Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Behind the Paddle podcast with me, paulson, victoria. I like this episode. It is going to educate you, it's going to open up your mind and, yeah, we're going to learn about how criminalizing sex work actually hurts trafficking victims. Criminalizing sex work actually hurts trafficking victims and I understand this isn't everybody's boat like. Not everybody agrees with certain things, maybe some people don't want to learn about it, which I would definitely encourage you to learn. Anything about sex work, about human rights and freedom, absolutely. We're told the law is here to protect us. At least, that's sort of how I grew up. Sort of how I grew up, um, when the law was me growing up, okay, no, I tell a lie, my, my, no, the law didn't do that much for me. But we are told that the law is here to protect us, to do to help us in some way, shape or, and we're told that criminalising sex work through raids, stings, arrests, surveillance is all part of a strategy to rescue the vulnerable, save the women, to stop traffickers. But this is the first lie that we're going to talk about in this podcast episode. In truth, the people most frequently targeted by these laws are not the ones running the trafficking rings. They are not the men profiting off exploitation. They are the survivors, the street workers, the single mothers doing survival sex to feed their kids, the migrants without papers, the 16 year old girl who never came home from school, the 16 year old girl who never came home from school. When we criminalize sex work, we do not protect, we punish. We don't dismantle trafficking networks. We bury their victims in court records and jail cells.

Speaker 1: 2:42

This episode isn't about ideology or theory. It's not about what might happen or what should. It's about what does happen, and I can't exclaim that enough, about what is actually happening, about people who were raped, beaten, manipulated, then punished by the very systems claiming to rescue them. And how about? Our justice system doesn't just fail to protect victims, it actively makes escape harder. Over the next hour, you're going to hear how fear of arrest keeps victims silent, how laws erase the line between trafficking and consensual sex work, how police have been complicit in abuse. We'll hear about women who begged for help and were handcuffed instead, about girls treated like criminals instead of children in danger.

Speaker 1: 3:50

So when someone tells you that criminalization is about rescue, then ask them rescue for who exactly? Because if you talk to survivors, they they'll tell you. Handcuffs don't feel like freedom and silence doesn't sound like safety. So imagine you've been kidnapped. You're 16, you've been moved across state lines, beaten, raped and told where to stand, what to say, when to smile. And then the police come. You don't run to them, you freeze because you know if they catch you you'll be arrested again. That's not hypothetical. That's the reality for trafficking survivors across the world and here in our own cities.

Speaker 1: 4:52

The truth is chilling. When sex work is criminalized, victims are silenced by the very people meant to protect them. Most legal systems don't make a clear distinction between someone selling sex and someone being forced to. A woman picked up in a street stink, she might be a trafficking victim. She might be working to feed her kids. The law doesn't ask it. Arrests first, ask questions later, if at all. This creates a deadly grey zone where survivors are punished exactly like the traffickers. They're fleeing.

Speaker 1: 5:38

Even when police suspect trafficking, many departments still arrest the survivor. Why? To get a confession, a testimony leverage. It's a form of legalized coercion, a confess or rot approach, and it re-traumatizes people who have already lived through the worst. Let's say you do survive, you get out. Now what? You have? A criminal record. You can't rent an apartment, you can't get a job and you're denied student aid. You are, in the eyes of the system, still a criminal, even if you were trafficked, even if you were a child. This isn't protection. This is punishment by design. So we're just gonna take a story which was from a anonymized Shared Hope case. Shared Hope is a I believe it's a charity. I don't quite know the right terminology of what to call this campaign, I'm not too sure, but it's a charity that wants to end child trafficking. So, yeah, let's call this woman Emma, based on documented examples of minors trafficked at 16, forced by traffickers into criminal acts like carrying a weapon, then arrested. That record followed her for years and blocked her from housing, childcare and public aid, making her feel thrown away rather than rescued.

Speaker 1: 7:48

The 2018 Yale Global Health and Justice Partnership found that US courts routinely prosecuted trafficking victims under prostitution laws. Charges are used to extract testimony, not offer support. At 2016, amnesty international report interviewed dozens of sex workers and survivors. One pattern was consistent they didn't call for help because they knew help would come with handcuffs. A 2016 Amnesty International report from the UK found that sex workers feared calling the police, not because they didn't want justice, but because they knew help often came handcuffed, with eviction or deportation as the price. More recently, a 2024 study in London found migrant survivors refusing to report serious crimes, not due to distrust but fear of brothel visa or criminal charges that could follow them home.

Speaker 1: 8:47

If you look back on a few episodes that we did, we did Proceed Without Caution, which we done in February, called Marked Forever, the Hidden Cost of a Sex Work Caution the Hidden Cost of a Sex Work Caution, and they're both really, really good. So I went to London, I went to the House of Commons to speak in front of God knows how many people, with the lovely help of English collective prostitutes, to talk about how the police are really not helping any situation when it comes to sex work right now. They are very ego-powered and think they can do whatever they like, to the point where there's assaults, there's rapes, there's forced confessions, there's them deporting sex workers, survivors of traffickers and like throwing the sex workers out onto the streets naked or in underwear. It's not good right now in any single way, like why would we want the police? The police are not helping us at all right now.

Speaker 1: 10:08

A ucla study in 2024 described how migrant sex workers, often victims of serious crimes remain too frightened to involve police. Health care workers expressed feeling powerless when patients leave clinical spaces, refusing to report because they risk arrest for brothel keeping or visa violations. Adversity International documented that many sex workers are hesitant to report to police or courts because you know they they fear arrest, eviction or criminalization and the fact that there are a good few studies on this where they're saying no, no, no, no, no, like no. You need to listen. And the government, the police, they're still not listening, or if they are listening, they are choosing to ignore us.

Speaker 1: 11:09

What if you survived abuse but because you weren't the right kind of victim, you were treated as a criminal. What if the system didn't want to hear your story, only your confession? Well, in a criminalised sex work system, the law doesn't see nuance. There's no room for grey, only guilt. The system sees two kinds of people the deserving victim, usually young, white, innocent, voiceless, and everyone else labelled a criminal, prostitute, disposable. But real life, real trauma, doesn't fit those boxes.

Speaker 1: 12:00

In a few episodes every now and again I do talk about how me doing my job, I am white and I am privileged and so I don't get the same experiences as other people can get. Um, but I would like to say that the police it really does depend who you get. I want to say there can. There can be nice police officers and there can be very not police officers. I've run into both before, and that's even me being white. So, like you might think, because you're white you have that privilege and if you have any run-ins with the police you'll be fine. But in reality you never know. The police are really cracking down on us and it's not good. We've created a fantasy binary that you're either trafficked or you're choosing this life freely. But ask any survivor. That line is messy. Coercion and choice can exist in the same story.

Speaker 1: 13:17

Survival sex isn't consent and for many, especially those living in poverty or fleeing violence, sex work isn't empowerment, it's endurance. So when the law refuses to see context, it fails everyone. For migrant workers, especially those who are undocumented, reporting violence is often more dangerous than enduring it, because it isn't just arrest. They fear. It's deportation, separation from their children, imprisonment in a country they barely escaped. And when anti-trafficking raids are carried out without protections which is quite often are carried out without protections, which is quite often many of these workers are detained or deported before anyone ever checks to see if they are victims. Now, if you listen to revolting prostitutes, we do talk about this in the book, where migrants will get deported and they won't be helped or saved or anything like that. Um, they will just get deported. Even if the police do say like they're safe, nope, they can lie.

Speaker 1: 14:41

And then there are the children minors. In theory, us law says any child sold for sex is a trafficking victim, no exceptions. But in practice that's not how it works. In some states, teenage girls are still arrested, still detained, charged, just with different names Status, offence, loitering, delinquency. They're processed as juvenile offenders, labelled early, trapped early, forgotten early. So Homeland Secretary Yvette Cooper recently announced a major review Police forces in England and Wales have identified 287 historic child sexual exploitation cases where minors were actually prosecuted for loitering or soliciting offences now understood as identifying them as victims, not criminals. Authorities are introducing a disregard scheme to squish these convictions, realizing these children were groomed and sexually exploited, not willing participants. So, with that little fact there about the UK, where there has clearly been cases, that is a fact where they were criminalised, but now it's being squashed as the UK finally acknowledges that these children were exploited and not criminals. However, are we seeing this, not not that much, not yet. So we'll see how that goes, see how long that takes to get all those cases squashed.

Speaker 1: 16:42

So in canada in 2014, protection of communities and exploited persons act was supposed to help trafficking victims. Well, what happened instead? Sex workers reported more police surveillance, more fear, and when they tried to report violence, many were still arrested. The law said it was there to protect them, but it didn't recognize their humanity long enough to listen. So there was a project called the Polaris project in France and Norway, where Polaris documented minors being detained as offenders instead of being referred to services. In France and Norway, migrant sex workers were deported in anti-trafficking sweeps, even when there was evidence they were being coerced. Many cases they had no lawyer, no translator, therefore no way to actually tell their story. This is what happens when laws are written to satisfy headlines instead of protecting people.

Speaker 1: 17:56

When we criminalise the sale of sex, we create a world where pain is invisible. Create a world where pain is invisible, where the law looks at a woman with bruises and a criminal record and calls her a threat, not a survivor. When we think of rescue, we picture blue lights and badges. We picture safety, structure and justice. But what if the rescue hurts more than the captivity? In many parts of the world and communities right here in the UK, survivors don't see the police as protectors. They see them as predators, because for too many trafficking victims, contact with law enforcement wasn't the beginning of freedom. It was another form of abuse.

Speaker 1: 18:52

In Argentina, the Philippines, parts of the US and beyond, officers have been caught working with the very traffickers they're supposed to arrest. In some cities police have tipped off brothel owners before a raid. In others they've taken payment to look the other way and sometimes they've even been clients themselves, which we know for a fact. That has happened here in the UK, with some disgusting cases that have happened here in the UK which you can listen and read about in revolting prostitutes which we read every Thursday, and the fact that even if, for example, a sex worker is murdered, the police, even if they did use that sex worker which has happened, and multiple officers go to that sex worker for services before their death and after the death of the said sex worker, the police do not want to investigate it Again. This has happened.

Speaker 1: 20:10

Alika Keenan was trafficked in a brothel in Argentina where police were regular visitors, not to save her but to take bribes Not to save her, but to take bribes. She was raped, threatened, sold and the officers knew because they were part of it. And that was in 2012. A raid which exposed extensive police involvement. Years later, she sued the Argentine state and won. It was the first time in lat. Same time, because it's like, how can the police, who are betrayed to be trusting, do all this? Like what? Like they? The police actually routinely visited the establishments, but they didn't do it to protect her. They actually went to extort money from the traffickers. Insane. I would definitely go read into her story because, again, it's true, it's happening and I'm so happy. She sued them and actually won.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Sexual coercion by the police. And then there's what no one wants to admit there are officers who exploit their power sexually. Survivors have reported being forced to perform sex acts in exchange for not being arrested. Others were assaulted after being taken into custody and when they tried to speak out they weren't believed or, worse, they were threatened with more charges. In Oakland, officers were found exchanging information and protection for sex with a minor. In Baltimore, an entire gun task force was investigated after allegations of rape and extortion. These aren't just bad apples. They're symptoms of a culture that sees sex workers, even children, as tools, not people, like a UK case study, emma Caldwell. Emma's story is fucking tragic and the fact that it took so many years to we're gonna speak about it in Glasgow.

Speaker 1: 23:07

The 2005 murder of Emma Caldwell, a sex worker, revealed some systemic police failures. During the trial of her killer, it emerged that police officers were clients of Caldwell and other sex workers, that those officers likely concealed evidence to hide their own misconduct. Police Scotland even issued a formal apology to Caldwell's family, acknowledging that dismissive attitudes and failures in investigation contributed to her murder. Outreach groups reported that 90% of sex workers experienced violence, including assaults and near murders, yet only 11% felt safe enough to report it. There was, there's so many failures in the government, in every government, when it comes to sex workers.

Speaker 1: 24:14

Imagine you're a trafficking survivor, finally escaped. You walk into a police station, shaking, terrified, and they tell you testify or go to jail. That's not protection, that's a threat, and for someone who has already been violated, already silenced, it can be a final freaking blow to you. It really can be To go through all the horrors to get to even more horrors. The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women has collected stories from across africa, asia and eastern europe. Over and over again, the pattern is the same survivors report extortion, ignored tips, laughing officers, arrests for daring to speak. These aren't isolated incidents. They're structural failures.

Speaker 1: 25:13

If we want people to actually trust the system, the system has to be worthy of trust. But for too many survivors, the badge is just another uniform worn by their abuser. Badge is just another uniform worn by their abuser. Until we confront the rot inside these institutions, the corruption, the coercion, the complicity, rescue will remain just another lie, we tell ourselves. Even the few support services available in the UK come with strings attached.

Speaker 1: 25:49

If you need emergency housing, you may need to sign a form agreeing to cooperate with the police, want a place in a safe house? Prepare to share your entire history with a caseworker before they believe that you deserve it. Looking for job training or therapy, you might end up in a voluntary sector program run by a faith-based group where there's prayer before lunch and no space to talk about what really happened to you. We've made safety conditional. We've told survivors if you want to help, you have to perform the version of victimhood we approve of, and if you can't, you go without. Where are survivors meant to go if the doors just keep closing If they can't get a job, If they are struggling with so much because of their criminal record, because of prostitution?

Speaker 1: 26:53

A case study by the urban justice center in new york found that 90 percent of trafficking survivors had at least one prior prostitution conviction. That record impacted everything from child custody to eligibility for public housing. The system didn't help them escape. It held them in place. The Global Alliance Against Trafficking Women reported that many survivors refused to go to shelters because the conditions were dehumidizing. All required law enforcement cooperation. Some were forced into religious programs that condemned them. Others were supervised, restricted, isolated. They didn't feel saved. They felt watched, judged and controlled.

Speaker 1: 27:46

We talk about trafficking as if escape is the end of the story, but survival is only the first chapter. What happens next? The criminal record, the barriers, the bureaucracy is often just as brutal. Until we stop criminalising survivors, they will never be free. Safety doesn't grow in courtrooms, and a justice system that punishes the abused while protecting the powerful isn't justice, it's theatre, it is entertainment, especially when it's slapped on the newspapers and you see the headlines of prostitutes caught in raid or something silly. No, it's not silly, it's cynical in the way where you're taking away the humanity of these headlines and they don't go in depth into what is actually happening, why and what we can do to prevent it. Instead, they just go for the most flashy looking caption that they can find and that they can think of and think, yes, this is going to get us the most popularity and people are really going to read this. That is all the media cares about these days. And, gosh, if they interview one of the police officers, I swear they're just coming from an orgasm, from getting the attention they so badly crave. When it comes to or these romanian women were getting trafficked and you know they will be saved when actually, in reality, you've just deported them. True facts that has actually happened.

Speaker 1: 29:37

So we've spent a good amount of time already talking about the first lie, which is criminalizing sex work protects the vulnerable, that it helps victims, that it ends trafficking, but what we've seen in case after case, in country after country, is something else entirely. We've heard how fear of arrest silences survivors, how laws blur the line between victim and worker until everyone is treated like a criminal, how police courts and shelters often re-traumatize the very people they claim to protect, and so-called exit ramps are full of barriers, traps and shame. Now I will tell you not from a personal experience See, this is bad. This is horrible, because if I say certain words and a police officer is say, for example, allegedly, example, allegedly that I did a double escort session or I rented an apartment with another sex worker that is now a brothel and I could get in trouble for that, which is ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 31:01

Women working for safety? It's, it's a brothel, clearly. But then, even if it is a brothel, are certain people being forced into it? And then, if they are okay, what are you, what is the police going to do about it? Are they in a safe environment? Again, there's no fucking exit strategies, clearly, as we've just spoken about, which are good exit strategies.

Speaker 1: 31:31

This is the one thing which the government needs to actually get a hold of and do. They need to speak to sex workers and we need to sort this out, because sex work isn't always peachy, it's really not and especially when it comes to trafficking, the government needs to speak on this. But they need to actually include survivors and we need to figure out how are we going to combat this where the police and the courts and everything else is just abusing the survivors. So I know a story. Let's say that where there was two workers working together in an apartment and one of the girls, she got stealthed. And stealthing is when a guy takes off the condom without you knowing and comes inside of you, and so that girl got stealthed. However, she did not feel confident enough to go to the police at all based on the fact that she was sharing an apartment with another sex worker.

Speaker 1: 32:50

It's a horrible world that we live in currently. Rescue shouldn't leave you with a criminal record. It doesn't take your children away. It doesn't strip you of housing, identity, safety or hope. It doesn't, but it does. Rescue does leave you with all this because it's not truly rescuing you. If our systems truly wanted to help survivors, they would start with suspicion. They wouldn't trade testimony for food, they wouldn't rely on coercion in a place of compassion, they wouldn't lie to you in the interview room. When sex work is criminalized, we don't end trafficking. We drive it deeper. We punish the people most in need of support and let the real traffickers walk away. But if we change the law, what if the tools used to threaten survivors could be dismantled and replaced with protection, with resources, with choice?

Speaker 1: 33:59

They say go to the cops, you'll get arrested, you'll be charged. You'll lose everything. For migrants you'll be deported. You'll never see your family again. For those convictions, no one will believe you. For those with convictions, no one will believe you. The system already owns you. You and the worst part, they're not lying. This is a quote from a survivor that they had with their trafficker. He told me you think the cops will help. You've got two prostitution charges already. They'll book you, not me. And he was right. The Urban Justice Center 2020. 76% of survivors said fear of arrest kept them from escaping the G-A-A-T-W. The G-A-A-T-W reports. Decriminalized countries see higher survivor outreach. Yale Criminal laws create an incentive for traffickers to exploit with impunity.

Speaker 1: 35:18

We criminalize the symptom, then blame the victim for not asking for help. So let's sit with a difficult truth In many criminalized countries, police are not neutral for help. So let's sit with a difficult truth In many criminalized countries, police are not neutral enforcers. They are sometimes part of the abuse Extortion bribes to avoid arrest, sexual assault, demanding sexual acts under threat, intimid threats to silence, and we've already heard previously some stories about how bad the police are. So some support and evidence with to add with our lovely big long catalogue of what we've got currently. So we've got animosity international in 2016, reports of police abuse in argentina, nigeria and norway, where it is criminalized. In france, harassment escalated, post-bio criminalization laws, the human rights watch, the Human Rights Watch 2019, rape, blackmail and Theft by Police documented globally. Survivors have been quoted multiple times talking about how you fear police as much as the pimp, sometimes even more. This isn't a broken system. It's a system working as designed to protect institutions, not people.

Speaker 1: 36:50

Even laws intended to fight trafficking are sometimes used to silence, criminalise or punish victims, especially women of colour, migrants and youth. So in the United States, federal law says minors can't be charged with prostitution, but states still detain them. In Texas, minors are jailed for delinquency despite victim status. In France, anti-trafficking raids lead to deportation, not safety, not safety. In canada, post 2014 laws closed sex worker-led collectives, one of the few safety nets trafficked workers had like. How does that help whatsoever? Why are you closing the places that we need? So the london school of hygiene and tropical medicine even did a study that anti-trafficking efforts often overlook or harm the victims.

Speaker 1: 37:56

We're now going to talk about something which is very close to my heart, because scotland they are trying to get the nordic model in, which is also called the end demand model. It's got a load of freaking names. They always try and rename it to make it sound new and like whatnot, but it's the same damn thing. So the nordic model criminalizes buyers, not sellers. It sounds good in a way for some people. I know that this can sound like compassionate towards sex workers, but survivors say it still hurts us and sex workers because there's a difference between trafficking victims and sex workers big difference.

Speaker 1: 38:46

Um, in sweden there has been case studies. They do have the nordic model. Fuck you, sweden. Sweden have just banned only fans and a bunch of other platforms because they want to ban porn. That's what sweden has just done recently. What the fuck, why? What, oh god, could you imagine? You can't even jack off in the country that you are living in. Like what?

Speaker 1: 39:12

Sweden were the first country to adopt the Nordic model, the government promised it would reduce trafficking and protect sex workers, but what followed was far from protection. So evictions. Landlords were pressured to remove anyone suspected of selling sex. Sex workers were evicted from their homes, sometimes after police leaked their names to housing authorities. Now this is like a study. This has been like looked at and recorded. So isolation.

Speaker 1: 39:51

Criminalizing buyers push sex workers deeper. Underground workers reported being forced into more remote areas like darker streets, back roads, isolated forests, where help was further away and danger closer. I was having a conversation with somebody the other day about that. There was a street in Ipswich in the UK called the management area, something along those lines, and so what that meant was you could actually do sex work in this street, but you couldn't do the acts of it in the street, so then you had to go further away to complete the acts, and that would lead to like dark alleys or cars, or to the hotels or where possible, and this actually led to a few sex workers deaths, and they were done by a murderer, a serial killer, in Ipswich.

Speaker 1: 41:03

So then Norway followed in Sweden's footsteps, adopting the Nordic model in 2009. Like Sweden, they promised to reduce trafficking to protect women, but they forgot something Most of the women they were quote protecting weren't Norwegian. They were undocumented migrants, and for them, protection never came. What really happened was police raids. Under the guise of anti-trafficking crackdowns, police raided apartments and hotels where sex was suspected.

Speaker 1: 41:37

While selling sex wasn't illegal, the laws criminalized nearly every aspect surrounding it Working together, advertising surrounding it, working together, advertising, renting a room what the heck. And, of course, migrant women were targeted. The women most vulnerable to violence were the first to be deported. Many were sent away without legal representation or trafficking screening. So in amnesty international report about norway, women did report being followed, harassed and threatened by the police. One nigerian woman said they told me to pack up my life in 10 minutes or they'd come back and destroy it. Another reported being deported two days after reporting a violent client. She called for help and the law punished her for it. The law said she wasn't the criminal, but the system treated her like one. That's not rescue, that's removal.

Speaker 1: 42:43

In france 2016, france criminalised the purchase of sex. They said it was feminist, they said it would fight trafficking. But on the streets of Paris, something else happened. Workers moved into unlit parks, construction zones and forests. Police stopped arresting the buyers and started documenting workers. That is something which is very, very prominent and common in every case where there is um, the nordic model, and where it is criminalized. Where you are, men are actually criminalized the buyers rather than the sellers. But that's not what's actually happening. Wait until I talk about ireland.

Speaker 1: 43:38

Many women, especially migrants, disappeared from visibility. Outreach teams couldn't find them. Sex workers no longer work where they can reach them, said one health worker. They move constantly. They don't trust us anymore. They know that if they're seen they'll be surveilled and if they speak out they risk deportation. So in ireland, since march 2017, ireland criminalized the purchase of sex brothel keeping and living off the earnings, adopting the so-called nordic model.

Speaker 1: 44:20

So, despite the enforcement, research does indicate no overall reduction in demand, because that's what they say with the nordic model, or if you use the nordic model, there won't be much demand. Like if we kill the demand and it's like no. Most sex workers simply move indoors or online. There is no decrease in demand. 56.7 percent of northern ireland sex workers under the same model said the law made them feel more vulnerable, more anxious and more stigmatised. 85% of brothel keeping convictions were migrant women, including disproportionate targeting. A report by HIV Ireland found the law reduced sex workers' Ireland now fear for their safety, citing lack of housing, healthcare and legal support, especially among migrants and victims of trafficking. The Human Watch in 2023 noted criminalisation hinders trafficking detention, making it harder for organizations to access brothels or build trust with survivors. Now there is much more I can add to this, but I feel like I've really summed up what is happening and the difference between trafficking victims and sex workers and how survivors are not benefiting from the criminalization, are not benefiting from the bloody stigma that we have right now.

Speaker 1: 46:24

Criminalization is not neutral. It doesn't just punish pimps, it builds the environment. Traffickers thrive in fear, isolation, mistrust and silence. We often ask why don't victims just run? I fucking hate that question. I really do. The answer is they are told if they run, they'll be arrested, deported, shamed or erased, and too often they're right. Traffickers don't need chains, they don't need locked doors, they just need fear. And when the law says sex work is illegal, that fear becomes very, very real. So the last thing we're going to speak about is the differences between decriminalization and legalization. I feel like I could make so many podcast episodes just talking about each and every single one, because you've got decriminalization, you have criminalization and then you have legalization. They are all different in their own way.

Speaker 1: 47:35

So let's just talk about decriminalization for a start. So removal of criminal penalties for consensual adult sex work. So decriminalization it doesn't regulate, license or approve. It just stops arresting people for, you know, surviving. And, of course, it empowers sex workers to actually work together, to seek help and to build safety without fear. It doesn't mean approval, it means autonomy and, oh my god, the fact that we wouldn't get punished for working together, especially, for example, if you had a dungeon or if you had an establishment that you could have sex workers at to work safely and we couldn't be criminalized for that. I would fucking love that. That is my dream, honestly to have an establishment where sex workers can just work in a safe environment and not fear anybody, and if they needed something it can be there by a click of a finger, especially when it comes to safety, security and having the essentials to do their job. And yeah, oh, it would open up so many doors. So legalization it allows sex work, but only under state control. It does involve permits, registration, zoning and health checks.

Speaker 1: 49:17

So legalization is what they have in germany. Uh, we did actually cover an episode about germany and, uh, berlin, I think and that was when we interviewed a lovely, beautiful dominatrix called Miss May. That episode is ages ago ages ago, but you will be able to find that episode. It is just way back and that talks about how Germany is legalized in sex work and what's what's good and what's bad about it, and Miss May actually lived there and things. So, again, legalization often excludes the most vulnerable. So migrants, migrants, trans people, those without papers or anybody who can't navigate bureaucracy If you don't comply, you're still a criminal.

Speaker 1: 50:18

You need to remember that Legalization builds cages. Decriminalization opens the doors. So why does decrim work better? It reduces the police's power, but I think I don't know right. I I go on so many rants about the nordic model and like how we need decriminalization rather than criminalization and legalization, because when you legalize it and when you criminalize it, especially when you bring in, like the nordic model, things like that then the police have the power, the government has the power and the clients have the power and there's barely any power for the actual sex workers, the sellers. So yeah, if you, if, if we do get decriminalization, it does reduce the police power, there will be fewer raids, fewer threats, fewer bribes.

Speaker 1: 51:18

And this has been studied on and this like there are facts out there which have been presented that decriminalization works and it lets survivors actually report abuse without risking arrest or deportation. It creates space for harm reduction, peer outreach and real support and, of course, it centers health, safety and dignity, not punishment or shame. The atmosphere International have found that decriminalization is the model most protective of sex workers and trafficking survivors alike. So what does decriminalization actually does? When someone is in danger, peer networks see it and act on it. Safety doesn't have to be bought or begged. So it eliminates the need for pimps and gatekeepers. It does build trust with outreach teams. Harm reduction workers don't have to chase shadows. They can build up those relationships with the workers or the survivors. And it does take fear off the table. Without the threat of arrest, traffickers lose their biggest weapon control through silence. So there's a case study done in new zealand. So after passing the prostitution reform act, new zealand became the first country to fully decriminalize sex work. Now if I was to move, new zealand sounds very good, but I don't know if I'd get in. They're very picky with their visas. So what changed? Violence against workers dropped, trafficking reports went up, not because it increased, but because survivors felt safe to come forward. There was no spike in trafficking At all. Collective workplaces flourished, giving workers more control over their conditions and safety. When the job isn't a crime, the abuse stands out. And that's how you fight trafficking not with raids, but with daylight.

Speaker 1: 53:33

Even after rescue, the record stays and it follows survivors everywhere. This is what you've got to remember. Criminal records stop you from doing so many things. You can be barred from certain housing, you can be denied jobs and education, you can lose custody of your children and then, of course, you've got constant trauma triggers. You can get ptsd. You, you again. You can be so traumatized by the system which is meant to protect you, and the solutions are just automatic expungement for survivors of their records, record sealing for survival-based offences, trauma-informed courts. Survivors with expunged records were three times more likely to get stable housing and work. You can't rebuild if the court still owns your past. If you want to fix a broken system, ask the people it failed.

Speaker 1: 54:41

Decriminalisation is the beginning, but not the end. The next steps would be to fully fund survivor runs, shelters, train first responders to spot coercion. Offer no barrier trauma care and housing. Stop conflating sex work and trafficking. Fund peer outreach, not raids you want. It's so simple if you want someone to leave a trafficker, give them somewhere to go. That is not what is happening currently, and so we're going to end this episode where we began with a lie that criminalizing sex work protects the vulnerable. But the survivors told us the truth and, of course, many case studies and literal facts that traffickers fear the police. They fear the government and it's the same with sex workers. Now, decriminalization isn't a cure for all, but it's a start. It says you're not a criminal, you're not disposable, you're not alone. If we want a world where survivors actually survive, we must stop punishing them for how they have lived.

Speaker 1: 56:00

Now, I hope this episode of Behind the Pad have been has been informative and educational and, yeah, hopefully I haven't rambled too much, because I feel like this episode is very, very open, where you can talk about so much and you can go into different sectors talking about the nordic model, talking about each country and the statistics of everything. But we are punishing the wrong people and this does show how criminalizing sex work hurts trafficking victims. So this has been behind a bad podcast. Thank you very much for listening.

Speaker 1: 56:48

I have had like such a energetic week. I'm so tired and I'm a little bit ill. I think I've got currently a blocked nose, so I'm so sorry. Um, if anybody's listening and like it's horrendous, I do apologize. I have tried not to sniffle and everything. But yeah, thank you so much for listening to this episode of behind the padder podcast and yeah, I am actually off to download next week.

Speaker 1: 57:22

I'm very excited. Uh well, actually Thursday this Thursday, because this episode's coming out tomorrow, because I'm recording this on Sunday, but yeah, I'm babbling, it's like nearly midnight, so I've done this to the last minute. I'm a little getting a little bit burnt out, but I think, um, I have recorded like next Monday's one as well. That's gonna be interesting because actually that is an interview style um with a submissive and we're gonna be talking about phone domination, safety, trust and digital power. I was so excited first time doing like a zoom thing, because usually we just go to meet people in person, so it was an experience. And I do have a few interviews um lined up as well. So I'm very excited.

Speaker 1: 58:20

But, yeah, I hope you have enjoyed this episode and this has been Behind the Pad podcast with me, pulsing Victoria. You can I've said this like three times already, I know I'm too tired you can listen to us on Spotify, apple, wherever. Really, please leave us a review. We really, really appreciate it. It is really helpful for us and if you have any feedback and, of course, if you like and comment, that does help the algorithm. But yeah, thank you so much for listening to me babble on about this and good night. Good night, good morning, goodbye, sleep deprived, clearly bye.