The oldest profession

The debate over the murders of five sex workers in sleepy Suffolk raises all kinds of interesting questions. The girls were all drug abusers and street walkers and their horrific deaths leave five children motherless.
The case has led many in the media - and certain politicians - to ask whether legalising prostitution could help prevent such tragedies in the future. While sex workers deserve more protection and sympathy than they are used to, it is difficult to see how they can be taken off the streets once and for all through licensing, no matter how progressive attitudes were to become.
Last year I interviewed a madam and a prostitute for an investigation into the sex trade. Both women worked at massage parlours and both were adament that the industry would be safer if control was taken out of the hands of pimps and given to women.
The madam, originally from South Africa, had never worked as a prostitute herself but saw her role as providing a clean, safe place for women who work out of choice. Her girls effectively work for themselves but pay her for the rooms, washing, bills and admin. All are drug tested and undergo weekly checks for HIV and other STIs. The women are all ages - from early 20s to almost three times that - and come from all kinds of background. They make good money, many are university educated and have families who don't suspect a thing.
The sex worker I talked to was in her 50s, well spoken and from the Wirral area. She was a grandmother who got into prostitution in middle age and far from seeing it as shameful, said she found it liberating to be the one calling the shots in the bedroom. She admitted sadly though that she was now unlikely to find a man to grow old with.
I found both women engaging and their stories fascinating. But for every sex worker in control of their destiny and there through choice, there must be dozens leading chaotic lifestyles and there through desperation, poverty and drug addiction.
First there are many in brothels and massage parlours who have been trafficked into Britain by unscrupulous gangs, raped and beaten into submission and locked away from public view.
Then there are others who slip into the industry in order to feed their heroin and crack habits. It's hard to know how legalising the trade would actually help these particular women. Those who crave ever greater quantities of hard drugs are inevitably going to take risks with their safety - by working dark, dingy streets in dangerous parts of town, undercutting other girl's prices and by getting into whichever vehicle happens to pull up next.
And men who are into the seedier side of these liasons won't necessarily get the same thrill from a clean and clinical licensed brothel.