Sex Work - Ideology vs Reality

Written by Sophie Marx

Photography by Elizabeth Hunt

In my first year of university, I was walking through campus with friends when we passed a debating society poster advertising their next discussion topic: whether sex work should be legal in Ireland. We stopped to look at it, and while I rolled my eyes at the question, which in my opinion only had one logical answer: “yes,” one of my friends hesitantly remarked, “Maybe, but I don’t know.” Their hesitancy made me reflect on my own presumptions. After all, sex work is legal in few countries and continues to be stigmatised in most.

Growing up in Germany, where sex work has been legal since 2002, I was born into a country that treated it as a regular profession where people pay taxes, have access to healthcare, and pay into their pension funds, etc., making it no different from any other job.

The majority of people around the world seem to be split around the controversial topic of legalising sex work. The dichotomy between my upbringing in Germany and my new temporary home, Ireland, has resulted in me challenging our Zeitgeist on bodily autonomy, our own prejudices, and whether the laws in place enforce harmful practices drawing on religious remnants in many societies or whether they have progressed to a level of modernity appropriate for the 21st century.

To discuss the contemporary landscape of sex work in Ireland, I sat down with Linda Kavanagh, the spokesperson for the Sex Worker Alliance Ireland (SWAI).

The two main objectives SWAI advocates for are the decriminalisation and destigmatisation of sex work. What they and sex workers are calling for is to take sex work entirely out of the criminal law and allow it to be under the umbrella of workers’ rights, labor rights, and healthcare. A lot of people that work in the profession do it because they do not have any other options, and it is a way to make a lot of money quickly. It is also a job that a lot of marginalised people do. I was told that, “In Ireland it is mostly migrants. There is a significant number of LGBTQI people, trans people in particular, undocumented people, people in addiction, people without secure housing, and single mothers.”

As long as the profession remains within the criminal law, already vulnerable groups of people are only pushed further into a criminalised, insecure, and potentially dangerous sphere. They have no choice but to rely on the whims of whichever government is currently in power for security.

On paper, sex work in Ireland was decriminalised in 2017 with the introduction of the Nordic Model. The term “decriminalisation,” however, can give us a false idea of progress which does not accurately portray the current legal situation.

What was decided under the model was that it is illegal to purchase sex, but it is not illegal to sell sex. This makes it legal for sex workers to work alone, but it is not legal for someone else to live off the earnings of sex work, and moreover, a lot of details around the profession continue to be criminalised as well. What this supposedly seeks to combat is pimping (the act of managing prostitutes, organising clients for them, and in return getting a proceed of their profits), to prevent trafficking, and to decrease organised crime.

There is no way I can continue discussing this law without pointing out the utter contradiction within it. While it may not be perceived as objective news writing, I believe that it is also important in the conveying of information to point out if something makes absolutely no sense.

Since the law was passed in 2017, SWAI has seen a high increase in crime, robberies, and assaults against sex workers. In fact, this law is failing sex workers as it does not take the perspective and, more importantly, the reality of sex workers into consideration.

Sex workers in Ireland are only working in ‘legal’ territory when they work on their own and are consequently not allowed to hire a security guard, an admin person, or work together for safety reasons. Working together for safety is illegal in Ireland, even if there is no exploitation happening. Two sex workers renting an apartment together and working out of it is a criminal offence and regarded as brothel-keeping.

What the Nordic Model does is criminalise clients. When talking to me, it was very important for the SWAI spokesperson to emphasise that they do not agree with this way of ‘empowering’ sex workers, which the model sets out to do: “We are not here to promote clients being arrested because ultimately that has a bad outcome for sex workers.”

According to Linda Kavanagh, the model “has failed on all metrics. We are not seeing less sex workers in Ireland than there were before. It (also) hasn’t reduced trafficking in Ireland. We have not increased our trafficking arrests or prosecutions. And every year, Ireland is critiqued by the US Trafficking in Persons Report, where it remains near the bottom of the list.”

“So [the laws] are not reducing trafficking, they’re not reducing sex work, and there isn’t a lot of clients being arrested, maybe four since 2017. Many, many more sex workers have been arrested for brothel-keeping in that time.”

It is not only the execution of this law that is questionable but the entire basis of making clients criminals. The idea is that criminalising clients will lower the number of clients, reducing the demand for sex work, which then would reduce the incentive for sex trafficking.

The reality, however, is that by criminalising the action of purchasing sex, the safety and health risks of sex workers increase exponentially. Since clients are the ones committing a crime, they are more emboldened to push boundaries, Linda Kavanagh told me. They are the criminal, the one taking the risk, so they often refuse to wear condoms, which are frequently used to prove that sex work is occurring, or they won’t want to meet at the sex worker’s place as it could be surveilled, therefore making the sex worker go into an area or a location they are unfamiliar with.

Essentially, the current laws are promoting risk-taking behaviour for sex workers as they often must disregard their own safety regimes to make the money they need. We have to keep in mind that sex work is an economic activity, and any aspect of it that is criminalised is going to have negative effects on the person’s livelihood, health, and safety. These negative effects are extremely present.

According to SWAI, violent crimes against sex workers increased by 92% since the laws changed in 2017.

By forcing sex workers to work alone, the law is making them vulnerable to predators. This insurgence in violence has culminated to a new extreme when Geila Ibram, a sex worker, was murdered in April 2023. The lack of public reaction to the crime against the woman who did not only practice a stigmatised profession but, being an immigrant, also belonged to a further marginalised group, highlighted the persisting hostility and bias towards sex workers and other marginalised groups. Neither of which belong in a system of justice.

The mentioned hostility of SWAI’s work also extends to interactions with the Gardaí. It can be easy to assume what may be “best” for other people or how we can make them feel safe, but the way the police force in Ireland is currently operating has achieved the opposite. I have no intention of badmouthing their work; however, if law enforcement does not listen to the needs sex workers express concerning their safety as well as not cooperating with organisations representing the rights of sex workers, they will continue to enable harmful laws to be enforced in counter-productive ways.

Central Statistics Office (CSO) results show that 85% of the public would report it to the Gardaí if a crime was committed against them. Less than 1% of sex workers would do the same. According to Linda Kavanagh, the Gardaí explains this phenomenon as a “culture of mistrust,” and while that holds some truth, it does not answer the question as to why the gulf of trust in the Gardaí between the general public and sex workers is so massive.

In other words: what are Gardaí doing to break the trust of sex workers?

The interview highlighted three factors I will be briefly outlining. A widespread practice used by the Gardaí is to contact sex workers they find on advertising websites and ask them whether they are being exploited or if they are safe. While this might be done with good intentions, the effect this has is anything but reassuring for sex workers. Being randomly contacted by a guard is scary. Afterwards, many sex workers have contacted SWAI worried about how the Gardaí got their numbers in the first place. The organisation has previously said to Gardaí that their practices have an intimidating effect, yet no action has been taken to change their strategy.

Another frequent practice to ‘ensure safety’ is that officers will book an appointment with a sex worker under the pretence of being a client. When they show up to the appointment, they inquire whether the worker is safe, whether they are victims of exploitation, etc. Yet once again, the reaction this elicits is the opposite of the claimed intention. Not only are they lying to get access to sex workers, but they put the safety of sex workers at risk as a) this practice gives clients a reason to be fearful of surveillance and b) if the sex worker has to meet a certain number of clients a day in order to make financial ends meet, this fake appointment can lead them to take on another spontaneous client for the day who they may not have taken otherwise.

The third factor creating an ill-disposed relationship between sex workers and law enforcement is found in recent research titled “I must be some person,” conducted by the University of Limerick. Research found that 1 in 5 street workers in Dublin and Limerick have been sexually assaulted by Gardaí.

What SWAI is working towards is that sex workers only interact with Gardaí when they want to. As of now, the way interactions are handled and the manner in which the law is both written and enforced is not only putting sex workers at risk but also has negative effects on intelligence needed by the Gardaí to protect sex workers that experience abuse.

Not only do sex workers themselves not feel safe reporting the harm they experience to law enforcement, but clients who are criminalised under the law no longer contact Gardaí if they meet with a sex worker that shows signs of physical abuse. If they did inform law enforcement, they would automatically criminalise themselves and risk getting arrested and prosecuted.

Linda Kavanagh has been told by high-level Gardaí that intelligence has dried up in terms of gathering this kind of information. Allegedly, Gardaí do not see the correlation between the law and drying up of information and continue to defend the law as a way of disrupting organised crime. This has not been achieved either.

If the aim is to reduce trafficking and organised crime, this can only be achieved by creating laws specifically targeting these crimes. However, if a government wants to reduce sex work or make sex work safer, resources must be provided, and laws must not criminalise either the sex worker, their actions, or their clients.

Linda Kavanagh put it in simple terms: “We need housing. We need rehab. We need accessible mental health services, affordable or free childcare, well-paid jobs, secure jobs, and secure housing.” She explained that all these things would lead people to be able to leave the industry if they want to and stop new people from entering. But that is not what is being offered. What is being offered is criminalisation.

When the Nordic Model was introduced in 2017, a clause was built into it that the new law must be reviewed within three years. This was supposed to be done by 2020. As of now, this has not happened, and due to delays, the originally appointed independent reviewer has stepped down. Now the Department of Justice is going to finalise the review, to which SWAI strongly objects.

“We feel like the Department of Justice is reviewing itself because they are the people responsible for the implementation of the law,” stated Lisa Kavanagh.

“We feel the way that it has been gone about is really unethical, and we want it scrapped and started again. We are willing to take the delay.”

Going forward, it is important to stay realistic about the nature of sex work and to consider sex workers’ reality and opinions in the creation of new laws.

What is currently being done and the way the law is written has produced more harm and is not beneficial for an already vulnerable group. Destigmatisation and decriminalisation go hand in hand, and instead of ideologies setting the agenda of how laws interact with sex workers, the humans behind the law should be put into focus.