Produced by Luba Fein

Part 1 Featuring Sabrinna Valisce (New Zealand), Grizelda Grootboom (South Africa), Luba Fein (Israel), Simone Watson (Australia), Yulia Dorochova (Ukraine), Yelena Divine (Israel), Myles Paredes (Philippines).

Earlier this month an international group of Sex Trade Survivors met to present short and long-term goals in the fight against prostitution and the sex industry. This page includes the recordings of Part 1. The second part will be released shortly.

These survivors are not philosophising or debating about "choice" or "freedom of occupation". They believe that prostitution is one of the evilest purest forms of human slavery that still exists and as such has no place in an advanced moral society.

As you’re reading these lines, women in the sex industry all across the globe, are being traded, raped and tortured by men from all walks of life in exchange for money. If we consider ourselves moral and cultural beings, if we consider ourselves to be part of our communities and thus vouch for each other, then the ignoble, violent, sadistic, traumatic, and inhuman act of rape-trading sex for money must end.

These survivors are a select few who have devoted their lives to the abolitionist movement and paid a huge price in the ongoing battle against the vile sex industry. They truly and deeply comprehend the unmeasurable harm it inflicts, and the immense mental/psychological, and physical toll it takes from the women's souls involved in this vicious cycle of daily rape, degradation, and humiliation.

In this presentation, each survivor outlines the current state of legislation, data, and statistics in her own respective country and provides her opinion on what should be the short and long-term goals in her fight against prostitution and the sex industry.

Whilst their challenges differ from one country to another, the idea behind their mutual battle is the same. They will not stop until no women on this earth will be for sale. Until the last of the bordels shamefully closes its ugly doors. Until prostitution is abolished from the face of the earth.

Watch the complete video (or scroll down to watch each individual speaker). A transcription of the entire event is also provided below:

Grizelda Grootboom (South Africa):

Myles Paredes (Philippines):

Simone Watson (Australia):

Yulia Dorokhova (Ukraine):

Sabrinna Valisce (Australia/ New Zealand):

Yelena Divine (Israel):

Webinar Transcription:

Simon Watson

Thank you so much, Luba, for that beautiful introduction and to FiLiA and all the other survivors,  participants and attendees. I wouldn't be here without the support of women like you and women working globally and in my own country. So I appreciate everyone attending and watching this. Indeed, I stand by every word of that, and I'm honoured to be in such great company of real feminists.

Australia had prostitution imported with invasion and colonisation approximately 250 years ago. This was not something that, to my knowledge, existed on this continent and to give people a bit of a visual example Australia is approximately the size of the United States, but our population is currently only about 25 million.

So leaping forward to the 1970s because my time is limited, the global pink interests were gaining traction, as well as gentrification in certain areas of Australia. This impacted on women, particularly in street prostitution in areas like St Kilda in Victoria where prostitution is now legalised and they are fully pushing to fully decriminalise the John's or the paying sexual abusers, as I would call them, and the pimps and the profiteers.

So, for example, people didn't want these women in their neighbourhoods around their children, they didn't want the attendant condoms and needles and so on that go along with the prostitution system. Of course, what people really didn't want was the men, the obnoxious, entitled, violent sexually aggressive men in their neighbourhoods. And their solution to keep this out of their gentrifying neighbourhoods, which were devaluing their property prices was to try and get rid of the women.

I truly believe though that some of the women who were inadvertently implicated in creating and entrenching women in the prostitution system did so out of very good intentions because there were feminist women who cared about the women on the street and wanted to find some way of destigmatising them and getting them right and basic support.

So in the context of the late 70s, and early 80s, feminists were using whatever legal framework or policy framework that they could. So this workers’ rights seem to be the closest fit so they could put an under occupational health and safety. I don't think that they had any idea that what they were doing was going to further entrench the prostitution system, or how gleefully the global sex trade pimps and profiteers were rubbing their hands with glee at this situation.

So now let's talk about those lovely men who are helping us so much by giving us money to fuck us into our liberation. Here's some quotes from some Johns, or sexual offenders as I will call them. ‘When you pay for sex, you get a really different feeling from what you would get in a consensual relationship. ‘You can just relax instead of trying to share the experience with someone else.’

So this tells us that clearly, he knows that this sex is unwanted. But further he doesn't think that the woman that he's doing this to is someone else or a human being.

Another man goes on to say that he can pull a ‘real woman’ but sometimes that's difficult, so he uses one of the others for sex. So the real women are the women who are not in prostitution and the others are women who are in prostitution. So again, we are dehumanised. The only difference… By the way, I’m using the cleanest quotes I can find. These are not vulgar. They're reprehensible, but there's the least vulgar. Johns say things like they use us as their public lavatories and so on. The only difference between these guys and any other John is that these guys have disabilities. These are the lonely men to whom women in prostitution should be catering like Florence Nightingale's.  These poor, lonely men who have a lot in common with every other entitled misogynist jerk who pays to buy sexual access to our bodies.

Someone tell me again why it’s my responsibility or the responsibility of anyone, to provide women for sexual use and abuse by men like this. So, obfuscating language, this is a wonderful trick to neutralise the reality of prostitution and move into what Andrea Dworkin correctly called ‘the world of ideas,’ the intellectualising of prostitution, removing us distinctly from the reality.

I've spoken previously about how dissociation is a particular survival technique in prostitution to distance ourselves from what is actually happening to us in order not to repel these men away. So dissociative language can be helpful as well, which is why you will get women insisting on calling themselves sex workers. If they do, I recommend that when you're talking one-on-one you respect that but I won't be referring to it as sex work just as I won't be referring to these men who take advantage of this situation as clients.

The language, like sex work or migrant sex worker in place of trafficked woman, serves to invisibilise these paying sexual offenders and the wealthy local and global pimps and profiteers. To go back to Andrew Dawkins quote and to paraphrase it, if we move into this sanitised language, and we dissociate from the reality, we forget that prostitution is a man penetrating a woman, either orally, vaginally, anally, one after the other, after the other, after the other.

To give you an example of how someone counted this beautifully, I think, a woman who is an academic and scholar in Australia and I won't name her. She's often on these panels, which I'm sure are happening globally around the world where people operate in the world of ideas in the academy, on the decriminalisation of prostitution or sex work, as they call it. They’re always talking about decriminalising the sexual offenders, the buyers and the pimps, because in the majority of states and territories - but not unequivocally - women are already decriminalised to some extent. She would be sitting there, a very understated quiet woman who doesn't lean towards hyperbole because she doesn't need to, because she quietly and clearly can argue the facts and not the person. Sitting on panels where they will talk about men who visit prostitutes, men who see sex workers. And this lovely, elegant, understated woman's response on this particular panel was ‘They don't visit them, they fuck them.’

This caused a reverberation of shock because it's very visceral when you hear language like that. You’re brought down from the heady world of ideas into the fucking reality. Apparently, it is our right to be treated like this. So I think that we need to, as much as possible, describe the behaviours of these men, never obfuscated.

I would like to talk more and more and more about the men - and I will always get back to them, but I am not going to leave the pro sex trade lobby groups that carry the red umbrellas, who are called ‘The Scarlet Alliance’ here out of this equation because even though a couple of them I still count as kind of friends, I’m sick of them because they keep putting on the facade of working towards our supposed rights by proxy of the rights of this cohort of men, which studies prove over and over and over again, if sex trade survivors… if you don't believe us and what we tell you about these men, the studies actually prove that men who buy sexual access to women lack empathy, are more misogynist, are most sexually violent and/or have a higher propensity to criminality than the cohort of men who do not. So what they're really doing is buying the rights of these men or using these men to get rights for the global sex trade pimps and profiteers on the proxy of the rights of this particular cohort of men. Friends to women they are not.

They have influenced legislation most recently in the Northern Territory. In 2019 the Northern Territory decriminalised expanding the decriminalisation of these paying sexual abusers and their profiteers and even added a clause whereby the women could be taken to court and fined if they didn't provide adequate satisfaction to the buyer. The Scarlet Alliance approved this policy without even questioning that particular clause.

The Attorney General went on the Hansard report proudly calling this member of the Scarlet  Alliance her friend, and naming her with her first name. The Attorney General misquoted Article 35 of CEDAW, the Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. One might forgive the general public for not knowing what that Article means, but one doesn't really feel inclined to forgive the Attorney General of the Northern Territory, particularly when it has the highest rate of Indigenous women per capita in Australia.

Ending demand, ending the entitlement of these sexual abusers and their legitimisation requires us to end normalisation and decriminalisation of these sexual offenders. It's as simple as that, and that the women in prostitution must be decriminalised immediately. Immediately. Now.  The rights by proxy of this cohort is no right for women at all. Dignity by proxy of this cohort of misogynist, sexually entitled men is not dignity. The media's responsibility in this is to report it accurately.

It's been noted in participating in legitimising this cohort of men and the men who profit from them. Recently, very near to me, a brothel was raided. Border force police deported two Chinese nationals. When I asked the journalist who was reporting on this, ‘What happened to the other women?’ she didn't know because she didn't think to ask. So I have no idea what happened to those women, where they went.

Australia, if it is going to continue to roll out this yahoo policy of male sexual entitlement, especially under the name of women's rights and feminism, needs to be working on a policy that will protect women that are sex trafficked both internally and internationally. And instead of deporting women, give them rights. Ending demand requires that border force actually arrests the men. And the policing onus should be on the paying sexual abusers, and doing their part to uphold the real rights of women.

Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

Sabrinne Valisce

Hi. Thank you so much for that introduction. That was really powerful and amazing. It’s interesting to hear what other people have to say, the way they perceive you, because I perceive myself as pretty ordinary.

I want to give a bit of an idea of the way New Zealand perceives itself first, so that you can understand the mindset of Kiwi people.  New Zealand perceives itself as progressive from both the left and the right political spectrum, and the reason for this comes down to three main events in New Zealand. One of them is being the first country in the world to give women the vote. And unlike many, many other countries, when New Zealand gave women the vote - or more to the point when women fought and won the vote - it was all women from 18 years and over, so you didn't need to be married, you didn't need to own property. It wasn't over the age of 25. It included indigenous women, it included migrant women. So, if you were a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident of New Zealand, you had the right to vote. It didn't come with caveats. And that's one of the reasons that New Zealanders perceive themselves as progressive.

Another was the Springbok Tour, which was actually a rugby event. But what happened was, there was an anti-apartheid raid of the streets. People literally started smashing shop windows, running down the streets in protest. It was one of the largest protests, it was across the entire country, and it was an anti-apartheid thing against South African apartheid situation, because South Africa was playing against New Zealand in the rugby.  This was something that the right and the left came together on, and they interrupted the national sport to do it, which is a big deal. It's the only time throughout all of New Zealand history that the rugby has been interrupted for a political reason. So that's another reason for New Zealanders to perceive themselves as progressive.

And the third one is the breaking of the ANZUS Pact. Now, ANZUS  was Australia, New Zealand and the United States. And New Zealand, the smallest country, stood up against the superpower of the world and said no to nukes. And again, this was an issue that people on both the left and the right came together for. So they broke this pact with the most powerful country in the world in solidarity over having no nukes in the country, and no uranium mining either. And to this day, New Zealand is nuclear free as a result of that.

So this gives you a backdrop as to why when decriminalisation came in, full decriminalisation, which means there is no criminal element to prostitution at all - so the pimps are decriminalised, third party profiteers of all types decriminalised, punters are decriminalised, and the women and the men in prostitution are decriminalised. This is why the country thinks, ‘Oh, this is progressive. Nobody else has done it because we're so progressive.’ They don't think no one else has done it because it's a failure.

And these three events that I've just talked about, has built up this understanding of ourselves as a progressive country that does things before everybody else. Another factor is marriage equality, which though we weren't the first country in the world to have marriage equality, we had civil unions. Civil union was outside of religion, recognised by the state union between any two people actually. It could even be a heterosexual couple, but for the most part it was same sex couples were able to be recognised legally. So we've had that for I think, since 2001.

Anyway, that's the backdrop I wanted to give you to get the mentality.

Now, why would decriminalisation be the understanding of what's progressive? And there is a history to this. We had a Jack the Ripper copycat, and this was prior to decriminalisation. The police did not even bother investigating until there was one murder where they believed it was a woman who was not in prostitution. And they started investigating and trying to find the Jack the Ripper copycat. Then they discovered, ‘Oh, actually, this woman was in prostitution,‘  and they dropped the case and stopped trying to find him and went, ‘Oh, well, it's only those women.’  That was in the media. It was very big news, and the police were scrutinised a little bit for it, but for the most part the public at the time went ‘Yeah, whatever,’ and it was dropped.

So that was the only real newsworthy stuff prior to decriminalisation outside of a prostitute was murdered, a prostitute was raped. That might be the only things you've ever seen in the media. So when full decriminalisation came along, and suddenly it was a sex worker was murdered, and there is an investigation, and we are trying to get the murderer, and then they did, and that murderer went to jail - that was considered the most progressive moment in the history of the sex trade in New Zealand. It was the first time that the police had ever bothered giving a shit about a woman being murdered in prostitution.

So this is the backdrop to people saying it's working, it's the right thing. You're hard pressed to find a journalist in New Zealand who will even bother thinking about interviewing somebody.  I have been interviewed twice now in New Zealand media. Both times I have had my words twisted and cut at places in order to try and back up full decriminalisation as the right method to go. The first time I said that I would not be giving horror stories, but I just wanted to talk about the everyday reality. The only quote they took was, ‘I'm not prepared to talk horror stories.’ And they made it sound like I hadn't given the interview. I had done a two hour interview with them. And the other time that I was interviewed, they cut the interview intersections, and they got a pimp to respond. And then they made it sound like I hadn't been anywhere near prostitution during decriminalisation when I actually had been. 

So this is the kind of thing you're up against, to the point that I actually refuse to do interviews in New Zealand now, because I know that the result is not even going to be to actually get the boys out, the Nordic model. The suppression within New Zealand is so much so that I don't think even Kiwis know how much the media is suppressed.

Now, to have a look at this idea of progressivism, I just want to say all the things that aren't progressive about New Zealand. Abortion was only just removed from the Criminal Code in 2020. That's last year. It had been illegal right up to that point. So, up until last year, a man could pay for sex with a woman, he could pay to rape a woman, but a woman could not get an abortion. So that tells you how we're not really a progressive country. We have the highest domestic violence rates in the developed world, We have got Jacinda Arden who is our Prime Minister, and she has put through legislation to try and make it easier for women in domestic violence to leave. However, it's only going to work for a woman who is employed whose employer is prepared to pay her four weeks leave while she's not actually working so that she can leave that situation.

We also have out of the OECD countries, we have the highest rate of rape, the highest rate of sexual assault, the highest rate of street violence, and the highest rate of domestic violence. It’s one in three women and girls, and one in seven boys and men who are raped in New Zealand. One in three women and girls, and one in nine men and boys who suffer from domestic violence. This is not the case pre 2003. We didn't have those rates of violence. We were on par with the US where it is one in six women and girls, one in 13 men and boys. It has skyrocketed since 2003. Now we can't say that it is as a result of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003, but we can say there's a correlation between the increased rates of violence in the country and that law being passed. So there may be other factors. If there are I don't know what those other factors are.

We have also had pushback on local councils. Christchurch City Council and Manicar City Council have both tried to overturn the prostitution Reform Act 2003 through council legislation, and in both cases they were told they weren't allowed to do it because Zealand only has one system of parliament. We don't have state and federal. We have what's called MMP. So this was passed at what would be the equivalent of a federal level. The reason that both Christchurch and Manicar tried to overturn it was because the street prostitution had made certain areas extremely unsafe for residents, and this was mostly women and children. It also meant that there were being bottles being thrown out of car windows from men. There were condoms being left on the streets and people were pissing and shitting in the neighbour’s gardens and things like that. There were also needles left on the streets. So we're talking from drug use here.

This is exactly what you expect to happen when you have prostitution decriminalised because there's no… I guess it's just left. There's no law that is going to protect anybody, and there's no law that was going to criminalise anyone. You just have a grey zone of whatever happens, happens. So residents are powerless to clean up their streets. Women in prostitution are powerless to get any services to help them get out because you can't have services to help somebody leave something that isn't considered wrong. That's like saying, why aren't there exit services for people in accounting? Because it's considered normal. Well, prostitution is now considered so normal that people consider it a job, not any kind of violation of a woman's body. The law when it comes to trafficking, there is no trafficking law. It's not even recognised as a possibility in New Zealand. Domestic trafficking, sex trafficking are not recognised. Labour trafficking has only been recognised within the last five years, and that is usually from Tonga and Samoa for men. It isn't so much women.

Domestic trafficking and sex trafficking, those are the areas that are mostly women, and they have not been recognised. There is one line in the whole Prostitution Reform Act 2003 that refers to trafficking but doesn't actually use that word, and that’s Section 19 where it makes it illegal for any person who is not a citizen or permanent resident of New Zealand to be in the sex trade. What that means is it's considered a visa violation, so the person who is caught in it is the criminal. So in other words, trafficking victims are criminalised, prosecuted and deported. This is after they have been put into holding cells. So they're held in custody until deportation.

Now considering the majority of our trafficking victims are from Thailand and Korea, this means that when they are deported home they are trapped in prostitution for the rest of their lives, their family will disown them, their friends will not talk to them. This is the culture. It's considered a moral issue to them. They believe that the women are immoral. So that is like a death sentence. These women will die in prostitution. That is the fate of any woman who was deported from any country for prostitution. So we're not doing anybody any favours, and we're really not taking trafficking seriously.

Now the NZCPC – this is the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective - who pushed for full decriminalisation, is trying to get this one sentence removed from the Prostitution Reform Act. If it’s removed, it actually makes it even worse. It means that there will be no nothing to stop women from being trafficked. In fact, it will decriminalise sex trafficking in New Zealand. It will effectively do that. There’ll be nothing there to stop women from being trafficked, nor will there be any reason to pull them out of prostitution, and it can go on indefinitely. So while the situation is dire right now, it can actually get worse, and there is a lobby trying to make it worse.

So that's the main thing that we're trying to do at the moment is to look at trying to get anti-trafficking laws specifically introduced in New Zealand, so that if that line does get removed, there is something else to catch the traffickers. There's been one case of a person being caught as a trafficker, and they weren't actually called a trafficker at all. They were in violation of visa laws, and they went to jail for only about four years. So it wasn't even a real punishment, not does it have anything to do with a sex crime. It's a visa crime. So they have more rights than somebody who has been done for statutory rape who may have only been 17 years old and in a relationship with a 15-year-old. That person will have a sex crime on their record whereas a human trafficker in New Zealand won't. That gives you an idea of how disrespectful these New Zealand Boers are to migrant women who have been trafficked in.

 To wind it all up, I think in New Zealand the main thing that needs to happen is services to help women have other options. And it really doesn't matter what the name is at this point because once those other options come in and women start using those services, I think the conversation will be able to be begun as to why women are exiting the prostitution circles and why women are exiting the sex trade. Right now we can't even have that conversation. People are not open to hearing it. There needs to be, I guess, a bit more of an en-mass push for the services which will then give women a chance to meet each other, and that will then bring it a bit of a rise to being able to speak out and be heard. So we are 50 paces behind the eight ball on this one. It's not even at a point where we can push for the Nordic model. 

So yeah, that's what I've got to say about that. I think I'll leave it there.

Yulia Dorokhova

My name is Yulia Dorokhova, and I am the director of the Ukrainian organization LegalLife, the oldest sex workers' organization in Ukraine, which has existed for over ten years. On March 3, 2017, we organized the first march of sex workers in the history of Ukraine. The rally was in the governmental headquarters. You can read about our organization on our website.

I use "sex workers" and "prostitutes" as synonyms.

We wanted to draw public attention to our problems. This had a great resonance. The global media covered us. We have declared that we exist, there are more than 100,000 of us, yet many women who provide sex services do not recognize themselves as prostitutes. In addition, some women do this not regularly, but from time to time, only when in urgent need.

Prostitution is an administrative offence in Ukraine. The Criminal Code of Ukraine has Article 181 (1), which provides a fine for engaging in prostitution. The amount is small, about 50 cents, because we are an impoverished country. The fine has negative consequences for another reason. It is a tool that police can use to blackmail a woman. Let's imagine that a woman from a small village is detained. The police officer can tell her, "Work for me. Otherwise, your local council will be informed what you were detained for. Your family will be informed too". Such a woman becomes a sex slave.

I have many stories like this. The small fine is extremely dangerous. Police deliver many reports to women who are not even present at the moment the report is issued. Most women are not appealing to a court due to the high legal costs. They don't report rape cases, either. They know that police will humiliate them and probably even rape them again. Brothel keeping is illegal here, pumping is unlawful, but police and policymakers, including chief politicians, often protect the brothel owners or even run the brothels. This is a thriving illegal market.

We have here a lobby that promotes decriminalization that is actually legalization. At the same time, there's a battle against the illegal brothels owners, but they obviously don't want to lose the business.

Ukrainian women have always been popular among traffickers. You can see the history. Hurrem Sultan, also known as Roxelana, the wife of the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, was Ukrainian. Turning the beauty of Ukrainian women into goods has become even more ubiquitous nowadays.

Ukraine is an emerging country with high political instability. There's a war that lasts seven years. The women suffer the most. Many women are forced into prostitution because they have to feed themselves and their children. They should pay for meds, for protection. Prostitution is ubiquitous in war zones because of the perception that soldiers need this sort of recreation while women need protection.

We have women who go to the Gray Zone [Zone of Russian - Ukrainian conflict in Eastern Ukraine] to "work". Many women disappear there. Nobody knows where they are going. Soldiers can murder them, and nobody will ever know. The Soldiers understand that they are unlikely to be punished; these women are officially non-existent. I want to talk for FILIA in a separate podcast about the prostitution situation in a warzone in Ukraine.

Like in every country with prostitution, we have numerous categories of prostitution: street prostitution, highway prostitution, indoor, massage parlours and high-end brothels. All of them are illegal. Despite its illegal status, the sex trade is thriving in the country. Women in highway prostitution earn a little, but indoor prostitution is paid better.

I want to share a horrible story that has just happened yet wasn't published. Recently a woman who is working in a brothel that belongs to our mayor (the chain "Rio": bars, restaurants, brothels, saunas ") was assaulted by an MP. He invited a woman to a sauna while being high on cocaine. Suddenly he inserted his fist into her vagina and begun tearing out her womb. The sauna manager saved her. She is physically wounded and mentally traumatized now. When she complained to "Rio", she was told she would "disappear" if she speaks. No protection, no justice, nothing.  She needs a gynaecologist, a psychologist. Despite having almost no resources, we cannot abandon her. This sort of event is quite ubiquitous.

Another issue to be mentioned is that women pay pimps from 40% to 70% of their earnings for protection, advertising, handling logistics.

There's another NGO with an almost similar name, "Legalife Ukraine". They pretend to care for women in prostitution and their rights. The authorities officially support this organization. It is financed by international budgets, including the ones dedicated to eliminating HIV and tuberculosis. That NGO supports Decriminalization. Its head is also a member of NSWP (Network Of Sex Work Projects, a pro-sex trade global network) and SWAN (Sex Workers' Rights Advocacy Network, a European network).

In 2017 they supported legalization and not Decriminalization. The change of the legal system in Ukraine was discussed in the Ombudsman office. I am a jurist, and I specialize in women's rights, especially women who were subjected to violence or other critical life conditions. During that discussion, I have asked: Are you all lawyers? What does "decriminalization" mean in your understanding? Decriminalization is the abolition of punishment, criminal and administrative.

During that discussion, were mentioned topics like labour relations, obligatory medical inspection, taxation. These are aspects of legalization. If the state controls the relationship between the employee and the employer, this is already legalization. I announced this in the state structure, in the Ombudsman office. Other participants of that meeting supported Decriminalization. But this is not Decriminalization. Decriminalization with elements of legalization --- this is unacceptable! I object! I understand the sort of rights violation imposed by this legal framework. I speak a lot about it as a jurist with a law degree. And ordinary people do not understand that this is a game of legal norms, and no one delves into it.

People don't know what the "Swedish model" is, good or bad. If it's well funded, no one wants to delve into and understand. If NSWP says that the Nordic model is terrible, they accept it. Those who support our views are not given a penny of money, no funding. We cannot carry out explanatory work, publish brochures; we cannot help people.

We asked many NGOs for financial support but got nothing. Without funds, We cannot explain the difference between Decriminalization and legalization, explain what the "Swedish model" is, initiate research about the harms of prostitution. We cannot explain the harms of prostitution because this goes against the policy adopted in Ukraine. NSWP and SWAN aggressively promote pro decrim politics, and they have money. We are struggling, but we need support. That said, we started working with Ukrainian feminists like Ella Lamah and Maria Dmitrieva. We are trying to mobilize supporters.

We are facing a terrible confrontation. It is challenging to help people when there are no resources. We have announced a fundraiser for the victims of prostitution to support them during the lockdown. The international health-related NGOs refused us. We were even denied to receive masks and personal protective equipment. Still, we are trying to help as much as we can.

We also help transgender people. There was a case when a transgender woman engaged in sex work as an individual was harassed; her house was searched, $ 20,000, a computer, wigs, etc., were confiscated. She was charged with a crime she did not commit. People were simply interested in her apartment in an expensive area. We have been doing this for the third year. She applied to many authorities, but in the end, we are doing this without the slightest funding. The Trans rights NGOs rejected her. The state refuses to acknowledge its mistake. We have no chance to get the 20,000 $ back. We only hope to clean her from the charges.

We have organizations that work with victims of the slave trade. But they do not have programs aimed at systemic victims, as they say. We know that many prostitutes take drugs, alcohol, and AIDS. But these organizations do not accept these women; they prefer to send them to various centres. When I was at the CCM, I suggested including the rehabilitation program in the state program. Engage in psychological assistance, rehabilitation, job creation. In fact, more than 100,000 people, taxpayers, are overboard. No one is dealing with their problems. In 2017, it was announced that a moratorium was imposed on these issues.

Here is a case when a woman with a disability found herself homeless after being imprisoned. Her roommate forced her to earn sex. He beat her and forced her to bring money and alcohol. She couldn't come home without money. She had nowhere to go. Only we helped her. Eventually, she left him.

Nobody wants to help women who wish to leave prostitution, who wish to acquire a new profession. This is the first time I speak on behalf of these women in need of help.

I know how it does feel to be chased, raped, persecuted. This hopeless situation where no one can help. And you can't share it with anyone because prostitution is terrible. You are not a human being. Every scum feels entitled to wipe his feet all over us. Noone will help – not with healthcare, not with rights issues, nobody. That's why we assist anyone who needs our help.

Myles Paredes

Good day everyone. It is a great honor for me and my group, Empowered Women Survivors Collective (EWSC), member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific (CATW-AP), to be invited here. We are based in the Philippines. I am happy to also hear from sister victims-survivors of prostitution in different parts of the world. Our group is currently active in helping survivor victims of prostitution and various forms of violence against women.

I was victimized in prostitution since I was 14, and I am 41 right now. I was raped by my own father and eventually victimized in bar and brothel prostitution, by politicians, police, soldiers and men from all classes.

In terms of reducing the demand side of prostitution, I worked with CATW-AP where I am also a board member, to pass the Anti-Trafficking law that protect victims regardless of consent, and punishes buyers and owners of establishments. CATWAP also provided trainings on this law in various places in the Philippines especially for local government units to those who received the training. I helped in the training by giving testimonies on the realities of prostitution and the effective measures to empower victims-survivors and properly address the root causes and effects of prostitution.

The trainings have helped a lot to implement the law better. However, the current government of the fascist Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is one of the reasons for the increase in the number of victims of prostitution because they themselves are the main buyers. Also, because of extra-judicial killings, many of us, including me, lost our loved ones. Those who were orphaned became vulnerable to prostitution. I helped sisters 14 and 16 years old. The younger one was quickly sold because of her age, as men demands for younger girls. She contracted HIV in a matter of months and died.

In the Philippines, one of the number 1 abusers of women in prostitution are the men in uniform. Apart from using women, they also do not take the side of women, and they protect the customers. Also, buyers kill women in prostitution. Many of them house, impregnate female victim survivors and infect us with sexually transmitted infections. I myself is HIV positive and I lost one of my three children to complications related to HIV. My two other children also passed on because of sickness and the other due to the supertyphoon in 2013 in our province of Leyte.

The current government is exacerbating poverty so more and more women and youth are being victimized. This COVID19 pandemic was aggravated because the government did nothing to alleviate the hunger experienced by every family.

We filed complaints about police officers raping women in prostitution in exchange for their lives or their partners’ lives, or in exchange for crossing the borders during the pandemic-related lockdown.

So one of the main trainings provided by CATW-AP on the Anti-Trafficking Law and of other forms of violence against women, is also for law makers and various government agencies because many of them buy women in prostitution or tolerate it. Even the police were given trainings. Due to the trainings, the male buyers were reduced.

Much changed in the police when they was formally given the Anti-Trafficking Law. They have partnered with NGOs such as CATWAP to promote that buying women in prostitution is a crime. They placed banners on the street of Quezon City and in establishments about the law and penalties. Pamphlets were distributed to communities which were also a big help.

We built Bantay-Bugaw or pimp-watch mechanisms in trafficking hotspots around the country and prevented prostitution from the source areas. We formed watch groups against violence against women among women displaced by supertyphoons, so we are able to reduce cases of all forms of violence against women in evacuation camps, including domestic violence, rape, prostitution and trafficking.

CATWAP’s project on young men entitled Young Mens’ Camps on Sexuality and Prostitution is also one of the very effective methods to reduce the buyers of women and children in prostitution. In this camp, we survivors of prostitution testify about our experiences within prostitution and our contexts before we became victims. This camp was very effective because the young men, after our testimonies, cried and many apologized, because some of them had used victim-survivors and they felt guilt in themselves, and many others apologized for their fellow men who are buying women in prostitution.

Young people talk to the victims and commit themselves that they will not buy a woman or any person for that matter, in prostitution, because it the women are not different from their own mothers, sisters or partners. Thousand of the young men who participated in the trainings are already advocates. The organization that has been helping us from then to the present has greatly contributed to raise awareness among young men that they should not enjoy buying a woman or child in prostitution because it is a form of violence against women. In the long years that CATW-AP has been doing this, many young men have become aware of the issue of sexual, emotional and physical abuses that we suffer in domestic violence, rape, prostitution and pornography. This training is all over the Philippines and has been replicated abroad in Thailand, Indonesia, India and other Asian countries because CATW-AP is a regional organization.

CATW-AP also helps a lot in providing trainings to women survivors-victims because it makes them feel that they can get support to get out of prostitution and become advocates.

Women victims and survivors of prostitution are now helping to reduce the demand for prostitution. The trainings provided by CATW-AP are a great help to regain self-confidence and return to their dreams. Survivors are now cooperating with NGOs in promoting that buying women and children in prostitution has corresponding penalties. And that it also reduces their dignity as human beings.

Our strong campaign with CATW-AP as survivors bring a strong message to the public that prostitution is not sex work and should not be glamorized. We speak constantly on social media to destroy the myths about prostitution. EWSC-CATW-AP has 586 members in our province of Bulacan and my first national group called Bagong Kamalayan or New Consciousness has 150 members around the country.

Some of us come out as HIV positive while also victim-survivors of prostitution and extra-judicial killings and these are powerful messages  to the public. We are enjoined by CATW-AP in multi-sectoral organizations campaigning for human rights defense, against neo-liberal globalization, against militarism, for environmental activism and other related issues because all of this aggravate prostitution.

By fighting against the root causes of prostitution, including patriarchy and economic, political, social and cultural inequalities, we emphasize that prostitution is not work but a result of these inequalities. Unless and until we resolve these root causes, we cannot address the prostitution.

Calling it sex work will only free the architects of systematic inequalities. We need real jobs, not prostitution. We need the social movements to address the root causes, including patriarchy. That is why our coalitions, World March of Women, Kalipunan ng mga Kilusang Masa (or social movements coalition of workers, farmers, environmental activists, the youth, human rights defenders) all are in solidarity with EWSC and CATW-AP. We work hard to build unities so that we integrate our issue of prostitution with other structural issues.

We build community pantries to redistribute food, even as we don’t have enough. We build cooperatives among prostitution survivors so that we promote real jobs, but not profits. In our soapmaking and other cooperative initiatives, we promote values of respect for women’s human rights, non-commodification of life, climate justice, and fair trade.

Lena Divine

Two months after the sex purchase ban was applied in September 2020, Tel Aviv was the last city in Israel that had operating strip clubs. And then, the city decided to cancel their licenses. The meaning of this step was to eliminate the stripping business in Israel. Prior to this decision, Israel didn't have any law that bans strip clubs. Feminists' organizations initiated any protest or activity against the stripping industry.

Those feminists' organizations proved time after time again that in those strip clubs, it wasn't just stripping as the owners claimed, but also prostitution. In 2015, the mayor of the city Haifa hired a private investigator and proved to the police that strip clubs offer prostitution services.

In 2017, the Judge Michal Admon Gonen ruled that lap dance is not a dance but a form of prostitution, and her heartfelt explanation for the ruling is worth a discussion of its own.

In 2019 the State attorney published an official order that stated that lap dance was prostitution. That said, watching the strippers dance without any contact was not framed as consuming prostitution.

Following Tel Aviv city's decision to cancel the strip clubs license, the last strip club in Israel closed. But it seems that in 2021 the city changed its decision, and there is one club, the "Shendo", that has re-opened after COVID.

According to the state attorney order, they cannot perform lap dances or have any physical contact between the "clients" and the strippers. Do I believe that it's not happening? Well, I really don't. So, what is actually happening in the strip clubs in Israel? In my time in those clubs, you had two ways to make money, the lap dances and the private rooms.

The lap dance was approx. $ 7 for two minutes, and the private rooms were usually $115 for 15 min, while $30 of it goes to the club.  Most women would do oral sex or "hand jobs" in the private rooms. People knew that more things were happening behind those doors, but nobody talked about it.

We also had to pay for the "right" to work in the club and for our drinks. Most clubs charged $ 7 per shift, but some clubs like the "Shendo" set $ 30 per shift. With the additional charge for the drinks, it's easy to find yourself owing money to the club for "working."

After a personal crisis, I found myself in this world; my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer while being in a violent relationship. Despite everything that happened, I held my head above the water, I had a good job, and a lovely apartment never had any dept. But when my mother died, a part of me died too. Unfortunately, even bare existence costs money, so I found myself in a strip club in my last powers.

I just did what my dad taught me when I was little, and he would show me porn.

I thought I'll save some money and leave this world. If I only knew that the price would be physical and mental and irreversible, I believe that I wouldn't do it. But I could never imagine in what mental and physical state I would find myself in when I actually left this world after 4.5 years.

It is almost five years since I left. I went through rehab that was harder than the 4.5 years I spend stripping. Today, thank god, I'm in a different place in life. But the memories, the memories will haunt me forever.

A human being is born into this world,

a clean and blank page.

And then those hands.

Coming and touching

endlessly.

Endless hands.

Endless time.

And there is no choice,

because there is no alternative.

And meanwhile,

Dirty fingers that leave ugly stains

even in private places

where no one is allowed

to touch.

Cruel hands wrinkling my body as if I was

a piece of paper.

And like on that piece of paper,

the marks remain forever.

A stranger would never understand.

The stranger sees only what I wish to show.

The stranger knows Bianca.

Bianca, she's a giggling,

a flirtatious girl who likes alcohol,

and lots of it.

Bianca performs a sensual lap dance

like you see in the movies.

Bianca is incredibly tough.

Bianca loves it.

It's easy for her.

But I am

Not

Bianca.

I'm Lena.

And I'm coming home after this evening,

dozens if not hundreds of such strangers,

and I'm broken.

I'm desecrated.

I do not want to go back there anymore.

Ever!

But I think of the roof I have over my head and my stomach,

rumbling like an alarm clock three times a day,

and I beg Bianca to keep playing the game

to continue to be Lena's beautiful face,

because Lena doesn't have a beautiful face

anymore.

"She has no face" at all.

But a stranger will not understand this.

And maybe worth a try?

As we speak, as I said before, the only club working is the "Shendo". Weirdly, only that specific club is open - the smallest club. And why do the big clubs just let it own the whole market?  In my opinion, the big clubs are checking how the state and other organizations are reacting to the "Shendo" activity to decide what will be their next steps. I think it is pretty evident that it's just a matter of time until one of the big clubs will re-open. 

At the same time, a weird organization named a "Strippers Union", instead of trying to give the strippers better working rights and benefits, appealed to the supreme court against the ruling that lap dance is a form of prostitution. They demand to bring it back to the strip clubs.

I really hope that this claim will backfire on them, and through this case, we could take the sex purchase ban even further and criminalize the whole concept of strip clubs.

Every time I see the sparkling lights of those clubs, all I can think about are those little girls that don't know anything about the real world except for their father, or the next-door neighbour, or the creepy uncle. Those men in their lives were so shameful, and with that shame, they step into that honey trap of those damned sparkling lights and find themselves in this evil industry. Even if you can get out of it, the scars on your body and soul will stay forever.

This webinar and other activities on this subject give me some hope and cautious optimism that, just like slavery, someday prostitution will be too immoral for our society. The women and children being purchased in this industry are our children, and if we want a civilized society, we can never let it have any moral legitimacy.

It was a privilege to speak here. Thank you so much.

Grizelda Grootboom

Thank you so much, it’s such a big blessing, I’m in tears, because finally survivors have our own platform and we're not going to be told how to speak or express. Being in South Africa or being African you're extremely lonely as a survivor because the patriarchy culture, African cultures, are a price that as a survivor of trafficking that I think I am probably going through survival of survival right now being pushed back of what voice I should bring, and who do I think I am to say that it shouldn't be legalised?  I get bashed by political parties, by lobby house organisations. and I think what Youlla was just saying right now is that’s exactly what we’ve got to do.

 Also, just the most insane experience after the United Nations speech, I think that was the most depressing speech I've ever had to do because the whole room just smelled for me like semen. Being locked up in a house for two weeks, duct tape around my eyes, injected with crystal meth behind my knees, my lower body being low and just men taking care, and not feeling any need of what would this do to me years down the line. And in the 20 years down the line of being sexually exploited, you still have to look behind your back because there were so many porn movies done in torture and in Africa, in South Africa. gender based violence, sex trafficking, human trafficking is literally in translation of this is the only economic space we can get to for women and girls.

Today I still work around the country. We’re still going to Brussels, we’re still going to – like Youlla was saying, so called public houses that the government gives pimps and pretend to say he's going to take care of the survivors. Six months down the line, you get a victim that's nine years old, smelling like semen, having condoms in her and not wanting to get out of under the table and prefer just to do suicide one day.  And that's the rescue plan that we have in South Africa today. That's the rescue plan, and I'm so happy that the report came out of human trafficking in South Africa is downgraded because they are literally just undermining our voices. And I don't know if I can say ‘our’ because I think I've been probably prostituted lip service on political platforms to discuss human trafficking. But in those spaces, I was insulted to the highest. The highest was I'm just angry because when I was working for a brothel, 28 years old, in Port Elizabeth, surprisingly I got pregnant with my baby girl and I thought that's when the madam will kick me out. And she didn’t.  I got pregnant until six months, and I was still working, because the customers were so happy of the pressure of Summer on my vagina. But because of six months, and I was a black woman in a white brothel, they made sure they hired a doctor to come to the brothel and remove some.

Three hours later, I was asked to take [Inaudible] and that's when I thought this is it. They can continue to do that. And today, I mean, health wise because of that unwanted abortion because of that torture, the embarrassment is still sit in places and talk about it and feel your body going into a physical health trauma and wet yourself. And knowing that that is frustrating you and you’re sitting in that house conference meeting where people are discussing what they should legalise for women and girls, and you're sitting there and you're thinking, the whole room of men with the clients that was in the brothel that I worked at.

So it is such a blessing just sitting with survivors and being able to just to pull out the pain and the strain in this fight in South Africa. I know that today it is, you know, a lot of support by a lot of global organisations. That's how this is important this day because South African organisations is just come and share your ideas, so we can write it down, but there's no solution every year. I still stay in Khayelitsha, which is the same informal place. I stay still in an environment where in Cape Town when they have the most incredible, beautiful conferences, Uber drivers come to my community and put signs up and say they're looking for girls. And the police is aware of my existence. The police is aware of my environment, but still those ghosts disappear. And today just we sit with girls that has abortion in these houses and just want to escape pain and continue because there's no rescue plan. There's sex trafficking in South Africa. They do not want to put the two together. They don't want to put prostitution and sex trafficking together. They have tried in all documents to try and isolate my words into a space of saying it's a need, but it's also a manageable need. And I am a full blown abolitionist. I have been in partnership with the soul organisation, but there's a soul in me with faces of women and girls that died in the rooms that we were kept. And they would OD over drugs because their bodies couldn't make it and then you go and check on the girl and she’s out and nobody cares.

So I will never agree on legalisation of prostitution. I will never agree on decriminalisation. I will just agree in saying when the government tells me we are shutting down brothels, we are taking whatever pimps we get, and we are going to start prosecuting and opening cases. And that's when we can start discussing why should we manage consent at our prostitution to legalise prostitution in decriminalisation, in its legalising. But for now, around the world, we have countries where girls are just being brought into South Africa because the language to the world in South Africa is that no, we are allowing you to have your human rights as an individual. So even if a woman that is having adult sex at the age of 32, she can still bring her daughter from Ghana and Senegal, that 16 year old, and come and sell her to a pimp, and that will be okay. And that's the language and the misunderstanding on legalising and not wanting to link sex trafficking in prostitution in South Africa right now.

In South Africa we have I don't know, thousands and thousands government health doctors with private practice that is pushing that government should legalise prostitution. The only way we can deal with gender based violence, and what we call in South Africa rape culture, is let's legalise the fantasy and the need of men to say let's legalise prostitution and not forgetting that there are going to be cracks between these laws. I totally understand. Let's start with the certain equality law that maybe will open the eyes of government policymakers. But no. No. I grew up on the street because of government. I never asked government to come and remove me. I became a street kid at a very young age because of government. Not because I was a drug kid, not because my parents abused me. No, because of government. And because of that foundation, I ended up in sexual exploitation, and all the higher level of torture against women and girls. So for me to sit and be a woman in a country in South Africa and still feel Oh, no, let's just speak nicely for the sake, so that the government can hear us,’  I refuse to do that language as a survivor. I refuse to even be saying let's do this collectively so that we can just get a footstep in the door with policymakers in Geneva or wherever so we can decide how to tackle sex trafficking and prostitution. I refuse. As long as they tried to separate the two, as long as MSC trying to separate the two and saying prostitution and sex trafficking is not happening because in Africa right now women and girls are being trafficked because the world is saying let's legalise prostitution. And that trafficking through the geographically of them travelling through the oceans, and containers and trucks in our waters along the way, 10% of those women die. And nobody cares.  Nobody comes up with the statistic, ‘Oh, we have found at least about 20 under age Syrian young girls dead in the ocean because they were trafficked by one of the minister’s friends as a pimp to bring girls through to Italy. Nobody talks about that. It's just, ‘Oh no, we know that. It's just numbers. We know nobody's names.’

None of those girls names gets recognised. And I always ask these officials, every time you tap into a porn site, every time you tap into a porn site, do you know if she consented to that?

You have to deal with your nervous system so many times when you sit on platforms to fight for change. All you get every time, you’re seeing the girls that you have experienced this journey with have not made it to live. So, as a survivor around the country, and also a founder of Survivor Exit Foundation in my community, this year I have started just to assist the women and the girls in my community by giving an after school programme, which is netball, where we take time and we just sit and make it a safe space and discuss. And if we feel uncomfortable, we go into the field and talk.

And at the same time Survivor as a foundation is really, really looking forward for a full global collaboration with international survivors to be able to make some noise in Africa and say we do have African survivors of sex trafficking and prostitution and we would love the platform to speak. And that's what we’re struggling with in South Africa right now.

I get undermined and taken as a weakness every time I cry. And it is not that. It’s because I'm trying to deal with the anger and confusion of what the world is thinking about women and girls in sex trafficking and prostitution. It is not a weakness.  It is because up to today we’re still dealing everyday with women and girls of sex trafficking. And sometimes I get so mad like I say, that the United Nations put a face to the documents that you keep on reading from organisations, just try to put a face from a girl From Mexico, put a face from a girl from Ghana. Just put a face in that document and maybe, maybe the humanity in you will understand that women and girls also have the right to speak against sexual exploitation. And they are advising expertise on this is the only way to rescue women and girls in that. 

Thank you so much. And I'm so sorry, it's PMS man. I'm having my monthly periods, and that alone, that alone, health wise after the sexual exploitation is insane, and just being here with you guys going through the PMS and monthly pain, it's fulfilling, it's reviving, and I know I can go another ten years further and continue to fight this struggle that we have to deal with. And hopefully, it will never be a struggle by the time we all step in Beijing ‘23 and say, ‘Hello! We’re done with the struggle. We want the solution. Can we have a solution and thank you very much. God bless, ladies. I love you.

Thank you so much Grizelda,  for being here with us. You're such an inspiration. I haven't mentioned that, but Griselda is also a motivational speaker today, and I can understand how she motivates other women to be a little bit stronger. She's passing some of her energy, some of her enthusiasm, some of her strength. Thank you. Thank you so much for being with us in our struggle, being in this panel. Thank you for everything.

At present in the current legal situation in South Africa, is that brothels are criminalised, right?

It is, but it is also as you’re describing, there is but it’s not implemented. So it hasn't been signed off by the President this year. It's just been voiced on platforms and gatherings. So the health department, they get called in most of the time to discuss, and they feel like when they hear whatever the President would say on the human rights, it's your right to be, it's your right to sell your body, that's when they use and go and just continue. Like in Kwazulu Natal Durban the health department there have gone ahead to put out clinic mobile buses to assist women on the street that can sell. And they only identify obviously as sex works, which is the name that came up with one of the activists. That was the terminology. As much as we keep on saying in South Africa that cannot be the terminology because the pimps made it up. They’re saying it’s work, and it’s a worker set. So they’re taking it from prostitution because they say we are labelling the woman, discriminating the women. And again, that's a lobby paid media narrative communication from pimps and prostitutes so they can keep on normalising more and more.

So in South Africa right now, you could say it's on the table in front of the President and organisation that's close by. They get to hear how he might and he might not. The ANC Women's League position on it is yes, let’s legalise it. So that position in it helps the health department and the organisations that are lobbying for it in the country. So there's no law, but there is a voice and discussion and debate around the law. And that's what we as survivors in Africa and South Africa would like to say, but you have not discussed with survivors this particular law, and you haven't discussed with public. We haven't met any publicly, but why is it still being implemented here and there?

So for us, as survivors and for like half of my country are not even aware that there might be a legalisation of prostitution in South Africa. If it is, it should be decriminalisation and then embrace dignity also come with partial decrim, and that's when they bring the Nordic law to say, ‘Can we deal just with the pimps and the buyers?’ And for me that's a massive problem in South Africa and Africa because if we're going to go and deal with a pimp and a buyer that has a brothel in the central of every province, he is automatically just going to be bailed out, or he's automatically just going to wipe it off. Like there’s no follow through when it comes to catching a pimp that sells sex. The only time we get an opportunity to step in, if they tell us there's a missing person under 16 that might  end up in sexual exploitation in these areas. And that's when we come in and then find ‘Oh, it's a brothel.’

So with that practicality and theory it's not - and I think I agree with Lena, it  feels like for survival we don’t have a law. It hasn't been signed off. It hasn't been told. But there is this narrative and normalisation language it's going for and some ads from certain lobby organisation.  I don't know if that makes sense around it, but everybody is going for the decriminalisation. Myself and with embracing  we're going for partial because we feel like the police when they still beat the woman up,  they still lock the woman up. They still take the money from the woman, and then they rape them and then they throw them back on the streets. So that's the criminality side of decrim or partial decrease from those who are for it. So I don't know if that makes great sense to you. That's what is going on in South Africa.

There has been this thing called xenophobia that we apparently disagreeing on bringing African people to South Africa. And we are like, whatever they call it, the heart of the African…  But governments, mostly African governments, are literally using that to find a way not to even have a passport in Africa, when you travel back and forth in Africa, in South Africa. And then the Home Affairs said to us, ‘When that happens, then we will be able to be at airports and see if full motivational letters are for parents to carry their kids.’ And now that has caused so many men to traffic girls from Africa in our neighbouring countries, into South Africa. And then at the end of a month or so you find them into one of the refugee camps because the girl has run away from the parent.  And now she gets immigrated discriminated from government because there's no so called like, parents and extra…  because she ran away when she figured out ‘Oh, I'm being trafficked.’ And now they end up in these immigrant camps in South Africa, in Cape Town, especially one in Cape Town.

So that's the same thing that we’re also having people trying to push off, let's just give the women and girls a pass. And for us in South Africa, a lot of North Africa, men traffic women and girls and then come back and marry South African women so they can have papers to be able to travel back and forth in South Africa, and traffic girls. So that alone becomes a battle for us when we say I think government just doesn't want to do the work around ending  the trafficking through our borders. One thing  we question is our borders. Why are our borders so weak? Why are our borders not really checking verification documents? And then we have the same problem that all my sisters are having around the world with this issue of documentation and marrying women and girls with fake documentation, or with documentation from government to sort of push this narrative in other countries to sell their bodies.