Introduction

Commercial sex websites are today’s red-light district and mega-brothel. They have made buying women for sexual use and abuse easier than ever before. Men no longer have to get into their car and cruise the streets looking for a woman to buy or make their way to the local brothel in a side street in the city centre. Now they can simply browse an online catalogue of women and order one up to their flat or hotel room as if she were a pizza. 

This has normalised prostitution and led to rapid expansion of the industry and many broken lives as girls and young women are brutalised within it – while society at large carries the bill.

Commercial sex websites currently operate freely in the UK. Far from using the law against these sites, the police have entered into partnership with them and have little or no interest in prosecuting the pimps and traffickers who freeload off the women advertised on these sites.

We do not accept the sex industry lobbyists’ claim that “sex work is real work” and nor do we accept their claim that only a moral prude could object to the sex industry. This is about women’s human right to dignity and equality. It is time for society to consider with seriousness whether we want this dehumanising industry to be given free rein. 

Please sign this petition to show that you think that commercial sex websites should be shut down, and pimps and sex traffickers held to account.

Megan’s story

In her early 20s, Megan* was in the midst of a crisis, compounded by the fallout from the sexual abuse she’d suffered as a child. In an attempt to break herself out of her depression and isolation, she joined an online dating site, where she met Paul* who invited her to a party. She agreed, thinking it might cheer her up. But instead of taking her to a party, he took her to an isolated B and B where he handed her over to another man who was expecting to have sex with her for payment. She went through with it because she saw no way of escaping. 

While that was happening and without her knowledge or permission, Paul set up a profile for her on one of the big commercial sex websites using another woman’s photo ID. He then took her on to further prostitution encounters. Each time he pocketed 50% of the fee.

That was the start of one of the darkest episodes of Megan’s life as her daily routine became a cycle of being paid for sex and crying on her bed wishing for her life to end. Happily she eventually managed to escape from Paul and the industry’s clutches and rebuild her life. 

She later learned that he had pimped several other marginalised young women using a similar methodology and had accrued a considerable fortune from it. His success was entirely dependent on access to the big commercial sex websites, like AdultWork and Vivastreet.

* Names have been changed.

The pimp’s wet dream

In the UK, the vast majority of online prostitution adverts are concentrated on just a few big commercial sex sites. This enables advertisers to quickly reach huge numbers of potential customers (punters). A single advertiser can post adverts for multiple women, and while photo ID is required for each person being advertised, checks are lax and there is no way to ensure the ID belongs to the actual woman being sold behind the advert. There are confirmed cases of pimps selling children behind adverts purporting to show adult women.

This makes it easy for someone to set himself up as a pimp and to make a huge profit quickly and easily. He simply needs to find a marginalised girl or young woman and place an advert and watch the money roll in. And there’s nothing to stop him pimping multiple women and selling them multiple times a day and night.

Do the maths.

Pimping is eye-wateringly lucrative and carries almost no risk in the UK where laws against pimping and sex trafficking are seldom enforced.

Expansion of the industry

Because commercial sex websites facilitate third parties bringing new women and girls into the sex industry with very little risk, there has been a huge expansion of the sex trade in the UK, coinciding with the development of these sites over the last 15 years or so.

The scale of pimping and sex trafficking that takes place through these websites vastly outstrips the capacity of any police force to deal with appropriately.

The normalisation effect

In the UK, we might pride ourselves on not having window brothels like they do in Amsterdam nor huge multi-storey mega-brothels like they do in Germany. But we are deluding ourselves if we think we don’t have similar problems. 

The big commercial sex websites are the UK mega-brothels. They present a picture of an endless succession of interchangeable women – many young or very young – who are apparently sexually available and willing – or even desperate – to fulfil a man’s every sexual whim and fetish. This suggests that women are always ready for sex; that women are commodities that you can rent by the hour; and maybe even that women owe men sex. This is the logic that these websites teach boys and young men. 

This is catastrophic for society, because research has long shown that these attitudes are associated with violence against women and girls. So it is no surprise that we are witnessing an escalating epidemic of male violence against women and girls.

And what messages do commercial sex websites send out to girls and young women? That pleasing men is all women and girls are good for? That sex is a commodity that they should use to make money and get ahead? That there is nothing wrong with prostitution and you’d be stupid not to take advantage of it? That the government wouldn’t allow these websites if prostitution were damaging? 

This puts a target on all women’s backs.

But don’t these websites make it safer for the women involved?

If only!

You would think that now so much of life is conducted through the internet, it should be easy to make these websites safe. We’re used to having to upload a scanned image of our passport or driving licence if we want to open a bank account, or book or rent out a room through Airbnb. 

But there’s the rub. On Airbnb both the advertiser and the customer must verify their identity by uploading photo ID. This protects both parties should something go wrong. Both have proof of the other’s identity so in the worst case it’s possible to take legal action or report the person to the police.

As mentioned earlier, the commercial sex websites require those being advertised to present photo ID – although as Megan’s story shows, this is far from failsafe – but do NOT require the same from punters. 

You may be wondering why ever not? The answer of course is that it would be bad for business! The websites know full well that if they introduced such a measure, most of the punters would go elsewhere – hopefully to their bathroom with a tissue – because more than anything they want anonymity. They don’t want to be identifiable (which is why they often use burner phones and email addresses, and pay in cash). Most of all they don’t want their wives, employers and communities to know they pay desperate women to have sex with them.

So while both parties can write reviews of each other, if a punter gets a bad review, unlike on Airbnb, he can just create a new profile and start again.

Meaning the screening options are weak to non-existent. Their ineffectiveness was demonstrated last year when Mark Brown was convicted of the murder of two women he met through AdultWork, where he was a registered user.

However, many of the adverts show women’s contact details to people who are not logged in. Meaning the screening options (such as they are) are by-passed altogether.

So, no, commercial sex websites do NOT make women safe.

Reviews as a mechanism of control and harassment

Because punters don’t need to show photo ID when they register on these sites, the reviewing mechanism has an inbuilt imbalance of power – just like the system of prostitution itself.

Punter reviews determine how much women can charge and how many punters they attract. Punters use this to their own advantage – for example, to coerce women to engage in more painful and risky behaviour or to give discounted rates. Independent punter forums (such as UK Punting) provide further opportunities for men to retaliate against women who do not please them. Sometimes groups of men use these platforms to make coordinated attacks on individual women.

And of course, pimps have their own system of reprisals, often involving violence, when the women they control get bad reviews.

Website operators gain influence by partnering with the police

Commercial sex websites enable and profit off the prostitution of the women being advertised. In other words, they themselves are pimping. 

Shamefully, UK law enforcement authorities consider these websites to be partners, supposedly in the fight against human trafficking and sexual exploitation – which is a bit like partnering with the drug barons in the fight against drug trafficking. This then enables the companies that run commercial sex websites to use their relationship with law enforcement to enhance their status and gain credibility – and to lobby for legislation and policy to their benefit.

They claim that they are working to make the sites safer – but they never seem to consider the one thing that might actually make a difference – requiring punters to upload photo ID.

Wouldn’t closing these sites drive everything underground?

It is frequently claimed that if the commercial sex websites were closed, the level of demand from men would be unchanged and the industry would simply move elsewhere – to the dark web, for example – and this would put the women in more danger.

The dark web is less accessible than the open web – so even if some adverts did move to the dark web, there would not be the same scale effect that there is on the open web. Law enforcement and support services would still be able to find them on the dark web just as the punters can – but as the scale would be smaller, they would have a better chance of dealing with them appropriately.

Prostitution-buying is in many ways opportunistic. When it is blatantly in front of us and we are surrounded by adverts that are condoned and tolerated by the authorities, it normalises prostitution-buying and sends out the message that it is acceptable. This leads to more men succumbing to this behaviour and grooms girls to accept a life of being used for men’s sexual use and abuse.

Evidence from the US shows that when effective laws against these websites are introduced, the size of the industry decreases significantly.

The law hasn’t kept up with technology

In 2001, the Labour government made it an offence to put prostitution adverts in or near phone boxes. At the time, these adverts were the major way that indoor prostitution was advertised. Although cards and stickers are still common in some areas, they are no longer the main way that indoor prostitution is advertised, having been replaced by online adverts, mostly on the big commercial sex websites. 

It is beyond time that the law was updated to reflect this new reality. 

The UK is in breach of international law

Having ratified CEDAW and the Palermo Protocol, the UK has a binding obligation under international law to combat third parties profiting from women’s prostitution and to take measures to discourage the demand that fosters sexual exploitation. 

The commercial sex websites are not only facilitating third parties profiting from women’s prostitution, but they are also directly profiting from women’s prostitution themselves. Furthermore by enabling, facilitating and normalising prostitution buying, they are also encouraging the demand that fosters human trafficking for sexual exploitation. 

This means that by tolerating and legitimising these websites, the UK is in breach of its obligations under both CEDAW (Article 6) and the Palermo Protocol (Article 9).

What we are calling for

The key pimping offences in England and Wales are ‘Causing or inciting prostitution for gain’ and ‘Controlling prostitution for gain’ – Sections 52 and 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. They are not simple to prosecute and are hardly used in practice.

We are therefore calling for the introduction of new offences of (a) enabling or promoting, and (b) knowingly profiting from, the prostitution of another person, and that these are used proactively against those behind commercial sex websites, along with mechanisms for closing down or restricting access to websites that contravene this law, and for seizing their profits.

This needs to be combined with ring-fenced funding for services for women (and others) involved in prostitution that provide viable alternatives and genuine routes out of the industry. Any profits seized from the websites should be used to fund these services.