Movement for the Abolition of Prostitution

What is the Nordic Model?

The Nordic Model (sometimes known as the Sex Buyer Law, and the Swedish, Abolitionist, Survivor or Equality Model) is an approach to prostitution that has been adopted in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Canada, France, Ireland and Israel. It has several elements:

1. Decriminalisation of selling sex acts

Prostitution is inherently violent. Women should not be criminalised for the exploitation and abuse they endure.

2. Buying sex acts becomes a criminal offence

Buying human beings for sex is harmful, exploitative and can never be safe. We need to reduce the demand that drives sex trafficking.

3. Support and exit services

High quality, non-judgemental services to support those in prostitution and help them build a new life outside it, including: access to safe affordable housing; training and further education; child care; legal, debt and benefit advice; emotional and psychological support.

A holistic approach

A public information campaign; training for police and CPS; tackling the inequality and poverty that drive people into prostitution; effective laws against pimping and sex trafficking, with penalties that reflect the enormous damage they cause. Read more >>

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A prostitution survivor explains the reality of the ‘girlfriend experience’, how this is the model for AI girlfriends and the risks these pose.

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This open letter from a sex trafficking survivor calls on women’s organisations to stand with survivors and challenge men’s demand for prostitution.

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What are some of the lifelong consequences of prolonged trauma from involvement in the sex industry? – A survivor’s perspective

A call for everyone to listen to survivors of the sex industry and to understand the trauma they suffer and to show them compassion and grace.

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The dystopian landscape of porn, AI girlfriends, and sex robots and how they threaten our shared humanity and mutually satisfying relationships.

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The UK Government has introduced amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill that purport to implement Baroness Casey’s recommendation for statutory rape legislation but that in fact fail to protect children under 16 from predatory men.

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Sex trade survivor, Amanda Quick, responds to Ash Regan’s Unbuyable Bill falling with a call for honest discussions about the harms of prostitution.

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Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Why I defended the sex industry

By Anonymous

If you imagine a situation to be inescapable you do whatever you can to make that situation agreeable. Coming to accommodate misery, in this way, is an insidious process.

Liliam Altuntas

I know what it means to hide your past… a past full of mistakes.

Sometimes not even your family want to talk to you. Nobody wants to talk to someone who does drugs, who steals, who constantly tells lies, to hear about the person I was…

Alice Glass

“It is hard to unravel ten years of prostitution into non fictional coherence. To put all the years of confusion and compromise and cognitive dissonance and bent consent onto a page. One year (this month, as it happens) after my last ever ‘appointment’ with a ‘client’, I am trying to retrace my steps through prostitution, with the clarity that comes from distance.

Sara Smiles: My Story in the World of Paid Rape.

Sara Smiles started in prostitution in New Zealand in 1988 when she was a homeless 14-year old. She eventually escaped in 2010 when she was in her late thirties. She therefore experienced life in the sex trade in New Zealand both before and after it was fully decriminalised in 2003. []

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