UK: Uncovering the Secret Sex Trade

UNITED KINGDOM -- A new project based on Tyneside aims to help a hidden group - the vulnerable women who work unwillingly in the sex trade.

They might not advertise themselves, but they are there. To all appearances, they might be average types of women, just ordinary faces in the crowd. They're all dressed up in skimpy clothes - but then in Newcastle, that's normal - and men eye them up as they pass. Yet these are not like other women just heading out to hit the town. They're working girls, and what is more, they're not uncommon.

This is the picture that's presented by Laura Seebohm, development worker for the GAP project. She deals with women in the sex trade in Newcastle and beyond, and says the lack of a red light district has kept this secret far too long. "It's a very hidden problem," she says. "I think that because there's no red light district, in some ways the women are more vulnerable because nobody knows about it. It's behind closed doors, really."

Though those who worked with vulnerable women had an inkling of the problem, it was just last year when a statutory body decided to act. Research by the Government Office North East confirmed a trade in prostitution with women largely as its victims. "A researcher interviewed people from around the area in relation to sex work and what came out very clearly showed a lack of support for women," says Laura.

She interviewed some women I was working with and we felt we couldn't just leave them. We felt we needed to do something, so we set up a weekly drop-in in central Newcastle. Gradually, more and more women were coming to that, largely through word of mouth, and through that we got funding for a pilot scheme to actually set up and develop a project for sex workers."

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