Pushing back against the so-called Nordic Model of sex work

[SnugFinch]

Hi. I'm aware that my views might not be the most popular, but I am posting here in good faith.

Many of you know that Ash Regan has been campaigning to get sex work legislation in place which follows the neo-abolitionist model, or Nordic Model. This so-called Nordic Model claims that it will punish buyers of sex work, while not criminalising sellers, and that this will benefit sex workers and stop sex trafficking.

However, this is untrue. By criminalising buyers, it ensures that the only people who will buy sex are criminals who don't care about breaking the law. And because sex workers have a smaller client pool, they have no choice but to put themselves at the mercy of these criminals, and can end up suffering violence as a result.

This so-called Nordic Model has been law in the island of Ireland for nearly a decade now, and it has made things worse for the women involved, and it has done nothing to stop sex trafficking, as the facts in this article (and the testimony of a former sex worker) prove.

https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/02/07/on-problems-with-the-nordic-model-of-prostitution/

Ash Regan's bill has been delayed for the moment, but it hasn't been defeated. There is a growing worry that what happened in Ireland could happen in Scotland. And it could extend to England and Wales as well.

Feminists should want to end violence against all women. So why is there support for the Nordic Model, which has proven to be so hazardous to female sex workers?

I'm curious as to what your thoughts are.

I set up a separate thread for Anna Rajmon's book, as I think it deserves to be discussed in its own right, and not as a prop for an agenda.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5460700-elis-irish-call-girl-by-anna-rajmon-18

They say it's a matter of enforcement because it's true.

There are between 850-1000 women advertised on Irish escort websites. Do you really think that all of them are there for just 150 men?

I'll need to check the rest of what you've said, but the statistic Rachel Moran cited was reported in the Dutch press. Jim Wells didn't make it up.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2013/05/cold_case_team_identities_poss/

I'll check the rest, but you don't seem the most credible source.

Jim Wells stated in the Northern Ireland Assembly that 127 prostitutes had been murdered in the Netherlands in the same time period that 1 prostitute had been murdered in Sweden. Prostitution was legalized in the Netherlands in 2000. The Nordic Model became law in Sweden in 1999.

The deaths in the Netherlands occurred over a much longer period of time than that though. Jim Wells (a fundamentalist Christian) was asking Laura Lee (a prostitute) what she thought of his statistic. She didn't know what to say at the time, it's difficult for anyone to respond to a false statistic that they haven't heard before because it's just been made up.

Laura went away and found out the truth of the statistic. Then she wrote a letter to the Belfast Telegraph. This is what she wrote.

"Mr Wells seems determined to avoid discussing the real issues and, instead, talks of these 127 murders of sex workers in the Netherlands. Given his obsession with this 127 statistic, I'd like to clarify: the statistic relates to 118 murders that occurred between 1985 and 2012 being investigated by a police cold case team in the Netherlands. In 25 of the cases, the victims were not sex workers, or it is not known if they were sex workers or not. Most of the sex worker victims were working illegally and outdoors, not indoors. Eighty-six of the murders took place before October 1, 2000 (i.e. before prostitution was legalised in the Netherlands)."

So 86 deaths occurred in the 15 years before legalization and 32 in the 12 years after legalization. It sounds as if legalization has reduced the number of murders in the Netherlands, although Laura didn't make that claim. Yet people like Jim Wells, Rachel Moran and Kat Banyard want to claim the opposite.

People often say would you want your daughter to be a prostitute. I would rather have had Laura Lee as a daughter than Rachel Moran. I admire Laura Lee but I find nothing to admire with Rachel Moran.

It will always be difficult to detect punters, even more difficult to arrest them and prosecute them, and even more difficult to get a conviction. You can't say the police haven't been busy though.

In fact, they have been very busy arresting women too. Consider this from the University College Cork School of Law.

"Even though the Swedish model was supposed to decriminalise the sex worker, the 2017 Act not only failed to decriminalise brothel-keeping but also increased the punishment for this offence. Moreover, the punishment for two or more sex workers working together for safety is far worse than the consequences of purchasing sexual services as this does not lead to a prison sentence and the fines are not as high. The importance of sex workers being legally permitted to work together and the damaging consequences the criminalisation of brothel-keeping has on sex workers will be demonstrated in Section C."

and this

"There is no official statistics on how many sex workers have been prosecuted for brothel-keeping. However, according to the latest statistics on the CSO, in 2019 there were 113 sex work offences. Therefore, considering this statistic with the fact that between 2017 and 2020 only four buyers have been prosecuted, this demonstrates that the 2017 Act mainly targets sex workers."

The reason why there are so many rapes of prostitutes in modern Ireland is because women are not allowed to work together for safety. This has got worse since 2017 when the Nordic Model came in. They claimed to decriminalize the women, but they have done the opposite. It was never a crime to be a prostitute but it was a crime for women to work together. The Nordic Model didn't change that.

That's the biggest difference that decriminalization makes. In New Zealand they don't arrest women for working together. Women can work together, make the rules for themselves and keep the profits for themselves. Pimps don't like it because they start to lose control of the women. That's not how it works in Germany, everyone agrees that the German system - which is not decriminalization - does not work.

You've been shifting the goalposts quite a bit here.

First, you try to imply I didn't read Rachel Moran's Paid For. This was untrue.

Then, you try to say that I claimed Paid For and Anna Rajmon's Elis - Irish Call were the same thing. This was also untrue.

Then you shifted, claiming that the statistic Rachel Moran cited was something Jim Wells made up.

When I provided a news report from the Dutch News service citing the statistic in 2013 (the same year Paid For was published) you shifted again, going on about the late Laura Lee exposing Jim Wells and how you'd prefer her to be your daughter instead of Rachel Moran.

If you have a consistent point to make, do that instead of throwing everything at the wall and hoping something will stick.

If you have a viable alternative to the Nordic Model, present it. But it is obvious at this point that decriminalisation isn't the answer.

If you have a viable alternative to the Nordic Model, present it. But it is obvious at this point that decriminalisation isn't the answer.

The alternative is proper criminalisation. With a massive investment in women's services, including peer support to leave, housing support, MH support, addiction support and DV services. Huge investment in stopping CSA (because a lot of women in prostitution are abused as children).

Name and shame punters and especially traffickers and pimps. Make it socially suicidal to use a woman in this way. Teach everyone that consent can't be bought. A huge police push to arrest punters and pimps.

We can't have punters try to make the debate 'Nordic or decrim'. The Nordic model is already a compromise based on women's safety. If they argue that it doesn't make them safer, then it's back to full criminalisation with severe punishments for the men who sell women and buy them.

There's a lot to be said for this, especially the massive investment in women's services. Make sure they have the support they need so they won't have to resort to prostitution.

https://nordicmodelnow.org/2022/04/05/decriminalisation-of-the-sex-trade-vs-the-nordic-model-what-you-need-to-know-booklet/

This has been raised by Nordic Model Now, and there was a thread on here about it.

And in fact which the Government needs to be reminded nearly a decade ago, thanks as much to lobbying by Job Centre staff, it became Government policy NOT to have sex work, sexplotation work advertised, let alone presented to women as a positive career.

However in that period of time Only Fans etc., has become more "acceptable" and suppose this means that now among job centre staff there are some who know think this is not a problem.

No time to check but think there is a campaign or letter writing to government initiative. Check out NMN web site.

https://nordicmodelnow.org/2025/09/20/how-long-before-uk-jobcentres-move-from-encouraging-unemployed-women-into-onlyfans-to-mandating-it/

https://nordicmodelnow.org/2025/11/03/is-the-dwp-morphing-into-a-pimp/

I will never support the criminalisation of prostituted women.

I accept that treading a line between stopping women from working together to reduce the risk they face and de facto legalising brothel-keeping is hard. My one criticism of the Nordic Model as commonly implemented is that it stops women from working together out of the same flat.

“The new Ipswich prostitution strategy had five main objectives:

• Identifying the Problem: gaining an understanding of the key issues, the extent of the problem, the impact on the local community and the motives behind those involved in prostitution. This helped to focus, prioritise and allocate resources and finances where they were needed most and ensure that the situation was continually monitored.
• Developing Routes Out: by offering multi-agency case conferences for each individual involved in street prostitution and ensuring that drug treatment programmes, health services, accommodation, and other supportive interventions were available to those individuals who wanted to leave street prostitution.
• Tackling Demand: responding to community concerns by deterring those who create the demand and removing the opportunity for street prostitution to take place. By utilising and exploiting all available technology, for example Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), to provide the police and their partners with the intelligence to support their aims.
• Prevention: Awareness raising and early intervention measures to stop individuals, particularly children and young people, from becoming involved in prostitution.
• Community Intelligence: to respond appropriately to the needs of the communities affected, by keeping them informed of our activities. By listening to their concerns we ensured the environment was kept clean, safe and designed in such a way to deter and prevent street prostitution.”

An extract from “Written evidence submitted by Alan Caton OBE” After the murders of five prostituted women in Ipswich. I believe they had some success with this approach. Start contrast to the managed zone in Leeds. It takes money and effort to solve.

Mea culpa. When I said there's a lot to be said for this, I mean criminalise the pimps and buyers, but ensure the women get the legal, social, and economic help they need. You're right, the women shouldn't be criminalised.

I actually agree with you about the women not being permitted to work out of the same flat. This is what Anna Rajmon told the Irish Examiner regarding this.

“I was familiar with the law, and I often argued with the agency. The agency had established protocols for how to handle these situations. They were convinced that as long as there were no drugs involved, no one could arrest us. Perhaps we accepted that as a good enough excuse because we didn’t want to be alone.

You may think it’s ridiculous, but we feared clients more than prison. It had benefits not to be alone.”

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-41447593.html

That's interesting, Elishiva. Thank you for sharing this.

And i don't want that either. But my point is that the alternative to the Nordic model isn't full legalisation. It's full criminalisation. Punters don't like the Nordoc model for their own purposes but they pretend it's for the women. Their fig leaf is women's safety.

I'm happy with the Nordic model. I'm happy with full criminalisation as long as it's only enforced against punters and pimps.

And on the brothel issue. Brothels are very complicated in terms of safety for the prostitutes, safety for the neighbours and pimps pretending it's just qomen working togetherwhen it's actually not that at all. No system handles this well, least of all decrim.

I asked you if you had read Paid For. I know that a lot of people who mention it haven't read it. It doesn't say what people think it says. It doesn't fit into their narrative of women in prostitution having no choice about what happens to them.

Elis: Irish Call Girl is also about prostitution in Ireland. It is not saying the same thing as Paid For. This is worth pointing out. There isn't one reality of prostitution but also that reality can change with time. Rachel Moran's reality changed for the worse when a new law came in in Ireland in 1993. She was very critical of that law and the suffering that it brought about for women. As well she should be, before 1993 she was able to avoid any form of penetrative sex as a prostitute.

Lots of people think that Rachel Moran is some kind of hero. I have pointed out many of her faults. How she takes false statistics from social conservatives, doesn't bother to check them, then gets to put them in the media and thereby influence policy decisions.

I'll give you another example of that. Do you remember in Paid For where she states that 38% of Irish prostitutes have attempted suicide and 25% have been diagnosed with depression? This is false. The false statistic came from Ruhama who took the work of a researcher and changed it to suit their narrative. The research was of a small group of Dublin drug addicts.

Ruhama campaigned for the Nordic Model in Ireland. Ruhama was founded by two order of nuns, both of which had run Magdalene Laundries in the past. They claim that they only want to help women, but as with Jim Wells they have their own agenda.

When you linked to the Dutch news report, I explained to you why the statistic is false. Most of the 127 women in the report died before legalization not after. Jim Wells was saying in the Northern Ireland Assembly that 127 prostitutes had been murdered in the Netherlands since 2000 when only one prostitute had been murdered in Sweden in the same time period.

Laura Lee researched this statistic and realised that it is false. This is something that Rachel Moran should have done but apparently couldn't be bothered to do. So Rachel Moran gets interviewed on Woman's Hour to repeat Jim Well's false statistic and all Laura Lee got was a letter published in the Belfast Telegraph.

So it does annoy me when people say that Rachel Moran is such a wonderful person that we should all be listening to. You accused the OP of not listening to Rachel Moran and Mia Döring. You were the one who brought Rachel Moran up, not me, so I don't understand your point about me shifting the goalposts. I was responding to what you wrote and I made some important points.

We need to stop arresting women for working together as prostitutes, this is something that never happens in Nordic Model Countries despite what they say but has happened in New Zealand. If women can't work together they either work alone or for a pimp. Someone said in an earlier post that "It is inherently unsafe for women to, multiple times per day, go into a private space with an unknown man who has paid money to have sex with her." Quite right. That's why a prostitute likes to have a friend or colleague in the flat with her. Never alone with a man. That's true of estate agents, health care workers and social workers.

Quite - but I think that given the OP is arguing for decrim, the comparator shouldn't be 'how would illegal gangs run it', it should be 'how would this work if sex work really was treated like any other job'.

As soon as you consider issues like this, the whole insistence that 'sex work is work' unravels.

I love your username, BTW!

I know this is probably a really obvious point, but if men were the prostitutes, society wouldn't just shrug it's shoulders about their plight, as if 'well, that IS basically why women exist, to satisfy men' and 'men have to have sex'.

There would be plenty of funding to deal with addiction, abuse, exit strategies, etc.

Its only tolerated by society because 99.9% of prostitutes are women 😪

What????

Do you think children should be empowered to go up chimneys?

Should people be empowered to work with asbestos?

It is inherently unsafe to sell sex.

I think you would also need somebody in an 'intimacy co-ordinator' role to ensure that all practices were agreed in advance, and obviously security to protect against any violation of the contract.

The hygiene and safety measures might be a turn on for some clients, but I think the market would be severely restricted.

And what is happening to the people who don't want to agree to these terms? Are they criminals?

Someone said in an earlier post that "It is inherently unsafe for women to, multiple times per day, go into a private space with an unknown man who has paid money to have sex with her."

That was me. A shared working flat still leaves unaddressed the following issues:

• Exposure to the punter's bodily fluids, with the associated disease risk.
• Risk of pregnancy.
• Psychological damage from repeatedly having sex with a string of men you don't want sex with. Prostituted women have described dissociation during their work. I can think of only military service that carries a comparable mental health risk.
• That decriminalising punting gives a green light to all men to treat women like purchaseable and hireable commodities.
• That decriminalising pimping gives a green light to traffickers and pimps and makes legal action against them harder.

This.

Military service is comparable. Street prostitutes have comparable PTSD to Vietnam vets. Not veterans, Vietnam veterans.

People often say would you want your daughter to be a prostitute.

And what's your answer?

Would you encourage your daughter to view prostitution as a potential career choice?

And of course, do you tell your sons that prostituted women (and men) are Doing It For Themselves.

Why do you make sure that the people who have the most to gain are the men who use prostituted women and girls? I would have thought that having John’s as the primary benefactor of your activism would give you pause for thought, but apparently not.