Vulnerability and involvement in drug use and ... - Sex Work Europe

Vulnerability and involvement in drug use and sex work
52
Defining ‘age’ and ‘abuse’ and delivering services to meet exiting plans
It must be said at the outset that there appears to be something quite arbitrary about age
and state definitions of abuse which young participants did not refer to when discussing
their relationships with either private or commercial sex partners. When older
p a rticipants compared their childhood prostitution with their adult sex work they did not
describe qualitatively diff e rent experiences. They did not describe having strategies
specifically for dealing with sex work at a young age. Nor did they describe their
experiences of sex work as influential on shaping their maturation to adulthood. Their
conceptions of their selves as children and adults were not important for their
conceptions of how to deal with problems. They did not for example, say ‘I will deal
with this problem in this way because I am a child. If I was an adult I would deal with it
d i ff e rently’. Rather, they focused on dealing with problems as they could and assumed
that they must do so with the re s o u rces they had. These tensions may create diff i c u l t i e s
for serv i c e s :
● that are geared around volition and choice ascribed to clients with ‘adult’
identities moving to more interventionist modes of service for ‘children’; and
● when definitions are unclear, especially at the margins of definitions of abuse.
For example, at ages 16 to 18 young people are of an age to consent to sex, yet under
Safeguarding Children Involved in Prostitution, (Dept. of Health, 2000) they are to be
treated as victims of abuse in relation to sex for which they receive payment.
Improving services for sex workers
The findings in this study suggest that the overall aim for interventions targeted at sex workers
would be to prevent child abuse through prostitution and particularly to reduce their access to
the outdoor environments where drug use and sex work take place. All sex workers would
benefit from interventions, which reduce the co-location of sex work and drug use.
Most of the services discussed in this chapter are those that provide interventions to young
people currently engaged in sex work. It is crucial that these interventions reduce harm and
increase personal and sexual safety. Action also needs to be taken to prevent young people
getting into these situations and enabling young sex workers, especially those young people
under 18 to leave environments where they are vulnerable to both sex work and drug use.