Splintered Lives - Barnardo's

Maggie O'Neill's (1995) action research project in Nottingham is an important source for
understanding the complexity of some young women's entry into, and continued
presence in prostitution. She argues that the variable and changing combinations of
financial and emotional needs, coercion and association have to be understood and
unpicked, if we are to make sense of why young people not only enter, but also remain
in the sex industry (see, also Hoigard and Finstad, 1992).
Association/economic need are often presented as differing and separate reasons for
women's entry into prostitution. This is too simple, and does not reflect the
complexity of many women's lives. For some women coercion and association led to
their entry, but economic need keeps them there as a well as a sub-culture of similar
and significant others. For others economic need led to their involvement but
coercion and sub-cultural entrenchment keeps them there. The sub-cultural aspect is
an important consideration; a sense of belonging to the network, friends who
understand and do not judge, and feeling needed and wanted are centrally related to
understanding women's continued involvement in prostitution (p11).
Her work also highlights the particular problem of young care leavers (see also
Linehan,1994).
Some are young women who drift into prostitution on leaving care because of
financial problems and their association with the street culture; others are clearly
pimped and coerced into prostitution whilst in care through developing 'romantic'
relationships with local pimps. All of these young women have profoundly sad
backgrounds: child sexual abuse; physical and emotional abuse; family breakdowns;
multiple placements in care. These result in extreme vulnerability and emotional
neediness, since their needs have not been met within the organisation of residential
care despite some very committed staff (p9).
Linehan (1994) reports on estimates that 80% of 'rent boys' and 50% of young women
working as prostitutes in London have been in local authority care, and notes the failure
of Children Act provisions in relation to care leavers. A number of children's advocacy
organisations have argued that the increased involvement of 16-18 year olds from the
late 1980s is a direct consequence of the removal of an automatic right to income
maintenance.
A joint 1992 Police Foundation and National Children's Home (NCH) study (reported in
Davies 1994a) of British children surviving on the streets echoes this, and Davies himself
comments: '
It always begins with the poverty of their origins, it moves through the bleak housing
estate, the single parent, the whole family trapped by income support. It usually
includes abuse - sometimes physical, sometimes sexual always psychological. It
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