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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FOI requests confirm the DWP considers self-employment on OnlyFans to be regular self-employment that comes under the same rules as hairdressers or plumbers

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Sex trade survivor, Venessa, calls on politicians to do something truly radical and hold men accountable for their actions by passing the Nordic Model.

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Jenna writes eloquently about the self-objectification that followed sexual abuse she suffered as a child and how this led her into prostitution.

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69 prostitution survivors from 15 countries call on Scottish ministers and MSPs to support Ash Regan’s Nordic Model style bill.

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In this moving poem, Jenna describes her struggle to rebuild a life away from prostitution.

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If we strip away the euphemism and wishful thinking, it is clear that prostitution can never comply with standard employment norms and law.

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Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Manon Marie Josée Michaud

I was born in a working-class district of Montreal. My parents divorced and I was the only child. I was in my mother’s care from when I was eight, but she didn’t give me an ounce of affection, because what she really wanted was a son. There was a lot of psychological and physical violence.

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. []

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.

Ally-Marie Diamond

Ally-Marie Diamond is of Maori/Pacific Islander heritage and now lives in Australia. She is a passionate activist against the sex trade and for the Nordic Model. This is her story of being groomed into prostitution in New Zealand.

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