On Friday, the Latvian Ambassador to Ireland, Mr Peteris Elferts, presented Dublin-based NGO Ruhama with a Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of its commitment to supporting women affected by prostitution and human trafficking.
The award comes as the NGO urged Irish politicians to criminalise those who buy sex in order to target those fuelling demand rather than those trapped in prostitution.
Ruhama is one of 48 organisations involved in the Turn off the Red Light campaign, which is seeking legislation styled on countries such as Sweden that would grant sex workers immunity while those who buy sex are prosecuted.
Speaking after Prime Time’s exposé Profiting from Prostitution, which indicated the degree to which criminality runs prostitution in Ireland, Ruhama CEO Sarah Benson said the programme's revelations were very opportune, coming ahead of the publication of a discussion document on law and prostitution.
“What that programme highlighted, which would be our experience, is that the vast majority of women involved are experiencing some form of coercion,” Sarah Benson explained.
She told ciNews that vested interests are promoting prostitution as an activity engaged in by two mutually consenting adults and airbrushing out the harm involved.
She commented that a book such as Between the Sheets by Scarlett O’Kelly, which is published by Penguin Ireland and contains a contentious account of prostitution by a Dublin mother, “didn’t reflect the experiences of the many hundreds of women we’ve spoken to,” or the children trapped in prostitution.
Ruhama’s CEO said, “Prostitution is, for the vast majority, a survival tactic. It is not something they would be doing if they felt they had any other choices.”
She explained that Ruhama’s work helps women who find themselves stuck in the sex trade and would like to get out of it.
The organisation provides practical supports and assistance because many find it “very difficult” to find a way out.
“There is a risk in glamorising something that really involves a lot of organised criminality. Women face the daily risk of being attacked, beaten, sexually assaulted, and there is a very significant impact on women’s emotional well-being in terms of having to sell your body again and again to strangers,” Sarah Benson explained.
Asked about the impact of the recession in forcing more women into prostitution, she said that the height of the Celtic Tiger boom saw the largest number of people in prostitution in Ireland.
“You had men with a greater disposable income and you also had globalisation and migration. The vast majority of women in prostitution in Ireland are migrant women who come from very impoverished backgrounds and highly vulnerable situations.”
The Ruhama CEO was one of a number of representatives who met Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, the OSCE special representative on human trafficking recently in Dublin.
Ruhama has called for new legislation to be introduced to tackle the increased levels of organised prostitution, which is taking place off-street in indoor settings where the purchase of sex is not an offence under existing Irish law.