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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— October – November 2013
POLITICS PrOsTiTuTiOn
T
HIS summer, after fifteen months of
deliberation, debate and evidence,
an Oireachtas Committee finally
recommended the criminalisation
of the demand for paid sex. It was a unani-
mous decision. The day it was delivered was
a very emotional one for women like myself,
who have lived the hugely exploitative and
abusive reality of prostitution.
I was one of the women who gave evidence
to the Committee and I had coordinated writ-
ten testimony from a group of women several
months before that. In my discussions with
those women and in reading their written evi-
dence, I learned how much prostitution had
changed in the fifteen years since I escaped
it. All of these women had been out of pros-
titution less than four years. They were able
to tell me how Irish prostitution had changed
with and because of the Celtic Tiger. It was a
vile and unsupportable picture.
As Irish men acquired more money many
acquired something else: the sense that their
wants were needs. This is now the measure
of whether or not
a person lives in
an affluent society.
The age profile of
men using women
in prostitution
dropped signifi-
cantly. Many of
the men present-
ing at brothels
were in their early
twenties and
crossed the entire
social spectrum.
This was very
different from
when I started in
prostitution in
. Almost all
the punters then
were middle aged,
middle class and
married.
With the Celtic
Tiger came a massive influx of stag parties.
Many of the men who travelled under the
guise of celebrating impending marriage
made the purchase of female flesh a central
part of the festivities. In Irish prostitu-
tion went online and the review system was
born. I was lucky was the year I got out
of prostitution. After that women were not
just purchased for sexual use, but reviewed
on their ‘performance’, their attitude, their
willingness and their bodies.
All aspects of commercial sexual exploi-
tation were facilitated by the growth of the
internet. Porn became more accessible and
immediately more prevalent. Women in pros-
titution were, of course, in the front line. Men
started arriving in brothels demanding sex
acts they said they’d learned from porn. These
were sometimes almost physically impossi-
ble to deliver, such as ‘tea-bagging’ – an act
whereby a woman is expected to accept both a
man’s penis and testicles in her mouth. If she
couldn’t accommodate him, she could expect
a bad review.
The review system in prostitution is a
monumental cruelty. Those who defend this
system pretend that it is voluntary because
there is an ‘opt out’ clause for women who
advertise sex online. This is a fallacy. Men
who pay for sex openly and repeatedly state
online that they will never visit a woman who
doesn’t allow herself to be reviewed, because,
in their view, this must mean she ‘has some-
thing to hide’. This puts women in the sex
trade in an impossible position: allow your-
self to be reviewed like a piece of meat or go
broke. This is just one tiny part of the coer-
cion in the modern-day Irish sex trade.
The price of sex in prostitution soared
during the Celtic Tiger years. When I started
out on Benburb Street at fifteen years of age,
the price of sex was ten pounds for hand relief,
fifteen for oral sex and twenty for intercourse.
By women were charging between sixty
and one hundred euros for the same acts. The
price of sex, just like housing, had soared to
unprecedented levels.
In the early nineties, the first visible signs
of the Celtic Tiger were the new apartment
blocks that suddenly sprang up all over the
city. They oozed a luxury the Irish people had
never seen before, at least not in our own land.
Suddenly we had residential buildings that
screamed of extravagance and seemed to
promise the possibility of a future none of us
had ever been able to afford. At the same time
the Sexual Offences Act of was passed
into law, and many street women, myself
included, were run indoors. The new face of
prostitution was a combination of both these
factors – beautiful luxurious apartments and
Suppress the demand
The reality behind the need for criminalisation of demand for prostitution.
By Rachel Moran
Pic
caption
here
45 people,
including
23 children,
were found
to have been
trafcked
into Ireland
last year
and 39 were
sexually
exploited
“
Continued
on page 48
— October – November 2013
POLITICS PrOsTiTuTiOn
women who needed to get in off the street.
‘Escorting’ was born.
There had been no shortage of dingy
whorehouses in Dublin before the advent of
escort prostitution. The moment
they had the chance many of
their operators shut up shop and
rebranded themselves as escort
agencies. The principal differ-
ence between these two ways of
operating was the sums of money
that could be charged. A massage
parlour could expect to charge
between forty and sixty pounds,
an escort agency between eighty
and one hundred and fifty. At
up to three times the price, the
choice was easy.
The price of sex has dropped
a bit since the financial crash,
but Irish men still pay four or
five times what other European
men pay. This has made Ireland a
magnet for traffickers and inter-
national pimping gangs. Ireland
is one of the Western world’s
most lucrative markets. peo-
ple, including children, were
found to have been trafficked into
Ireland last year and were
sexually exploited. In , the
situation has escalated to a point
where we can no longer contain
the monster we’ve created.
‘Prime Time’s’ ‘Profiting From Prostitution’,
aired last year, showed the real face of prosti-
tution in Ireland. women advertised for
sale every day, over % of them foreign, and
were bought by Irish men in every one of our
cities and towns. One young African woman
spoke of how she was trafficked here and
shifted from brothel to brothel, begging the
Irish men who used her to help her, pleading
with them to understand that she was traf-
ficked, that she didn’t want to
be there. In response she was
called a “slut” and a “whore”
and to ordered do what she
was told.
What pains me, and what
should pain all of us, is that
if that girl had been domes-
tically trafficked, if she had
been kidnapped and shifted
from Donegal to Dublin, or
from Sligo to Cork, there
would have been uproar and
a national outcry. There was
no outcry and there was no
uproar because she was a poor
Black girl from an African
nation and Irish people just
couldn’t grasp the horror of
her situation. But we need to
grasp the horror of her situa-
tion. We need to recognise that
these things happen to young
women in Ireland every day,
and we need to put a stop to
it.
One early-twenties
Eastern European woman I
met recently was trafficked to
Ireland five years ago. She was moved between
locations in many cities, north and south of
the border, molested by countless men. Men
who, no doubt, told themselves they were just
engaging in some sort of harmless money-for-
sex exchange. Men who looked the other way,
who ignored her obvious distress and telling
reluctance, all because they prioritised the
importance of their God-almighty orgasm.
“I’m so glad you escaped”, I told her. “This is
just the start”, she responded. I didn’t ask her
what she meant. I didn’t need to. A lifetime of
trauma; that’s the real price of paid sex.
I came into prostitution as a homeless,
socially-disowned, fifteen-year-old child. I
no more wanted to be in a brothel than any
trafficked woman. It is important in discuss-
ing prostitution that we do not lose sight of
one thing. The commercialisation of sexual
abuse takes two basic forms – ‘prostitution’
and ‘sex-trafficking’. Prostitution is the place
where sex-trafficking happens, and it is the
reason why sex-trafficking happens.
The demand for paid sex must be
supressed if we are to have any hope of
suppressing the damage it causes. The rec-
ommendations put forward by the Joint
Oireachtas Committee address one of the
most important issues ever raised in the his-
tory of the state. Those countries that have
legalised prostitution will be held accountable
by history for human rights atrocities. We, as
a nation, must on no account be guilty of that
charge. The Government needs to move now
to implement the legislative change recom-
mended. The urgency for immediate action
can be seen from the presence of the nineteen
children found in Irish commercial sex dur-
ing the months the Oireachtas Committee
were deliberating. The need for speed can
be seen from the fact that nineteen children
were found in commercial sex in Ireland dur-
ing the months the Oireachtas Committee
were deliberating.
Rachel Moran is author of ‘Paid For: My Journey
Through Prostitution’
Irish men
still pay four
or ve times
what other
European
men pay.
This has
made Ireland
a magnet for
trafckers
and
international
pimping
gangs
“
Rachel
Moran
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