REVIEW OF SERVICE PROVISION FOR WOMEN INVOLVED IN PROSTITUTION IN DUBLIN 24
Published: Thursday, February 24, 2011
SPEECH BY NATIONAL WOMEN'S COUNCIL CHIEF EXECUTIVE SUSAN MCKAY, AT LAUNCH OF THE "REVIEW OF SERVICE PROVISION FOR WOMEN INVOLVED IN PROSTITUTION IN DUBLIN 24
22 FEBRUARY 2011
When Gardai interviewed the women they found when they raided brothels run by Carlow man Thomas Carroll who was jailed last year, they were shocked by what the women told them. They spoke about having to work seven days a week servicing the sexual demands of men in towns and cities around Ireland, of having no right to refuse these men any demand they made, of being moved around from place to place. They had no say. They were in fact enslaved. There was one detail in particular that has haunted me since I read it. One of the women, a Nigerian, said that she was reprimanded for crying because, she was told, 'it puts the clients off.'
Her tears destroyed the illusion which a prostitute is required to provide, that she finds the man who is paying to have sex with her exciting and desireable, that she submits willingly to him. There is a comment in the report we are launching here today which stopped me in my tracks in a similar way. One woman is quoted as saying that she had not attended the community drug team because she felt 'too dirty'. That's the way women talk after they have been raped. And that is no coincidence. Prostitution cannot be seen as an occupation which women freely choose. The Women's Health Project says it well in the report: 'prostitution is in itself a high risk and exploitative situation for women'. As the writer Peter Sheridan put it at an event at which men spoke out against prostitution, 'it is not sex that is for sale, it is women - this is a modern form of slavery.'
Click here to read the entire speech
From left to right:
Kathryn McGrath, Women's Health Project (key author & field worker on research)
Wynn Nelson, Addiction Services HSE Dublin Mid-Leinster (key author & field worker on research)
Grace Hill, Co-ordinator Tallaght Drugs Task Force (chaired the event)
Susan McKay, CEO National Women's Council of Ireland (officially launched the document)
Linda Latham, Co-ordinator, Women's Health Project.