Being friends with a sex worker may mean you face stigma, but if you’re a good friend and you support the sex workers you know then you could also find yourself breaking the law. The law may even end up considering you to be your own friend’s sex trafficker.
This becomes even more difficult to navigate when two sex workers are friends, because working together from the same building will be viewed as brothel-keeping and sharing resources and money could be seen as profiting from another person’s prostitution. What laws exist shouldn’t be something that a person has to consider before they provide their friend with support to make them safer, but sex workers are in that position all the time.
There are many things a friend can do for someone selling sex which are obviously beneficial but are illegal at the same time, so I cannot recommend these actions without promoting criminal activity. So many of us are stuck in the complicated position of knowing that the help we need is illegal to provide, where we fear asking for it because we don’t want to put anyone else at risk.
When I’ve been poor and in desperate need to see a client so I can pay rent or afford food, sometimes the most immediate barrier is that I can’t physically get to the brothel or client’s hotel or home. A good friend would pay for my travel, order me an Uber, or drive me there, right? As far as the law is concerned, that person is trafficking me. If they get me an Uber to a brothel so I can work, they’re committing an offense under Section 58 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 or Section 2 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and could face up to six months in prison for it. Instead of helping me out with a small amount of money for travel, our legal system seeks to pressure them to leave me to suffer and be unable to get to work.
When I’ve shared a home with someone, any discussion of my work and arrangements made between myself and the person I live with can become illegal purely by virtue of me paying rent. If my friend works during the day and asks me to work during only those hours, earning the money to pay my half of the rent, they can be argued to be breaking Section 53 of the Sexual Offenses Act 2003 because there is a financial gain for them from me selling sex and they are in some ways influencing the manner of my prostitution.
A friend who corroborates a false story about a sex worker’s employment history is helping them navigate unfair stigma but may also be legally engaging in fraud. Writing an ad for your friend and posting it for them, if they struggle with English or with navigating social media, is illegal. There are so many things surrounding prostitution that are illegal, even when the buying and selling of sex are legal, that friends will run afoul of the law sooner or later.
My own friends know what the laws are and how to navigate them because I know the laws myself and I’m honest with them, but most sex workers don’t know the specifics of the law or what their rights are. If they don’t know that a friend could face criminal charges for supporting them, they may discuss it with others which increases the chances the police will become aware.
The police aren’t generally seeking to arrest people for things like helping with travel costs, so I don’t want to overstate the risk. The main issue is that being overt about it can cause police interest, and that people the police are already investigating may be targeted in this way and subject to these charges. If the police want a sex worker to comply with an investigation, or help the police prosecute clients or brothel owners, threatening their friends is a way for the police to gain leverage. It leaves us and our friends constantly looking over our shoulders and causes us to struggle to make friends. Putting someone in these kinds of dilemmas about providing support means they’re more likely to decide it’s too much work and leave. Being isolated is one of the things that keeps us selling sex for longer and means we do so in worse circumstances, so this creates a vicious cycle.
The focus should first be on the damage done to sex workers and their friends who face legal consequences for the support they provide for each other, but we should also consider the ways in which these people are robbed of recognition.
There are people I’d like to thank publicly, or to praise to other people in my life for the support they’ve given me, yet I’m limited to keeping my appreciation for their help entirely private. Since we cannot be open about the ways our friends have been by our side throughout our time selling sex, we often unintentionally play into this idea that sex workers are lonely or must always lie to our friends to maintain friendships. Criminalization impacts that narrative about sex work in more ways than just framing us as criminals.
Thank you to all the people who I can’t name, for support I can’t describe!
Jack Talks About Sex Work 