NI sex buyer law: Womens Aid query QUB report findings

The Assembly voted to make the purchase of sex illegal in NI in 2015.

Supporters of the law argue that it undermines the demand for women who are groomed or forced into the sex trade.

The Department of Justice commissioned the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast to review the effectiveness of the law. The resulting report found 173,460 ads for commercial sex from one website, a 5% increase in advertising since the law came in.

And it reported that the average number of daily sex workers available in NI was 308, from 100 nationalities, and that there was no reduction in the figure since 2014.

Researchers concluded that the legislation appears to have had no deterrent effect in purchasing commercial sexual services, and that the two cases of sex buyers that have been prosecuted have not involved prostitution or human trafficking.

The report said there was no evidence to suggest the law had reduced sex trafficking in the Province.

Since the law came in, it said, there had been 15 arrests and two convictions for purchasing sex, and 31 arrests and two convictions for human trafficking for sexual exploitation.

However, Noelle Collins of Women’s Aid said she did not find the report convincing.

Although Women’s Aid is the primary statutory body tasked with caring for victims of sex trafficking, it declined a request to take part in the research.

She noted that the lead QUB academic, Dr Graham Ellison, openly campaigned against the sex buyer law before MLAs backed it, and that he also advocates for fully legalised prostitution.

The report shows “a particular lack of understanding” of the long-term psychological affects prostitution has “on every woman, whether they do this voluntarily or are coerced into this”.

“Obviously he [Mr Ellison] has never spoken to the women we work with who absolutely have no choice, who are traumatised through years and years of abuse and violence,” she said.

But Kate McGrew, sex worker and spokeswoman for the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland (SWAI), said the research only highlighted an increase in the sale of sex.

“If the purpose of the law was to decrease demand, it has failed,” she said.

“If the purpose of the law was to help sex workers, it has failed.

“In the north, it led to massive increase in advertising, demand and an increase in threatening behaviour in clients.”

She claimed that the same law in the south has led to an increase of 92% in violent crime against sex workers.