Harassment of children in legal red light zone in Holbeck

[LaserShark]

I’ve just read an article posted in a feminist group I’m part of on FB. It’s a Daily Mail article, detailing the harassment of young children in Holbeck where the legal red light zone is. Men offering parents money to rape their children. Most shockingly, a grandmother pushing a buggy with a four month old baby was offered money for an hour alone with the baby.

I can’t get the article out of my head. I don’t live a million miles away (thankfully not close) and it makes the these depraved men seem so much more real. I can’t understand how anyone could defend this legal zone - there has been a murder, rapes, sexual assault and it sounds like a free for all for all kinds of terrible men with monstrous appetites. And neither the council nor the police seem willing to help or even acknowledge the festering horror they have created, or allowed to exist openly. Somehow they have empowered these sick, twisted fuckers to feel able to ask to rape children in broad daylight; so pornsick and warped that they imagine this to be reasonable or likely or simply get a thrill from the violation of frightening and upsetting women and children by voicing their hideous thoughts. What is happening and why is no one acting to stop it?

Not everything is black and white. I grew up in a rough area and actually knew personally two on the street prostitutes and a number of female criminals, I think perhaps this may be where the routes of our opinions differ

Rest assured, Early Walker knows so much more about this than anyone else because apparently unlike everyone here he is the only person in the world who grew up in a rough area and met two prostitutes.

Exactly, Floral. Once the idea that it's legal to buy people becomes normalized then some men proceed as if they can and should be able to buy anyone they see (mostly women and children). Holbeck is not the only place where this can be seen, and once it becomes known that a particular area is in that sort of "it's allowed here" category then men will travel there from far and wide. Because they feel that they can get away with blatant predation there.

(And as we can see in the case of the woman who was kidnapped, they seem to be correct.)

It's a hard thing to explain if you've never been in an area where that's happened, but if you go there and are female you really can't miss it. It fundamentally changes the way men approach not just women who're clearly prostitutes but women and girls as a whole. It's very, very uncomfortable to be in those spaces if you're female.

I've known far more than 2 prostitutes. Almost as if women talk to each other, innit?

The guys who raped the teacher didn't use 'I thought she was a prositute' as an excuse. They used it as a reason, because the lax culture around prostitution in that specific area meant that any woman was available.

But it does not make sense. I have never heard this uttered as an excuse or reason for the rape of a passerby in some red light district, let alone accepted as an excuse, anywhere across Europe, certainly not in the German speaking area (I may be oblivious to news stories in other, foreign languages). And, surely, there is very lax policing in many districts, too (especially North of the Danube, it seems).

deepwatersolo, I venture to suggest that there are some pretty bloody enormous systematic failings in this particular geographical area that run very deep and affect all sort of things.

Is there any thread anywhere this morning where Uncle Pumblechook hasn't arrived to morally fix everyone else while making the whole thread into a personal conversation with him?

Must buy in more pork pie.

In fact I'd suggest that if you gave West Yorkshire Police a church raffle to run they'd end up taking bribes and torturing interviewees.

Yeah, Angry and Floral, I agree. There is without doubt a general, huge problem with legalized prostitution and what it means, both, for the trafficked women and for society as a whole, but then there is obviously additionally a very serious and specific problem with West Yorkshire Police, its attitudes and its priorities.

Did a happy hooker really just show up on a thread about harassment of children in a red light zone?

Early it's you who needs to do the reading and listening. I think what you are actually (badly) trying to say, is that you support the Nordic model. You clearly have sympathies for women in prostitution, as do the other women responding to you here. But the difference is that they have studied the subject more than you, the solution being the Nordic Model. They are further along the path of knowledge than you, so it's obviously quite grating for them to have you show up and tell them that they need to listen to you, when in fact it's the other way round.

I venture to suggest that there are some pretty bloody enormous systematic failings in this particular geographical area that run very deep and affect all sort of things

Amongst the many horrors affecting Leeds I've just discovered a former mayor of Leeds and a member of West Yorkshire Police board is a convicted paedophile. I do not think this example of failing to pursue this rape case would have happened in any other police authority.

Do none of you think that more crimes are reported when the victim is behaving legally?

A prostitute selling access to her body is behaving legally. I think most police understand that prostitutes can be raped.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3395546-Universal-Credit-driving-women-to-prostitution

It never ceases to amaze me, the extent to which Woke Intersectionality™ is prepared to throw working class women under every bus that goes past.

In a Parliamentary debate on Universal Credit, Frank Field MP addressed Esther McVey, secretary of state for Work and Pensions, stating he he wrote to her about a number of women in his constituency, who had been forced into the red light district for the first time due to the government's new flagship benefits system Universal Credit. He invited Ms McVey to come speak to these women and the organisations helping them.

Ms McVey's response was when I totally gave up )-: )-: She replied that the government needed to work with these ladies and "see what help we can give them from the work coaches right the way through to the various charities and organisations" , but the REAL KICKER was when she stated that "in the meantime" Mr Field could "Tell these ladies that we've now got record job vacancies - 830,00 and that PERHAPS THERE ARE OTHER JOBS ON OFFER"

!!!!

Speechless. A complete lack of empathy towards what government cuts and policies have done to women. As if women already working and also ill or disabled women, women fleeing violence and bringing up children, hadn't already thought of 'just getting another job' !!

Women bear the brunt of these economic policies and austerity. Fact.

I think we are looking in the wrong direction. We should be looking at how we can have a welfare state that stops these women from slipping through the cracks, before we can even think of legislating on prostitution.

Sadly, I speak from experience.

First solve the poverty, before that is solved then legislation is only harming and putting these women in danger further. Look at it from the perspective that most of these women would not 'choose' sex work if they were not having their incomes cut to the bone and at threat of being evicted. They need this income, BECAUSE THERE IS NO SAFETY NET ANYMORE. First you need to address the poverty. No woman should be in the position where she is left to turn to sex work because UC have messed up her payments again, or she has to find childcare money upfront now to even start work, or she is a victim of the UC 'pay cycle problems' as Esther McVey herself put it and has not fixed, or she is subject to sanctions , or the exponentially higher debt repayments introduced on UC. Fix this first, or you are only depriving women of the only way they have left to survive.

Phillip Alston from the United Nations, has been in the UK past couple weeks investigating poverty caused by UK welfare reforms. He has spoken to a number of women forced into sex work by the reforms. Why isn't anyone listening??

Brilliant post @themachinestops

I have just posted about this in chat. Everyone needs to know.

Well said TheMachineStops.

a thread i posted on UC and prostitution on this board exactly a month ago is still only two pages long.

And as HAs have become more corporate there is no security in social housing anymore. Tenancies are no longer secure no matter what some of the social housing haters on this site would like to believe.

corporatewatch.org/tidemill-peabody-housing-association-from-social-landlord-to-big-business/?fbclid=IwAR0iwxLwtBP_UVIwaHdrdpK56MQ9glqXbB_3LapTKNJz8X_6k4qYKI8pky4

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3419451-the-housing-association-with-exposure-to-new-private-equity-funds-that-nearly-went-bust

IMO the 'happy hookers' ARE the middle classes. They have that inner confidence that whatever they do is right. I'm from the working classes and I fought the system for years to avoid being pushed into prostitution. It might be slightly different if we all did live in this middle class fantasy world they're so keen on pushing, where everyone is equal and has equally free agency and free choice, but that is a luxury - most of us don't have it, and the middle classes can't see that. Women 'willingly' selling their bodies for better lives? Define 'willingly'. If it's ever a case of not having many other good options, it ain't 'willing'.

this is just so horrific it should be national news, cannot believe the depravity of some people.

I'm a working class woman and I worked for far less than minimum wage rather than get into any form of sex work. That's because most of us older women never bought into that sex work is empowering shite.

Was that before or after UC @noeffingidea

There is a whiff of supieriority in your post.