Exclusive:Scotland's chance to be on the 'right side of history': Prostitution survivor says things could be better if selling sex is decriminalised

There are calls to change how prostitution is criminalised in Scotland - currently, selling sex and brothel-keeping are illegal, but paying for sex and running pimping websites are not.

‘A Model for Scotland’ is campaigning to have the selling of sex decriminalised in a similar way to the laws in Sweden and France.

This would mean the man buying the sex rather than the woman selling it is legally in the wrong.

The Scottish Government has previously committed to reforming legislation and working to tackle men’s demand for prostitution as well.

Selling sex was decriminalised in Ireland in 2017 and The Scotsman has been speaking to Mia de Faoite, a prostituted woman who helped with the campaign there.

She is now helping to advise the Scottish campaign, and says there are lessons campaigners in Scotland can learn from what happened in Ireland.

Mia ended up becoming involved in prostitution to fund her heroin addiction and becoming isolated from those she knew previously.

“You go in thinking you can solve one problem quickly, and I really had no idea what I was stepping into”, said Mia. “I was already cut off from my friends and family, anyone who could remember who I once was, so my only contact became those who exploited me.

“You see the world in a very different way because isolation becomes the norm and the message you get from society is you are not welcome back.”

Mia experienced “mountains” of trauma during her time as a prostituted woman, as she was raped on multiple occasions, including being gang raped.

She said: “It is horrendous for any woman to find themselves in that situation - nowhere else would that level of violence be tolerated.

“People know the sex trade is not a safe place, but they don’t know the extent of it.

“Some men specifically come out to be violent because they’re into something they saw in porn or are into inflicting pain.

“A lot of sex buyers watch porn and want to play that out and see this as the place they can do it.

“But for the vast majority it is like when you buy something and pay good money for it, and when you take it home and it doesn’t work you shake it and bang it off the table.

“The same applies to prostitution when they don’t get what they want.

“These men don’t initially intend to be violent, but often that’s how it ends up.

“There is so much humiliation too with things like being urinated on, it is horrendous.”

Mia says a lot of people have an unrealistic view of what prostitution is like because of how they are portrayed in film and the media, and added others will “smile and perform” out of coercion and fear.

Since leaving prostitution she has also had to explain to a lot of people that it is possible to rape a prostituted woman.

She said: “To those on the outside it’s hard to understand the horrors behind it.”

Mia was eventually able to leave prostitution and start to rebuild her life thanks to the help of a social worker.

Despite initially being wary of the social worker, she ended up opening up to her and telling her things she had never spoken about before.

Mia said: “It was not an epiphany

“I thought this woman had lost her mind, because no one has ever asked me anything like that before.

“But she was kind and from there I went to rehab, got a clinical psychologist and started my journey.”

The first year of her recovery was “horrendous” as she had to come off heroin as well as re-adjusting to life after prostitution.

Mia said: “Everything comes back to haunt you with flashbacks and nightmares.

“I wouldn’t shower because I thought I would never remove the filth.

“I don’t know how I survived that first year.

“You have to rebuild everything, all your relationships, who you are, and reconnect with your own body, because I lived in a body that didn’t belong to me from the neck down.

“There are also practical things which you underestimate.

“It is not easy money, but it is quick money - you go from quick money to €200 a week living on social welfare payments and you have to start budgeting.”

Mia got involved in the campaign to decriminalise the selling of sex in Ireland as part of her recovery journey.

Since the law changed in 2017, she says Ireland is now in a “much better place”, and now hopes Scotland can see similar changes in how prostitutes are treated by men, the police, and wider society.

Mia said: “The relationship between the women and the police in Ireland has improved because the criminality is gone and that trust has been built up.

“We’ve now had nine successful convictions for attacks on women in prostitution and that is because they know the law is on their side now, they can call the police.

“When I was there we didn’t have that because we were viewed as criminals, so you had to keep your mouth shut.

“I couldn’t walk into a police station and say ‘I was soliciting down the road but I was robbed’, because I was committing a crime when another crime happened.”

Mia now works for Ruhama, the organisation which helped her to exit prostitution herself.

Part of her work involves educating others about prostitution and reducing men’s demand for prostitution.

But all of this learning is now things campaigners in Scotland can take on board.

“You can’t just change the law,” Mia said. “You have to back it up with funded groups, training for frontline workers and instilling it in the education system.

“The only reason sex trafficking exists is because there are men at the other end waiting to pay - so if you don’t also look at the demand, you won’t stop anything.

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“We also now have in the legal definition of consent in Ireland that sex cannot be purchased.

“We are now on the right side of history because we have taken this seriously.”

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.”