel-worker be arrested for? Working in a brothel is legal, as is purchasing services within the brothel.

I suppose there's always breach of the peace, resisting arrest...

Mind you, I have heard of two independent escorts, working from the same flat (so the flat is a brothel) for protection reasons, both being threatened with charges relating to pimping each other. No connection with the Proceeds of Crime Act, of course.