Sex workers face a lot of violence. Sex workers in London are 12 times more likely to be murdered than other women. It is much safer to work indoors with others but this is illegal.
Criminalisation increases violence. Attacks on sex workers doubled in Scotland after kerb crawling laws were introduced which criminalised clients. A 2014 survey found that where arrests of sex workers and clients were high, only 5% of sex workers who were victims of a crime reported it. This compared to 46% of victims in areas where police adopted a harm reduction approach.
Sex workers at the Justice for Agnes Wanjiru demonstration in London on December 17, 2021. PHOTO: SWARMDrawn from three sex worker organizations; Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement (SWARM), ECP (English Collective of Prostitutes) and the AAWG (All African Women’s Group, the cocottes camped outside the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence headquarters on Friday in […]
Criminalisation, poverty and the hostile environment are roots of violence against sex workers. It’s time to end them all, say Niki Adams and Laura Connelly Since 2003, those of us involved in the movement for sex workers’ rights have commemorated 17 December as the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. It is a day of mourning, […]
Today (December 17, 2021) sex workers and allies gathered outside the Ministry of Defence in London to protest the murder of Agnes Wanjiru, a Kenyan sex worker, who was killed by a British Army soldier in March 2012. Today is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers (IDEVASW), a day in which we honour […]
‘We are entitled to the same rights which all human beings get,’ says Agnes Wanjiru’s neighbourMaya OppenheimA Kenyan sex worker allegedly murdered by a British soldier has been denied justice because sex workers are routinely unjustly refused rights, a neighbour of the dead woman has warned.Agnes Wanjiru, a 21-year-old Kenyan sex worker, is alleged to have been killed by a British Army soldier […]
Photos / video copyright Juno Mac / SWARM
Trans people globally live under the constant threat of violence, and for trans sex workers this is heightened by illegality & stigma. This Trans Day of Remembrance we’re sharing a short statement from a migrant trans woman in our network on how criminalisation impacts sex workers’ safety My name is Gabriela, I am a transsexual woman and […]
A murder carried out almost a decade before her birth, and which her family should have had no connection to, has long cast a shadow for Cassie Justice Parris. The 24-year-old only found out through anxious curiosity how her father, Tony Paris, had been dragged into what would become Britain’s longest running murder trial, unwilling to wait until she was older to be let in on what appeared to be a secret in her father’s past. “I googled […]
Video here: Niki Adams, English Collective of Prostitutes speaks to ITV NewsA group campaigning for the rights of sex workers has claimed the murder of a mum-of-four from Rotherham could and should have been prevented.Alena Grlakova’s body was found in a stream in the Parkgate area of the town in April 2019 – more than […]
A man has been found guilty of murdering two women 21 years apart. Gary Allen strangled Samantha Class, 29, whose body was found by three schoolchildren on the banks of the Humber Estuary in 1997. He was tried and cleared of her murder in 2000 but the acquittal was quashed last year after he was […]
Lisa Longstaff, Women Against Rape The strength of feeling provoked by Sarah Everard’s murder and the police response to women paying their respects remind us of the fury at the police killing of George Floyd. It has shed new light onto the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and succeeded in delaying it. The bill would end […]