situation of sex workers in Olympic boroughs

This morning I listened to Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. Jenni Murray was talking to Georgina Perry and Julie Bindel about the possibility of increased numbers of foreign women coming to London to work in the sex industry during the Olympics. Georgina Perry is manager of health services for sex workers across three London boroughs .

Georgina said that sex workers in east London are suffering because of a police crackdown in the run up to the Olympics.

"The problems that we are seeing at the moment in relation to the Olympics are already happening in terms of safety for sex workers. Because of the juggernaut of publicity around sex trafficking, around increases in sex workers, we are already seeing an increased number of brothel raids. This is actually happening now. And as a result of this, what we are seeing is women who have been working off-street, safely, now on the street selling sex in a much less safe environment. We are also seeing women who are unable to report rape and sexual assault. This is absolutely untenable. It is about women getting access to public health services and also access to the police (I couldn't quite hear the end of this sentence because Julie Bindel started talking over her)."

There have been a number of gang attacks against sex workers in east London. This recent article states that victims who reported knifepoint robberies said they ended up being threatened with prosecution.

Sex workers are facing violence every day, but also the conditions are there for a serial murderer to be able to kill women. When are we going to learn the lessons of Ipswich? We need not only to enable women to work from flats but work together from flats. Sex workers should have the same protection from the police as anyone else. They should have good access to health services. Nobody has the right to stand in the way of that.