60% are enslaved

I found a new false statistic recently. 60% of prostitutes are enslaved, so they say. There is only one researcher who is saying this, Melissa Farley, but Radical Feminists tend to believe what she says. As do the Evangelicals. I saw this statistic in a transcript of what the MSP Ash Regan was saying in the run up to the vote in the Scottish Parliament on her bill to bring the Nordic Model to Scotland.

So this is what is being said in the Scottish Parliament. They don't seem to be doing any fact checking. This seems to be a deficiency in both the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament. People are being told different things by the two different sides and they don't know what to believe.

There are three different researchers who have come to similar conclusions about trafficking. They come out with a figure of around 15%. Trafficking does not mean enslavement. It doesn't mean that she was kidnapped on the streets of Shanghai, bundled into the back of a car, smuggled into the UK in the back of a lorry and kept behind bars.

Trafficked can mean different things depending on how you decide to define it. It usually means someone who has come to the UK wanting to make money through prostitution. She will come here on a tourist or student visa. She may not be able to stop when she chooses to though: the employer may be keeping her passport or other documents, there may be a debt to pay or there may be a fear of deportation. Most trafficked women are not coerced or deceived.

The three researchers whose work we need to examine are:

1. Ruth Breslin of the SERP Insitute in Ireland
2. Project Acumen in England and Wales
3. Professor Ko-lin Chin interviewed Chinese nationals

1. Ruth Breslin of the SERP Institute
In their Statement on the Review on the Operation of Section 7A of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, they state "Based on the evidence The SERP Institute has gathered, dating back to 2015, we have established that approximately 10-15% of women in prostitution in Ireland fit the ‘classic’ definition of trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation recognised in Irish law, while approximately 5-10% describe having entered prostitution by choice, in circumstances where they had other choices available to them."

Ruth Breslin used to work for Ruhama and Eaves, so she can hardly be described as belonging to the 'pimp lobby' that Ash Regan talked about in the Scottish Parliament.

2. Project Acumen
Project Acumen, conducted by the UK's Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO)in 2010, estimated there were 30,000 women in indoor prostitution in England and Wales. 17,000 of these were migrant women. Of the migrant women 2,600 (15%) were assessed as trafficked. Another 9,600 (57%) were assessed as vulnerable. 32% were neither trafficked nor vulnerable.

3. Professor Ko-lin Chin
Professor Ko-lin Chin interviewed 149 migrant sex workers from China. They were Chinese nationals but worked in other Asian countries or in the US. He wrote that 15% of the women were 'not free to move around or quit sex work because her travel documents are kept by her employer or debtor'. He also wrote that only 1% were 'forced, deceived or coerced'.

So it is interesting that all three researchers come to roughly the same conclusion, one that is very different from that of Melissa Farley. I suspect that they are all talking about migrant sex workers and not other sex workers. The evidence seems to be that about 10% of sex workers are drug addicts. At the other end of the spectrum are the escorts. Women who work from flats, either alone or with others, tend to be migrant women these days.

Why is the truth so important? People like Ash Regan are told that their Nordic Model law will harm women, that it makes it more difficult for sex workers to choose their clients carefully to avoid danger. They fear detection by the police and so spend less time screening. If you believe that most sex workers are enslaved, then you don't believe that they choose their clients. So the whole concept of screening is meaningless.

Ash Regan has said that we have to legislate for the majority and not the minority. "The 2 per cent are probably the elite, at the very top of the market, and they are comfortable with the choices that they are making. I am not disputing that those women exist, and that they are in prostitution because they have made that choice. However, as legislators, we have to remember that they are not the majority, and their experience is not the same as that of the majority of people in prostitution." She is wrong, the majority are not trafficked, let alone enslaved.

This is the 'pyramid' that Ash Regan was so keen to tell her fellow MSPs about.

There seems to be only one place on the Internet that you can find it, and it is here. It doesn't say which specific research leads them to this conclusion. It doesn't say if this applies to women in the US or in the world as a whole. It doesn't say if this applies to migrant women or all prostitutes. Melissa Farley is extremely biased and has been criticised by other researchers.

With the three other researchers they explain how they got their results, and who the results apply to. Project Acumen and Professor Chin say their figure of 15% refers to migrant women in the specific countries they did the research.

That's one way you can tell good research. Be very specific about which type of sex worker and in which countries. Explain how you got your results. Project Acumen and Professor Chin interviewed many women. I don't find Melissa Farley credible, I think she is politically motivated, I don't believe she has the best interest of women at heart.