Scotland must take 'For Sale' sign off women's bodies, prostitution survivor says, amid calls to overhaul laws on selling sex

Diane Martin, 59, spent years being exploited as a high-end prostituted woman and is now fighting to have selling sex decriminalised in Scotland. Selling soliciting in public, kerb crawling and brothel-keeping is illegal in Scotland, but buying sex and running pimping websites is not, meaning the men buying sex are not criminalised in any way.

Ms Martin is now part of the A Model for Scotland campaign, which is calling on the Scottish Government to change the laws on prostitution by decriminalising the women selling sex and instead making it illegal for men to buy sex.

In its 2021 manifesto, the SNP promised to look at this issue and reform prostitution law in Scotland.

Ms Martin went to London as a teenager, but said she was misled about what she was going to do and once she ran out of money was pressured into prostitution.

“I ended up way out of my depth and surrounded by older people who realised they could make a lot of money out of me – not just madams taking a cut, but people pretending to be my friends who recognised my vulnerability and chose instead to cultivate controlling relationships with me,” she said.

“I went from being a happy, trusting girl to finding myself standing in a penthouse being looked over by a madam. It was like watching it happen in slow motion to someone else.”

Ms Martin said it was hard to see the grooming and psychological control she was being subjected to. She said being sexually abused as a child meant she was more vulnerable to coercion, adding: “Ridiculously described as ‘high class’, I was sent out by what was described as the safest agency in London.

“I found myself in the middle of Mayfair in an evening gown, asking a policeman for directions to the address I’d been given, willing him to see my predicament and ask me if I needed help. It was like being out of my body, watching someone else. Unfortunately what was to come was not an out-of-body experience.”

She described men treating her like they were “renting a film”, and said the glamorous lifestyle she was forced to pretend did not make the reality of prostitution any less grim.

“When the people paying for you are famous, in government, civil servants, members of other countries’ governments or have diplomatic immunity, you don’t have the confidence that you would be believed or protected if you reported violence or rape,” she said.

“Unfortunately, the best education and opportunities didn’t preclude them from degrading and violent behaviour … being in a penthouse suite doesn’t soften the blow of rape or having someone leave bite marks all over your face.”

Ms Martin attempted to escape prostitution after an airport security guard hid her and got her on a flight, but she said someone was waiting for her on the other end.

She said she started to “shut down physically and emotionally” and was having daily panic attacks. But after a “brutal” rape, she managed to get back to Scotland, but would still “jump out of her skin” every time her phone rang.

To recover from her harrowing experience, Ms Martin went on to volunteer and eventually work at a centre providing holidays for people with physical disabilities, and then moved to New York City to work with homeless people.

She came across numerous women who were being exploited through prostitution through her job in the USA, starting her on a path to helping women to exit prostitution.

Ms Martin later returned to Scotland and ran a project to help women out of prostitution for 15 years. In 2013 she was given a CBE for services to vulnerable women.

Ms Martin said her own personal experience of sex trafficking meant she fully understood the realities of prostitution.

She said: “What I have learned is that it is the same thing – a bruise or a threat feels the same whether you’re in a five-star hotel or leant against a car park wall, whether wearing Prada or Primark.

“The fear, the violence and the hopelessness feels the same, as does the desire for safety and a life free of violence. It’s not a job like any other, it is exploitation.

“The overwhelming majority of women entrenched in prostitution are vulnerable and trying to cope with multiple disadvantages and nearly all will experience male violence as part of their involvement in selling or exchanging sex.”

As well as shifting the burden of criminality, Ms Martin is also campaigning to reduce men’s demand for prostitution as well. She said punters would “continue to line the pockets of pimps, traffickers and organised crime groups” who were taking in billions of pounds “off the literal backs of women and children”.

“I want to see Scotland take the ‘For Sale’ sign down and refuse to have women’s bodies for sale for the sexual gratification of men and their desire to control women,” she said.

“It is time that women are no longer criminalised for their own exploitation, but supported to build the lives they would want for themselves, and this can happen with the right kind of commitment and investment. I believe we must also criminalise the demand by penalising sex buyers.”

Ms Martin said Scotland could look to other countries which have implemented this approach, such as Sweden, Ireland, Norway, France, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the US state of Maine.

She said the Scottish Government “rightly” recognises prostitution as a form of violence against women and girls, which she stressed was “crucial” to stemming men’s demand for buying sex.

Community safety minister Siobhian Brown said: “Prostitution is a form of violence against women and girls and is completely unacceptable.

“Our recently published strategy to challenge men’s demand for prostitution and actions to support women out of prostitution is informed by the voices of those with direct experience of this form of exploitation and by the approaches of other countries.

“The strategy outlines a new pilot programme to improve access to support those with experience of prostitution. Lessons learned from this pilot will help inform any future legislative considerations, including whether to criminalise the purchase of sex.”