Cosmopolitan: ‘Like in Gone Girls, the neglect from police over sex worker victims is still scarily prevalent’

At around 5AM on May 1, 2010, Shannan Gilbert — a 23-year-old sex worker from New Jersey — made a panicked phone call to the police. As she fled a client’s house in the sleepy beachfront community of Oak Beach, Long Island, she told the operator that someone was “after her” and that “they” were trying to kill her. She then disappeared into the night.

Gilbert wasn’t the first young woman to mysteriously vanish in Long Island, but when her mother reported her missing two days later, the police allegedly said — per the new Netflix docuseries into the case — ‘Don’t worry, she’s a prostitute. She’ll turn up’.

If you’ve watched the series, called Gone Girls, you’ll know how this story ends: that when Gilbert did ‘turn up’, she was dead. Her body was found 19 months after she disappeared, partially naked and with damage to her neck consistent with strangulation. Her death was ruled an accident.

In the agonising 19 months that Gilbert’s family waited for some kind of closure on her disappearance, 10 other people’s bodies were discovered on the same picturesque stretch of beach along Ocean Parkway. They were each killed between 1993 and 2010, and most of them, like Gilbert, were women who sold sex.

It seems almost unbelievable that a serial killer could murder women with abandon for at least 18 years, callously dumping their bodies in the same area, and not even be on the police’s radar. But the failures in the Long Island serial killer case (whose suspect, Rex Heuermann, was only arrested in 2023, 30 years after the first alleged murder) aren’t, unfortunately, rare.

In fact, as Netflix’s three-part series highlights, the case is a searingly stark reminder of the contempt with which sex workers are often treated by the police, and the dehumanisation they face at the hands of the media, even when they’re victims of violent crimes.

And they often are victims of violent crimes, which is an urgent matter this side of the Atlantic, too. In countries where sex work is criminalised — which includes the US and the UK — sex workers are over three times more likely to experience rape and other violence. In the UK, sex workers also have the highest murder rate compared to women in other occupations.

But, as the Long Island serial killer case exemplifies, the police aren’t necessarily a safe haven for sex workers who’ve been assaulted, nor for the families of sex workers who’ve gone missing or been killed.

Protect or perpetrate?

Sex workers are reluctant to report instances of violence against them, in part out of a justified fear they the police won’t take them seriously, but also because the police themselves are often the perpetrators of this violence. As per research shared by the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), 42% of street-based sex workers in London say they have experienced violence from the police, with marginalised sex workers, like trans and migrant women and women of colour, being disproportionately targeted.

“When sex workers report rape, violence, robbery, or theft, they can’t get the police to help them,” says Laura Watson, the spokesperson for ECP. “At best, women are told it’s part of the job or, ‘What did you expect in that situation?’ At worst, the police will turn around and say, ‘Well, are you telling me that you’re a prostitute because, if you are, we’re going to arrest you’.”

Speaking to Metro about the police’s relationship to sex workers, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: “We know that [sex workers] are more likely to be the victims of physical and sexual violence. While officers have a responsibility to enforce any legislation or local orders that apply, where we identify that a sex worker is a victim or is in need of safeguarding, we will prioritise that support. We know the importance of building mutual trust and confidence so that sex workers can feel comfortable to report issues to officers either directly or through third party organisations.”

“When sex workers report violence, they’re [often] told it’s part of the job, or [threatened with] arrest”

Although it’s legal to buy and sell sex in the UK, certain activities associated with it are criminalised, including ‘causing or inciting prostitution’, and ‘brothel-keeping’. In practice, this just means that sex workers are forced into more remote (dangerous) areas to avoid police detection; they can be arrested if they share safety tips or drive a colleague to a booking; and they can’t work together for safety, as it’s seen as managing a brothel.

“The relationship between the police and sex workers is very strange because on the one hand, it’s very difficult to get the police to even take a statement on things, let alone actually pursue the crime,” continues Watson.

“And on the other, sex workers get a lot of police interaction, as they’re being raided, arrested, and harassed. The resources in the police are there — they can find six or seven officers to turn up at your door to threaten you — but violence against sex workers is being completely unaddressed and is continuing with impunity.”

A 2024 report by University College London, commissioned by the Met, found that the current system of policing in relation to sex work “isn’t working for either the police or the policed”, but that neither of them agree on what to do about it.

A tale as old as time

Serial killers and violent men have long targeted sex workers, in part because of their vulnerability when working alone and a false belief that no one will come looking for them, but also because of the dismissive attitude shown to them by law enforcement and media.

When Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, was brutally murdering women (including many sex workers) between 1975 and 1980, senior West Yorkshire detective Jim Hobson told a press conference: “[The killer] has made it clear that he hates prostitutes. Many people do. We, as a police force, will continue to arrest prostitutes. But the Ripper is now killing innocent girls.”

The West Yorkshire police force has since apologised for these abhorrent comments — but how much has really changed?

Last year’s trial of Iain Packer (who, after evading arrest for 20 years, was sentenced for the 2005 murder of Scottish sex worker Emma Caldwell) would suggest… not much.

At the trial, it emerged that a rape allegation was first made against Packer in 1990 (by a child) and that multiple sex workers later reported assaults by him in the 90s and 00s. The police were apparently dismissive of his victims, and even arrested one woman for prostitution after she reported a sexual assault by Packer, who’s now been found guilty of 32 other charges against a total of 22 women.

Speaking to Sky News last year, Bex Smith, the assistant chief constable for Major Crime and Public Protection at Police Scotland, said: “Emma Caldwell, her family, and many other victims, were let down by policing in 2005. A significant number of women and girls who showed remarkable courage to speak up at that time did not get the justice and support they needed and deserved.”

Police passivity over Caldwell’s death and in the Long Island serial killer case directly led to the assaults or, in the latter case, murders of more women.

“Violence against sex workers is being completely unaddressed and is continuing with impunity”

“[Police] talk about how much they care about sex workers, they have forums and social media, and they speak in the press,” says Watson of their purported progress in recent years. “But when we’ve gone to these forums and tried to get help with some of our cases… we still haven’t been able to. It’s very upsetting, frustrating, and dangerous.”

She shares an example of a woman who says she was discouraged from reporting a violent attack because the police told her social services would be called, and so she feared she’d lose her child.

Sex workers, then, are left with word-of-mouth warnings. At the time of Caldwell’s murder, Packer was named in a ‘Beware Book’ used by street-based sex workers in Glasgow to warn them away from violent clients. This is a tactic used by sex workers globally.

Is change on the horizon?

These days, sex worker-led organisations like ECP and National Ugly Mugs, a UK charity working to end violence against sex workers, offer more formal tools for sex workers to report and help others avoid violent men.

But without the full decriminalisation of sex work, violence against sex workers will never decrease. And, at the time of writing, amendments are being put forward as part of the UK’s Crime Policing Bill that could even heighten it.

The first clause proposes criminalising ‘commercial sexual exploitation by a third party’, which in practice, the ECP reports, will criminalise anyone who associates with sex workers, as well as online platforms which sex workers depend on to advertise. The second clause proposes criminalising ‘commercial sexual exploitation’, which targets buyers of sex.

Although it’s not directly being referred to as this, the latter is the basis of the Nordic Model — proven to increase violence against sex workers, and make their work more stigmatised, difficult, and anxiety-inducing.

“If increased criminalisation does come in, clients won’t want to give out their information,” says Watson, referencing formal and informal reporting tools used by sex workers, “and so all that basic screening will be much more difficult for women.”

Until sex workers are afforded the same rights as every other worker (plus specific rights to protect their safety at work), acts of violence against them will continue to essentially be decriminalised. All women — however they earn their money — deserve safety.

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a64387934/gone-girls-sex-workers-police-neglect/