Nuns who work with prostitutes and trafficked women have called for the selling of sex to be decriminalised.Sister Lynda Dearlove, who was awarded an MBE this year, said the law kept women “locked” into prostitution.
Her comments were backed by Sister Ann Teresa, founder of the Medaille Trust, which runs one of Britain’s only safe houses for trafficked women.
Both Sisters say they are against the legalisation of prostitution because it would effectively “turn the state into a pimp”, with the state taxing the earnings of prostitutes.
Sister Lynda, founder of the Women@theWell project in King’s Cross, London, which helps women escape prostitution, said a conviction for a sex offence stayed permanently on a woman’s record, making it much more difficult to find work.
“If you apply for a job as a cleaner and a CRB [Criminal Records Bureau] check is done, then that offence will come up – you can’t ever get out of it,” she said. “It didn’t use to matter so much but now more and more jobs involve a CRB check.”
Sister Lynda, whose charity helped 270 women last year, pointed out that prostitution per se was not illegal. “What is illegal is loitering and soliciting on a street corner – not selling sex from a hotel. There’s one law for the rich and one for the poor,” she said.
But she said she would not want prostitution to be legalised. In some European countries, she said, “there is evidence that women have been sent to work in prostitution by the job centre”.
Sister Lynda also criticised the double standard that made it more acceptable for men to use prostitutes than for women to sell their bodies. Most of these men, she said, were drawn “out of the ranks of middle England”. At King’s Cross “the majority of people wandering round the streets [looking for prostitutes] are people in business suits with briefcases. They are people with money,” she said.
The Sister said British prostitutes faced an altogether different stigma compared to trafficked women even though the forces that drove them into the work were often identical.
“It’s poverty, women not having control over their life, lack of education and opportunity,” added Sister Lynda. “No one is making an active free choice to do it.” Sister Lynda said prostitution was likely to increase sharply in London because of the 2012 Olympic Games. After the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, she said, there was a huge rise in sexually transmitted diseases as well as rape and sexual assault.
Sister Ann Teresa, whose charity, the Medaille Trust, was forced to close one of its two refuges last month because of a lack of funding, said she had always believed that prostitution should be decriminalised.
She said: “[The law] should punish those who try to pay for sex. I don’t believe we should punish the victims, which is the situation at the moment.”
But she condemned the idea that prostitution should be legalised. “In countries like Australia and the Netherlands, which have gone down that route, trafficking has flourished,” she said. “It’s like legalising abuse.”
Dr Christine Newman, president of the National Board of Catholic Women, said: “Women forced into prostitution through any form of coercion should not be criminalised.”
Bishop Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth caused controversy two years ago when he appeared to back the legalisation of brothels. He told Portsmouth News that he supported a proposal by the Hampshire Women’s Institute for brothels to be licensed.
The bishop said: “If you are going to take a pragmatic view and say prostitution happens, I think there is a need to make sure it’s as well regulated as possible for the health of people involved and for the safety of the ladies themselves.”
He added: “That’s not to say I approve of prostitution in any way. I would be very much happier if there was no prostitution in Portsmouth.”
The latest UN figures show that prostitution is increasing globally.
An estimated seven per cent of men use prostitutes in Britain, compared to 73 per cent in Thailand, 39 per cent in Spain, and 37 per cent in Japan.
According to the Catechism, prostitution “does injury to the dignity of the person who engages in it, reducing the person to an instrument of sexual pleasure”.
It adds: “While it is always gravely sinful to engage in prostitution, the imputability of the offence can be attenuated by destitution, blackmail, or social pressure.”
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