Nearly 20 years after Emma Caldwell’s brutal murder, sex workers still face horrific levels of violence that they are unwilling to report to the police, outreach groups have told the Guardian.
The trial of Iain Packer, who was jailed for 36 years on Wednesday for Caldwell’s murder in 2005 and a catalogue of sexual violence against 22 other vulnerable women, exposed chronic police failings in their dismissive attitude towards women selling sex as well as normalised violence from the men paying them.
But while some have dismissed these attitudes as “historic”, violence against sex workers is a daily reality in 2024, the Guardian has heard, while doubts about how they will be treated by the police persist.
“Most of the women I see have experienced violence,” says Alison Scott, a consultant gynaecologist who runs a sexual health clinic for sex workers and other vulnerable women in Edinburgh city centre, treating up to 400 patients a year.
“I’ve had women come in here black and blue. Men think that because they’re paying for it, then they can behave in ways which are completely inappropriate.”
Scott says the group of women involved in transactional sex is increasingly diverse as family budgets tighten.
“There are still women on the street, involved in addiction, but there are a lot more women working indoors and advertising online, and that’s gone up exponentially in the last three years because of the cost of living crisis.”
All groups the Guardian spoke to agree that violence is pervasive, although their thoughts on tackling that differ depending on whether they see sex work as a legitimate career choice, and favour decriminalising the industry, or consider it violence against women, and focus on criminalising those men who buy sex.
Linda Thompson is coordinator of the Women’s Support Project, and runs a national programme on commercial sexual exploitation, which the Scottish government has stated is violence against women.
“Violence has increased since Emma’s day, and women are still not confident coming forward,” she says. “While attitudes might have shifted in terms of Police Scotland’s strategic thinking that’s not filtered down to frontline officers.”
Police Scotland apologised to the family of Caldwell, as well as to Packer’s other victims, admitting they were “let down” by policing.
Thompson has just published a snapshot survey of women involved in sex work, which found that 90% had experienced violence up to attempted murder, while a quarter had been sexually abused as children and a sixth sexually exploited before the age of 18.
The picture is the same across the UK. “Violence against sex workers is a clear and present harm,” says Raven Bowen, of National Ugly Mugs, the UK-wide charity working to end violence against sex workers.
Of the 585 reports of violence received by the charity in 2023, only 11% felt safe enough with support to make a full report to police and only 45% consented to provide anonymous intelligence.
“We all know that predators target sex workers because they can do so with impunity,” says Bowen. “Sex workers are rarely believed.”
She adds: “On Wednesday, while the police were apologising for their mishandling of Emma’s case, a sex worker was being raided for sharing working premises with others to keep women off the deadly streets at night. Working together from premises is a life-saving strategy but we criminalise this as brothel-keeping. This is part of why we support full decriminalisation.”
Denise Mina, a Glasgow-based crime writer and former academic who has researched violence against sex workers extensively, most recently for her novel The Less Dead, recalls the 2016 murder of Nkechi McGraa, a 37-year-old mother who was killed in Aberdeen while working as an escort.
“The trial was told that she called a friend in England saying ‘I think this guy’s going to kill me’ because she didn’t want to call the police or an outreach service that might judge her.
“Twenty years after Emma’s murder we’re still failing these women, and our guiding principle needs to be their safety.”
