Sexual Assault and Sex Workers: Some Things to Chew On

Chloe Angyal interviewed me for a piece in the Christian Science Monitor called: What would you do if you saw a woman being abused? Would it matter if she were a prostitute? No matter what a woman wears or how she acts, she deserves to be treated humanely.

My quote is one sentence on the second page of the article, but I thought I’d share the longer interview Chloe did with me via email, which better captures my perspective:

1) Briefly, what is your general perception of how sex workers are talked about and treated in American culture?
Sex workers generally aren’t treated as whole human beings worthy of dignity and respect in American culture. When they are discussed, sex workers are talked about as victims or the punchline of a joke, and they are always talked about with the assumption that there are no sex workers present.

2) Is the sexual assault rate among sex workers higher than among the general population?
This is hard to answer precisely, because sexual assault rates are based on what is reported, and sex workers (whether their jobs are legal or not) aren’t likely to report assault. I don’t know of any good statistics about sex worker’s rate of assault, partly because of political ideologies about sex work prevent good, clear research from being done – and some researchers consider the work itself to be assault.

3) Briefly, what are the difficulties that sex workers face when seeking justice for sexual assault? Eg. Are report rates lower? Are police unresponsive to reports? Is it more difficult to get an arrest, trial or conviction?
The biggest barrier to sex workers seeking justice for crimes committed against them are the police themselves. Police are notorious for raping and abusing sex workers who they arrest or who ask for their help. Trans women and men who sleep with men have this especially bad, crimes committed against them go largely unreported. The much celebrated Rape Shield Law, a federal law that says that rape survivors cannot have their sexual histories admitted as evidence, does not apply to prior prostitution convictions in some states. In New York, if a prostitute takes his or her rapist to court, regardless of whether she was working when she was raped, they can discuss her prostitution record from the last three years.